Re: Frodo, the '69 F250 CS: door redo

[popeyes71]

Looking good! Great step by step on how to do all that you have done! Keep us up to date.

[flyboy2610]

The west coast mirrors that Frodo currently wears are in pretty poor shape, plus I don't like the fact that if you hit anything, you're liable to rip the mirrors right off the door!
So I decided to mount these mirrors that were on a pair of door shells that my brother in law gave me:
(Yes, I know they're dent mirrors, but I like 'em and it's my truck!




These were mounted on the door shells with four sheet metal screws. That does not strike me as being particularly secure, especially with such weight hanging on them at 60 mph, so i set about to find a more secure method to mount them. I came across a video on YouTube where a guy used jack nuts to mount a power window motor to a door frame. I liked the idea of a threaded fastener, so I looked into it.
I wound up buying these on eBay. (The 1/4x3/4 bolts I bought at Menard's.)

Here's a link to them: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-4-20x0-71-Sta ... 4acb93af37

I marked the position of the holes on the door. Please note that this door is going to go bye-bye. I have another door I am working on rebuilding, and it will be going in place of this beat up old thing.


Next I drilled some 29/64 holes after center punching the mounting spots so the the drill didn't wander around. (I sure do love my Milwaukee 1/2" hammer drill! )


Next install a jack nut in each hole.


The way these work is that the four 'legs' compress in the hole so that you end up with a threaded fastener in a blind hole. To get them to compress, I used a 1/4x3" toggle bolt. I installed 2 1/4" nuts about 3/4" from the head and jammed them together. Next I put another 1/4" nut on the end about 1-1/2" from the end. I then slipped a large washer over the end and threaded the bolt into the jack nut up to the washer.


I then took two 9/16" wrenches and used one to hold the bottom of the two jammed nuts, while I used the other to turn the lowermost nut clockwise. Normally, turning a fastener clockwise tightens it, but in this situation it has the effect of pulling the threaded end of the jack nut up towards the hole, compressing the jack nut legs in the process. You will have to exert some pressure towards the door with the wrench on the washer to help prevent the jack nut from spinning in the hole, but it's not bad.


Here's a side view of the 'installation tool' so you can better see what I mean. When I actually install a jack nut I have the bottom nut up much closer to the two jammed nuts.


You want to stop when the jack nut is tight in the hole. You do not want to over tighten the jack nut as you can strip the threads out of the inside, and then you have a real PIA on your hands. You may have to stop and reset the bolt once or twice as you do this. This is it will look when properly installed.


All four jack nuts installed.


The mirror mounted in place.


On this door I didn't use any rubber washers between the jack nuts and the door, or the mirror and the jack nuts. When I do this on the door I plan to install, I will use rubber washers in both places to keep water out of the door. I just needed to get a mirror on this door in case my van or the wife's van develop a problem and I need to drive Frodo during the winter. I sure hope I don't have to do that since the salt brine solution they use around here is really hard on vehicles. During the winter, the vans get frequent car washes with undercarriage washes.

[sargentrs]

Good job, flyboy! I like 'em.

[Mancar1]

Good job on the mirrors and all else. I have the West Coast Mirrors, and you can not only rip the mirror off but if you just nudge something with them just a itty bitty bit you can crease your door.....after just having it fixed....ask me how I know. When I get around to it I am replacing my mirrors. (Yes I already know all you excellent drivers out there would never hit anything with your mirror.)

[jimmy828]

good post you have there. Mirrors should hang on forever.

[Heirloom]

Great job. That's on my 'to do' list.

[Calfdemon]

Good job on the mirrors and all else. I have the West Coast Mirrors, and you can not only rip the mirror off but if you just nudge something with them just a itty bitty bit you can crease your door.....after just having it fixed....ask me how I know. When I get around to it I am replacing my mirrors. (Yes I already know all you excellent drivers out there would never hit anything with your mirror.)

And this is why I am not putting my beautiful set of West Coast Mirrors on my crew cab when I put it back together. The set I have are in awesome shape and look great, but after getting the body perfect on the truck, I am also going with dentside mirrors.

[Mancar1]

Good job on the mirrors and all else. I have the West Coast Mirrors, and you can not only rip the mirror off but if you just nudge something with them just a itty bitty bit you can crease your door.....after just having it fixed....ask me how I know. When I get around to it I am replacing my mirrors. (Yes I already know all you excellent drivers out there would never hit anything with your mirror.)

And this is why I am not putting my beautiful set of West Coast Mirrors on my crew cab when I put it back together. The set I have are in awesome shape and look great, but after getting the body perfect on the truck, I am also going with dentside mirrors.

When I replace them I will hang my West Coast ones from posts out in front of the shop so I can admire them and see whoever comes up the drive when I am enjoying a hot tub soak. Wanna see them before they see me and it scares them to death.

[flyboy2610]

I recently purchased an F600 dash cluster from hotrodford (Excellent guy to do business with, BTW!), and have been working on cleaning it up and painting it. Chroming it is an option if your last name is Absolutelymadeofmoney, but us low budget types have to go with other options. I decided to paint it to match the (eventual) color of Frodo's interior, which will be dark hunter green for the painted surfaces and dark blue for the upholstery.
I forgot to take a 'before' pic of the cluster, so I'm using the one hotrodford posted in his for sale ad.


I did some research on how to paint over chrome (you gotten estimates on the cost of de-chroming something like this lately? ) and found that the consensus seems to be to sand the chrome down to a nice dull finish, wipe it down good with a good cleaner to remove dust and oil, give it two coats of self etching primer, and at least two coats of color coat. So I sanded, and sanded, and sanded, and sanded, and... sanded some more. I finally got all the old paint off, and the chrome a dull finish all over the part. Did I mention it took a LOT of sanding?
Next step was to hang it from the stepladder and give it two coats of self etching primer.


While it was drying for a few days, I completely disassembled the gauge cluster. First, however, I took pictures of the front and back, and I recommend you do, too, because if you're anything like me when it comes time to reassemble everything you're never going to remember how it all went together.





I'm not sure where all these plugs go, but I'm sure I'll figure it out when I actually put this in the truck.


You can see that the orange wire has been clipped. That goes to the fuel gauge. I have a tool coming that will make short work of getting that pin out of the connector. I've tried using small screwdriver and picks to do that before, and the results are usually not very pretty. I will repair that wire.


The bezel in front of the cluster got two coats of self etching primer, and then got painted a dark Ford blue. Those with sharp eyes will say "Hey, that's not dark Ford blue!" And you would be correct. I ran out of dark Ford blue and had to go get more. It wasn't until I was spraying the second coat that I realized... I'd... gotten... the... wrong... color.
So now it's more of a medium blue.


The gauge cluster itself got two coats of self etching primer, and then two coats of what Rustoleum calls 'canvas white.' This pic was taken after reinstalling the gauges, and the flash makes it look more of a tan color, but it's really an off-white.


The cluster bezel got two coats of dark hunter green, and two coats of gloss clear.


A pic of the cluster reassembled:


I plan to have an automotive glass shop cut a piece of safety glass for the bezel. You can see it's chipped in the lower right. That's my faithful assistant Wally there behind the tachometer. I don't pay him much, but he doesn't seem to mind. I plan to convert the tach from mechanical to electric, and cut the cluster bezel hole on the right for it. I'm going to try to clean up the rusty chrome trim on the vacuum gauge, and maybe try some chrome paint, which I know is really more of a metallic silver. If I don't like the way it comes out, I'll start saving my pennies for a new vacuum gauge. I intend to mount my hazard flasher switch in the small hole on the left side. Not sure what will go in the small bottom hole. I will be getting the stainless interior screw kit from LMC.
I hope this weekend to get my new tranny pan and tranny filter installed. Getting tired of having red spots under Frodo and having to add tranny fluid anytime I want to take him somewhere.

More to come! (Eventually.)

[Mancar1]

More to come? Good, I really enjoy your great project coverage.

[flyboy2610]

Well........ I dood a boo-boo.
When I went to cut the hole on the right side of the cluster for the vacuum gauge, I must have measured it wrong. I thought it was 4 inches. “Hey, I have a 4 inch hole saw. No problem!”
Problem.
After cutting the hole with the hole saw and a drill press, I test fit the gauge. It went right through the hole. Turns out the proper hole diameter is 3-78 inches.


After getting over the initial fear that I had just ruined the cluster, I began to consider what I could do to fix this. What I decided to do was to take a thin piece of sheet steel and cut and grind it to fit the back of the cluster with out hitting the center gauge cluster. I had to use a 3-5/8 inch hole saw (nobody around here sells a 3-7/8) and grind out the hole to fit the vacuum gauge. I also drilled a series of hole in the patch to tack weld it to the back of the cluster. Here is the finished result.


You can see that there is a small alignment tab on the bottom of the gauge housing, for which an indentation needed to be ground into the patch.


I test fit it onto the back of the cluster.


I made some alignment marks, so I could get it back in the same place later, and marked the spots where I would need to be welding.



and wire wheeled the paint off those areas.


Now to set up the welder. I last used my trusty Lincoln MIG PAK 10 110v welder outdoors, so it was set up for flux core welding. I did not want to use flux core for this job, as flux core runs hotter than mig with shielding gas, so I had to switch the leads from flux core DC-


to shielded mig, DC+


The metal thickness of the cluster is right at .045


And since I am using C25 shielding gas and .025 wire , the door panel chart gives settings of B-3.5, so that's what I set the welder up for.


I removed some of the paint from the back of the cluster to get a good ground, and used an old door hinge as a weight to keep things steady while welding. I used some scrap lumber to make a base so I could keep everything level until I got the patch tacked into place. I inserted the gauge, and lined everything up with my alignment marks.


I tack welded the patch on in a few places, removed the gauge, and finished making all my tack welds.


The front of the cluster shows that I had accomplished my goal: I now had a ring of metal, properly sized to prevent the vacuum gauge from falling through. The heat marks on the cluster tell me that I have adequate penetration into the base metal of the cluster, and it is not burned through anywhere.


Gauge in place on the cluster.


This pic shows the next project to tackle. The gauge is sitting lower in the cluster than the tach does on the other side. I needed to build up the edges of the hole to bring the gauge back to the proper level.


I used some JB Weld putty to build up the edges.


I then used a hobby rotary tool (think Dremel) to remove the excess from inside the hole, so the gauge could fit in. The I used a wire wheel to remove the paint from the welded area of the cluster, and it also gave the JB Weld putty the proper contours to match the grooves on the cluster.


I ground down the welds on the back of the patch.


Then gave everything two coats of self etching primer, and two coats of dark hunter green.
Well, what do you think?








69Ford was kind enough to send me the orange wire that I needed for the electrical plug, plus another plug just in case. (Thanks again!), so now all I need to do is get the tach converted to electric, I'm thinking maybe having Red Line Gauge Works (http://www.redlinegaugeworks.com/) handle that, refinish the chrome ring around the vacuum gauge, and get another piece of glass for the center instrument cluster. It may be a while before this gets installed, but it's getting there!
I know when I go to put this in that I won't want to put it in a dash that's painted the wrong color, so everything will have to come out of the dash so it can get painted. Then I'll probably wind up just redoing the whole interior and putting in the high back buckets that I have, which will mean spending $200 for the brackets from BillW. Then of course I won't want to reinstall the old dirty carpet, so it'll mean new carpet.
See how it goes?

[69Ford]

Very nice I like the blue and green combo. The two plugs with three holes are used for your vacuum and tachometer lights and whatever else you want to light up or turn on with your headlight switch. Just be careful not to overload this circuit as there is a thermal circuit breaker that will pop and cause your headlights to go out or cause headlight switch damage. LMC truck sells a headlight wiring harness to prevent this from happening. Very simple to install.

[flyboy2610]

Thanks for the compliment!
I was studying the wiring harness for the cluster last night and realized both plugs came off the same wire for the cluster lights so I kind of had an idea that was the case. I looked up the wiring diagram on here for a '68 F500-750 (there isn't one for a '69) and confirmed my hypothesis.
I do plan to get LMC's headlight harness, but funding is tight right now (should get a bit looser before long, though) and upgrade my headlights to halogen as well. The old ones just don't throw a very bright beam.
I also noticed from the diagram that factory position for the tach (when an air or vacuum gauge is present) is to the right of the speedometer. I'm going to leave mine on the left, though, as that is where it is on both Plymouth Voyagers we have, and I'm used to seeing it there.

[marvin2]

Great work on the new gauge. I bet it was nerve-racking for a little bit there...

[sykanr0ng]

On the trailer coupler, I think you would be better served by grade 5 bolts.
Years ago I thought grade 8 for everything but then read articles where the grade 8 bolts shattered while grade 5 would stretch.
You still end up with damage but at least you may not need to go back and pick up the pieces.

The dash write-up has convinced me that when I get to that point having it sandblasted will be the way to go.