Interior parts Questions

[cmefly]

The scuff plates on my 65 Sprint are 3 3/8" wide.

[2erobrd]

Thanks for all the details, I will embark on the disassembly of the steering wheel this weekend. As far as the scuff plates, I knew they sent me the wrong items, just does not seem possible that they would be that

I'll post what comes of this steering wheel once it's been cracked open.

Once again, thanks for all your advice guys !

[2erobrd]

Hey Roger,

I took some time to pull the tearing wheel off and I noticed a couple of bolts inside the hub of the wheel were not as tight as they should have been.

I tightened them and I took your advice and replaced the cone shaped bearing (as I already had it) and the one that was in there was split!.

Put everything back together and ALL the play excess play was gone !!! I plan on taking her out for a spin tomorrow and see if I aligned the wheel properly.

Back to the other 2 items I also noted on, I returned the Escutcheons as they were apparently for a 63, so i exchanged them for the correct ones, now they fit !

And Lastly, after measuring the scuff plates it seems that the ones i received were mis-labeled and were actually for a hardtop. So now i wait for the replacements.

One more Question....is there a big difference between the replacement Headlight switches and the NOS units? Mine, while it's new, seems I have to play with it to get the instrument lights to come on. Just wandering if it might be worth to get an NOS unit....what do you guy think ?

Thanks a bunch for everyones help...

Erick

[Jeff W]

In my experience flaky instrument lights had more to do with an old and dirty ceramic-like dimmer disk. This is the round white thing that slides into the front of the light switch when the actuator rod with knob is removed. I imagine there is some sort of wiper that rides on the wire wound disk that could be dirty or tension is not pushing hard enough on the instrument light dimmer. I think this same disk is the mechanism that turns on your dome light.

[SmithKid]

I would agree with the above. The ones I have seen were a ceramic housing with a wire wound resistor laid in a groove with a metal wiper arm that moves along its coils to change the resistance. They could often be made to work more reliably by spraying with a contact cleaner (like a tuner cleaner available at Radio Shack) and turning the knob back and forth several times to "clean off" the oxidation. Don't use anything oil-based as the resistor may get hot and you may get smoke from it (though only temporarily). A more drastic step would be to dis-assemble the cover and use a VERY fine abrasive (like emory cloth) to gently clean both the resistor and wiper arm. I have done both procedures successfully in the past. Good Luck!

[Luva65wagon]

Erick,

Glad you were able to resolve the steering column issue.

FWIW the cone is split normally (from the narrow end to the wide end) so it will compress as it is being pushed on by the spring.

The nuts and the bolts that cinch up the turn-signal housing is an assembly that I have seen installed wrong more than right anytime I've had to dig into someone's column. You can tighten them and still not have the bolt-part "hooked" into the column. You generally know they are hooked correctly when there is only a couple threads extending beyond the edge of the nut. It's not like it's going to go anywhere or anything, so you're probably OK as long as it's not sloppy.

Jeff and Gene are right. Personally I think most of the aftermarket parts are not all that good. Some are, but most are not. If you can even find a NOS part, you may still have 50 years of oxidation on the rotary rheostat. Getting these polished up helps. Tuner cleaner is great for keeping them clean and conductive, but I've had to polish them with some abrasive too. Also, the shaft goes into this part to rotate it, and I've seen new ones that are pretty sloppy around this shaft causing it to ride unevenly as you rotate it. Welcome to 50 year old technology!

[falcon cobra]

Last fall I was working on that problem with a LM-317 adjustable voltage regulator that looks like a transistor, it works good but gets quite hot with all the bulbs it controls, I quess if it was heat sinked to the unibody it would work, they are only good for 1.5 amps, but dim the dash lights with one knob....jh