Refurbishing my '73 after 48 years of ownership

Idaho Chris said:

August 10, 2021

Long post today, sorry, but wow what a day. This morning I pushed my old girl out of the shop in preparation for the first engine start in almost 30 years. I truly did not know what to expect. I have done a bunch of work on the car over the past months. So many changes all at once including a transmission swap means there are so many things that could go wrong.

After dumping 5 gallons of non-ethanol premium in the tank, I disconnected the coil and cranked the engine to prime the fuel bowls and circulate the oil. I re-connected the coil and pulled a plug wire to confirm I had spark. You never know after installing a new engine wiring harness, new distributor, new plug wires and a new coil, but good news… I had spark.

Well, time for the moment of truth. With a remote starter switch hooked up to the solenoid and a fire extinguisher close at hand I pushed the button…

Bam! She fired right up on the first crank without a stumble or a missed beat. I’m not sure the crankshaft even made a full rotation before firing off! Idle was a little high, timing only close, but otherwise running great.

The video below was taken 30 seconds after firing off. I looked for leaks and walked around the back to smell/listen to the exhaust and shot the video.

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Unbelievable. The car started and ran as if she had been my daily driver. I quite literally had tears in my eyes. Here she was…my first car…alive again after all these years!!

Back to the front of the car…a little fiddling with the idle screw… watching for leaks/smoke…I let her warm up and goosed the throttle a couple times. Electric choke needed no adjustment and the now warm engine settled down to a smooth idle of around 1000 rpm (tach works!).

I then shot this video:


View attachment 84718

As you can see/hear, she’s running smoothly on all eight.

After a quick adjustment of the timing and adjusting the idle to around 750 rpm I shut her down and just stood there smiling and laughing…

Well…WTF…I don’t need no stinkin’ registration or insurance…I installed the air cleaner, grabbed my wallet and jumped in. She fired right up again and I drove into town 15 miles round trip and topped off the tank.

Clutch worked smoothly, transmission shifted like butter, no noise from the new Eaton rear end, power brakes worked, power steering made no noise, hell, even the “eyeball” front end alignment wasn’t bad!

I am so happy I am giddy. I have been sitting staring at the old girl all afternoon re-living my youth.

Life is good indeed!

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Sheriff41 said:

This was a great post! It really captures the passion and joy we have for our cars.

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PoFoMoCo said:

I have been reading through your build again, thanks for pulling everything over from the other thread. So I gotta ask, 2 years later after you started this build…do you any regrets or things you would have changed?

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Idaho Chris said:

… I fabricated a spacer to move the new Hurst shift lever aft 3/4" and right 1/4" to better align the lever with the new OEM spec rubber boot.

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Austin Vert said:

Hi Idaho Chris,

Regards your center console color.

The black contrast is an option, and looks pretty good. However, if you wanted to color change it to matching blue, the only way to achieve this is to take your car down to a decent paint and panel shop that can either color match paint by eye of use a spectrograph analizer. The best paint to work with is auto acrylic Lacquer, but 2 pak solids can be ok as well. You can even get to choose the gloss level you want to end up with. Your whole interior has a few different shades of blue. Choose the one that you like the look of best and go with that.Also the upholstery has a very fine hint of metallic in it. This effect can also be reproduced in the made up paint. If you possess spray guns and a compressor, you could take on this refinish job yourself. If not, then leave it to a pro spray painter to refinish, as spraying plastics is always a tricky deal to get it right.

So forget rattle can paints, color matching is the only way to get a good match that you are chasing. Hope that helps.

Greg (pro spray painter) :classic_smile:

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rvrtrash said:

Chris, call KC Auto Paint on 4th in Coeur d'Alene. I've had good luck with them and they're closer than Spokane. Also less sales tax. :thumb:

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Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs said:

I have refinished many consoles and have never had an issue with the SEM paints matching. You should be using the paint not the dye. ABS hard parts use the paints that I have always had 100% perfect match with. You need to strip all the old paints off the console first using oven cleaner. Then wash with Dawn and hot water and then a wipe down with lacquer thinner before paint. Only two light coats are needed. If you put too much paint on you fill in the texture and will look odd for sure. I have never had a complaint on finish or color using the SEM paints. I get mine from NPD. I have a blue interior 72 Mach 1 that came with full length console but it has never needed to be refurbished. As far as getting it scanned and mix paint that would be a huge cost for just your console. Have been doing them for over 50 years started with 65 console.

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Mister 4x4 said:

I see lots of good advice to help Idaho Chris get his console sorted, but just like with most Windows utilities, there are at least 8 different ways to skin the cat.

I got lucky with mine since the interior was Deluxe Black, which lends itself to matching things up MUCH easier than with other colors. Throw in years (decades) of age, sun fade & weathering, and now you have several completely different shades of (insert interior color here) going on. The SEM colors are truly awesome, and work VERY well - that's what I went with... but it really only works IF you need to refresh ALL of the color in the interior... again, depending on which colors we're talking about. It will most likely not match perfectly straight out of the can because of those age factors... which is why you're having issues matching things up, and also why Greg made the suggestion of getting the color-match done by someone with the right equipment. Usually, a paint store and/or painter won't charge for scanning to get the right mix, but even so, it won't be much, and will save a TON of trial & error in the long run. My paint shop guy had all of the same equipment and matched up the paint for my Jeep and Mustang perfectly - not a penny charged, either (of course, the paint wasn't cheap, so I'm sure it works out in the end).

Oven cleaner can be a mixed bag, depending on what you go with (again, so many different kinds to choose from - some can even melt the texture, as they're designed for metal surfaces). Dawn dishwashing soap is an awesome degreaser, but just as bad if you don't get it all removed. Lacquer thinner?! I suppose... but I've never had to go with such a harsh evaporative chemical after getting it clean with with the dish soap treatment.

SEM Products are also designed to be used as a system, with surface prep, adhesion promoters, texture enhancement, and colors. I refinished all of my interior pieces (old & new 'repop' pieces) at the same to ensure they all came out the same shade of black (again, tough to mess that up, but there really ARE about 600 shades of black, just like with every other color). The surface prep and adhesion promoter actually softens the plastic (yes, kind of 'melts' it a little) so the texture enhancement and paint actually stick a bit better, since you're not using primer. I made a melty thumb print on a test piece to learn that little nugget (be careful handling the pieces throughout the process).

Thanks to my airbrushing experience, I've discovered House of Kolors Surface Prep pretty much replaces the need for anything else once the old surface has been stripped and cleaned. It's a mild soapy-like degreaser than won't do anything except remove grease, oils, and other adhesion-preventing substances. A good degreaser that is plastic-friendly is WAY better than harsh solvents.

Make sure to follow the directions, have as dust-free of an environment as possible, and use a tack cloth just before you spray the first coat of whatever, and you're golden.

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