Leaderboard

Here is how you reproduce the not yet reproduced 69-70 parking brake switch. Make the ABS body and the end by 3D printing. Make a bending jig to bend the beryllium copper contact to right shape and bend the contact strips. Heat treat the contact. Assemble and secure the parts. You are done. Changed the original design a little bit so the contact does not break due to fatigue like the originals did. Cycled the black switch 2500 times on the 70 Cougar pedal I have off the car; it did not brake and did not stop working so installed it on my 69 Grande. Left to right on the pictures below are; broken original switch, 3D printed ABS parts, contact, final product.

I've been on this site for a long time and haven't made a build progress page so I figured it was about time I got around to doing it. My car has been off the road since 1975 and was stored inside an upholstery shop since the early 80's. I attached a picture of what it looked like when I first rolled it out of the building, it has 53,000 original miles. I've had the car since 2010 but progress was slow due to moving from Texas to Oklahoma. I had to put the car in storage for a yr and a half after I moved until we bought a new house so I had somewhere to put it. After that I got busy working on the house and building a shop so I had a place to work on my car. Now that most of my non car projects are completed I have been back working on the 69 trying to get the body work finished up so I can get it back on the road. Nearly all the parts that on the car have been rebuilt and are ready to install. I still have a little body work to do but can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

If you correctly blue the valves i.e. apply it correctly, very thin - tap the valve up and down a couple of times without rotating it and it shows a correct seat, then lapping the valves will achieve nothing extra.

That will make a nice donor car for the rebuild. :)

New floors installed and my son being my helper drilling out the rear seat back spot welds to work on the axle tunnel. I didn’t get any pictures of the repairs made to the tunnel but have some with the seat back pulled out and reinstalled. Replaced the taillight panel also.