Bentworker

Excellent - I appreciate the good pics. Now to get to fabricating. If anyone else has any ideas / pics / links to threads where someone has done this please post them. I tried the search function and didn't have much success. Searching for "gauge bezel" or "triple gauge" "gauge retrofit" led to thousands of results. If I didn't see anything in the first dozen results I gave up and tried a different phrase.

My Grande came with an idiot light dash with clock. It is getting a tach retrofit right now thanks to RCCI. Is the factory triple gauge center console setup comparable with 1 7/8” gauges or did it use proprietary ones? I’d like to know how to retrofit some gauges in the factory triple bezel. Any wisdom to share?

Close enough. The camera case texture looks a little much in a close up, but I like it. As best as I can tell the raised characters were coated / painted too. There is a pretty good pic on Marti’s site. https://www.martiauto.com/CoolStuff/fraud/VINTag.cfm The top of the raised charters would have have been stretched in the stamping process- so if the tags were coated pre stamping the coating would be thinner there. A few decades out in the sun would erode that thin layer. Same would hold true if they were painted post stamping as the paint would be thinner on the crests of the stamped characters. That might explain why some of the cars appear to have bright metal stamped letters with a painted background opposed to what Marti shows.

Well, I found a paint that is pretty close to stock for the Vin. Humbrol 66 model paint. It is matte, I think the original was more satin.

Found one example, but it is pretty dirty. I am leaning in the direction of a thin coat of matte/satin dark grey, possibly with an hint of green. Paint the entire tag, raised letters and all. Anybody have an example out of a cleaner car? For the life of me I can’t figure out how to embed a photo. Link to dirty example below. https://ibb.co/D8fsnhN

Aye- I’ll give that method a go. Thanks!

After the forum update I seem to be out of space. Anyone else have the same problem? It is a lot easier to communicate with pictures.

The more I clean it the more paint comes off... https://ibb.co/HPS2Qfc

Here is the question, are the raised letters on the vin plate also painted that background olive drab / Dark grey color? My vin plate was super grungy and had a layer of beer residue reinforced with dirt on top of it. After cleaning it a bit I can’t tell if the stamped raised letters were supposed to be silver or the same as the background.

I’m curious what you find when checking alignment. Reminds me of my GMC pickup when I had toe out.

I have a coworker that has two different big block Chevy engines - A 632 marine and a 540 from Blueprint. His experience with them has been very good. The 632 is pushing around a 22’ boat to about 113mph. His experience was that he couldn’t piece together a big block Chevy out of the Summit Racing catalog for the price Blueprint was selling one for - and the Blueprint one came with a warrantee and a dyno sheet. Blueprints shop has some pretty cool videos. The interesting thing about them is the scale of their operation- big.

My car is still spread over the garage, attic, and the body shop so I can’t give you much input on what it is like to drive at highway speeds with a 12.7:1 box. I would say you might get a rough idea on something more modern that has a similar lock to lock. For example a Toyota Rav 4 SUV is about 2.75 turns lock to lock. A Ford Fiesta ST has the most aggressive steering of anything I have driven at 2.25 turns lock to lock with the wheelbase of a Gokart. Below is an old thread I dug up when the lock to lock numbers for the different Saginaw box guts in a 71-73.

I’d shoot for equal and middle of the adjustment range. Get everything torqued down to spec and double checked. I’d also do a crude toe in with strings or a long rule / folding rule / tape. As long as you have a good alignment person they should be able to tweak it to whatever spec you give them and be good to go.

You could just leave the sway bar off until the alignment is done. It is easier to install it with the weight of the car on the wheels anyway. Drive it up on some ramps or a lift post alignment and bolt it up.

In my experience by the time you move the lower control arms out far enough to get 0 or negative camber and shorten the strut rods to gain positive caster the sway bar end links end up pretty wonky. I wish some of the sway bar manufacturers would offer a “sport” bend that lined up better with the LCA holes when using a modern performance alignment. What I am getting it is that having the sway bar links plumb is no indication that everything is “right”