January 31, 2013

Tonight I pulled the radio and front speaker out. The muddy sound of the speaker had me thinking it was ripped, and boy was I right. It is a mess. No surprise for 49 year old paper. The radio and bezel are also due for a good cleaning and polishing before I reinstall them.

Glove box trim after cleaning

Hard to tell the difference in the pics, but the trim really cleans up nice.

Glove box trim before cleaning

Hard to tell just how dirty the dash board really is, but it's pretty gross.

January 30, 2013

Tonight I picked up the new temperature sender I ordered from AutoZone. This is the second one. The first had the wrong connector. The original part apparently has a clip type connector, but mine has a threaded stud connector. We identified a different sender from a 1965 383 motor instead. I will post the part number here.

So I replaced the sender in the hope that my temperature gauge would work again. No such luck. 20 minutes of warmup in the driveway resulted in no needle movement. I guess it's on to the gauge pod for this one. That's a few weeks off yet though.

I buffed the inside of the ashtray door and cleaned up the ashtray a little bit as well. I'll move back to pulling the radio next.

I also checked my tail lights. One was out, or so it seemed. I looked in the trunk to check the bulbs thinking I would just buy 4 new ones. The far right light bulb had simply fallen out of the light housing. I reseated the light and it works perfectly.

Speaking of lights, I need to identify the bulb used in the glove box. The bulb is missing so I'll replace that as soon as figure out what goes there.

I think I've found a replacement cigarette lighter online. I've asked the guys in the 880 Facebook group to take a picture of theirs so I can positively ID it before ordering.

January 29, 2013

I fixed the fader control tonight by soldering a lead onto the rheostat pin and using a butt connector to join the original wire that broke. The original wire was too short to reach after breaking off but this method seems to have worked.

The fader control works perfectly, smoothly adjusting the sound between the front and rear speakers. I also put a little light lube on the dual switches that power the reverberator. They switch a little more smoothly now. I put it all back together in the dash and polished the chrome control knob.

The cool thing I learned is that the reverberator isn't totally dead. At low volume, when the reverberator is switched on by pulling out the fader knob, the rear speaker simply shuts off. I found that if I turn the volume up very loud, the speaker kicks back in. It sounds horrible with lots of distortion, but the noise definitely has a concert hall echo to it. I'll tackle the reverberator in the next week or so.

I removed the trim pieces from the glove box and buffed them up with some steel wool. Wow, they look much better. The Custom 880 logo piece will also need some flat black paint touch up when I get to that point.

In anticipation of removing the radio for cleaning and easier access to the front speaker, I also removed the ash tray and its hanging bracket. I buffed the bracket with steel wool too. I'll get to the ash tray tomorrow.

January 28, 2013

I started really working on the car tonight. Some simple stuff, removed an old center console screwed to the floor on the transmission hump. Then I removed an old JVC tape deck stereo that a previous owner had installed. My goal is to get the stock radio back into full working order. The front speaker sounds like it's shot when the volume is turned up and the rear speaker reverberator doesn't work.

I also removed the fader switch and used CRC electronic cleaner to clean up the contacts. In the process I broke one of the wire connections on the control. I'll fix that tomorrow.