Day 13

A few days ago, we put the intake manifold on the engine. Before:

And after:

I worked on the dash fit, then secured the lower part to the chassis. Here is the dash while temporarily secured:

This is the space we have to work with, behind the firewall:

The holes on the bottom part of the dash don't quite line up the way they were drilled, so I'll correct that tomorrow. From there, I cleaned up the wire behind the gauges from this:

To this:

We put the dash lighting dimmer switch in the glove box, just to keep the look clean. I secured the bundled wire to the dash face with zip tie hold-downs and such. I also replaced the hole where the alternator fail light would go (which turned out to be impossible using a one-wire alternator) with a hazard light switch. So the dash is ready to plug and play.
More parts coming in next week and plenty of time on my hands this weekend...

Carroll Shelby, Automotive Legend, Dead At 89

One of the best. You will be missed.
http://jalopnik.com/5890132/carroll-shelby-automotive-legend-dead-at-89
And one for the road:
http://jalopnik.com/5909671/my-name-is-carroll-shelby-and-performance-is-my-business

Seats and dash

Dad worked on the seat tracks while I put together a nifty switch and USB port for charging a cell phone. This was mounted to the underside of the dash:

The 5 pos. rotary switch selects the gauge and the push button switch is for control, which programs the tach, speedo, fuel and clock. I took apart an old 12V cell charger and wired it to an female A type USB port. This will be wired into the radio lead, once installed to the car.

Here is a shot of business side:

The 3.5mm jacks plug into the back of each programmable gauge and are actually a separate circuit from the phone charger.

So after a bit of a struggle lining up the seat tracks to the seat, Dad got the driver side in:

And another angle:

And me, testing it out:

Still waiting on the lower steering shaft to show up, so I'm holding the steering wheel where it should be. Dad is working on getting the correct intake manifold & gaskets as well as water pump. Front brakes are still leaking too, so Dad is going to get new lines/bolts and hopefully that will do it. Till next time...