Greetings . . .

I cannot believe that has been over a year since I went heads down on the project. I expected to be on the road by now but the twists and turns of the details keep getting in the way.

I was running head long toward getting things ready for a first fire up when it dawned on me that I would want to roll as soon as it was running. So once I was done with the wiring harness swap:

I stopped working on the front clip parts and pivoted to the interior. I was surprised at how tight the quarters are behind the dash. One needs to use the service hatch and the fresh air vent to get two hands involved. It leads me to believe that the factory wiring was done on a bench before the dash was put in the car.

I used my wife’s upholstery cleaner to freshen things up as much as I could. I wanted the interior to keep that used car atmosphere:

After all a kid doing a hop up in the early fifties was hardly gonna spend money on something other than go-fast-parts/mods and instrumentation. There are some stains and rips here & there but that gives the car character. Conversely, the back seat shows little evidence of use. The springs even carry the original OEM tags:

The manufacturer was the now defunct ‘F.L. Jacobs':



The front seat on the driver side is really worn out. I added a single layer of heavy cotton between the old fabric and the foam (which is pretty tired and beginning to break down into dust at the surface). I stitched the tears closed and then covered it with a piece of folded wool tucked under the seat back – again in keeping with ‘the kid on budget theme’:


I’ve added instrumentation that I collected over the past ten years:

In spite of the apparent amount of real-estate under the dash – the space is actually quite crowded:

The area under the ignition is shrouded – making it a poor choice for a gauge. Then one runs into the emergency brake handle and then a vent pull:

So I centered the oil pressure and temperature cluster under the lighter/ash-tray/clock tower- with the vacuum gauge centered under the speaker.

The driver side of the dash is equally cluttered. The area right next the steering column is shrouded just like the ignition side – and it’s occupied by the overdrive engagement knob. Next to that is the heater/vent controls. I moved the turn signal clicker up top and out of sight. Leaving room a volt meter:


More progress posts to come.

Regards,
Stock49