A12 - time to get busy

I think I got the brakes bled before running out of fluid ... the pedal's low but I don't feel any air so I might need to tighten up the shoes a little. I left them loose so it's easy to push.

I'm done messing around with the parking brake cable. The bracket I made to move the housing stop still isn't in the right place. So this will be here today.
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I'll just make my own stupid cables using the two gadgets at top left to connect to the front cable at a good length to get things working.

Also, the stop in the frame rail that's missing for the front cable is going to be fixed with a washer that I ground flats on to fit it inside the frame rail and is big enough to never pull through the hole. I probably should weld it, but you know I don't see any way for it to go anywhere once the front cable is installed and adjusted so I'm trying it without welding for now.
 
I'll use the original style front cable and run the rear kit cable housings from the backing plates/brakes to the mounting stop welded on the frame (in the wrong place). Then I will string the rear cables through, pull them and the front cable together and figure out how long the rear cables need to be to meet the front cable like they should. Then I'll put those "Non-Slip Set-Screw Cable Ends" on there in place of the swaged on doohickeys like are on the factory style set. It will make sense once it's all in place.

The hard-ish part will be cutting the cable without it unwinding on me. I plan to put some shrink wrap on it and tape it tight before cutting it with a cut-off wheel.
 
Nice, did you ever think you had to be an engineer to put a car back together!
Nah, it's just hodrodding. What I never thought was that I'd be able to buy parts for a 50 year old car.

I would definitely rather have the factory style steel housing though but that's less important than having a parking brake in WV.
 
A tip - if you're going to install a heater box alone, it helps to have the windshield out so you can reach both sides of the firewall.

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I realized that it's been 50 years since the car had a heater box in it.

I stuck the tail lights in even though I've still got a problem with the extensions (should have been seam-sealed and painted on the car), but that all comes out in one piece so it wasn't wasted work.

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It's got foam weatherstrip in the gap right now, but that didn't work out.

Right now my plan is to take them back off (duh), get the best tape money can buy to cover the paint, then gob seam sealer or RTV in the gap and bolt them back on.

This: note you can see daylight between the extension and the quarter
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Ahhhh the memories, my heater box fought me for a while, I think something warped on the box, getting it in all the holes was a fight, I ended up chipping one of the drain tubes on the final ram the darn thing in, luckily far enough out not to leak back in the car.
I kinda wondered what good the jute padding & those silly little pieces of insulation actually do?
the pieces behind the kick panels made a little more sense!

Lookin good!
 
Had to be a reason, for insulation it doesn't do much, noise makes a little sense.
On the other car I put that stick on padding on the whole interior floor , this car just the black mats that come with the carpet, don't hear a lot of difference, these cars are noisy!
 
You haven't lived until you've been in my Duster. It's like a freaking Ricola commercial in there. Hello, hello, hello, hello ... It's kind of fun to just sit in it and talk to myself and let the car talk back to me.

It's got all the interior in it but the heater box and dash insulation, and the separator between the back seat and trunk.
 
Man, am I ever tired of losing things

I was working on cleaning up the dash switches and noticed that I don't have a flasher switch (pre-70 is in the dash), which means I don't have any of the switches out of this dash. The ones I found are just spares collected over the years.

They're here somewhere ...
 

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