What have you done to your wagon lately? (Let's keep the thread going!)

I stopped by the body shop on my way home as they felt quite certain, on Tuesday, that the Roadmaster would be ready for the weekend. I arrived to find that they had closed up shop early and everyone was gone. I peeked through the window to see the Roadie masked and ready for paint, just as it's been for the last two weeks.

I bought a box of WellNuts and some stainless steel machine screws from SpaeNaur to get ready to reinstall my roof rack.

Without a wagon, looks like I'll continue work on refinishing my power seat frames.

She's not a wagon, but the Poncho will have her Quadrajet replaced this weekend too.

 

I think I would drive it out of there masking and all....to a different shop.

 

You know me...Canadian to a fault.

 

i was shocked as anything last night by what my wife said . seems like after our road trip to chattanooga i few things needed replacement as i said.
1- tires - i get no compensation from this but discount tire direct was awesome . 6 yrs ago i bought 4 falken tires for my wagon from them . well as i said they went bad and perry from dtd gave me an awesome deal . 4 nitto 450 tires for $201 with warranty delivered to my door :2_thumbs_up_-_anima
2- rear leaked - brought it to the guy who rebuilt the rear and he replaced the bearing and seal picked it up on thursday
3- replaced rear shocks -
4-battery
what shocked me was last night we went to the local cruise ,my daughter says "dad how come we didn't take the old car tonite?" i said i didn't have a chance to check the battery don't wanna get stuck .My daughter sighs and my wife says "honey don't worry we just drove almost 2,000 miles a few weeks ago and the old girl worked fine. she just needed a little checkup and dad will get her going this weekend " it left me speechless as my wife has never said anything like that about the wagon

 

My wife does like wagons and I'm the one who cleans and washes the cars and her daily drive is allways first. lately I have been only driving company trucks to work and back leaving one wagon at work and the other in the driveway, both have gotton "dusty", the one I left at work more so. Last nite I drove my wagon home, later on I heard the garden hose and went out to find my honey hosing off both wagons. She has never done that before iether. Was kinda nice.

...now if I could get her to polish the wood grain

 

I did something bad :banghead3: and hurt the engine the other day. Don't know what I've done yet and no time left to tackle it before our trip to another vintage RV gathering, so it will reside in the shop till we get home, then I'll tear in to it. Dang I hate when I do this.

 

OK...what did you do and what car did you do it to??

 

The fuel gauge has not been working, so I decided to find out what needed to be done. The fuel tank is in the driver quarter panel. First, I checked to see if I could get to the sender from the interior. It looked like there would be a way. Nope. Then I did the under the car bit, removed the rock shield from behind the tire and directly in front of the tank. Voila. The sending unit is way up at the top and I am going to have to drop the tank to get to it. It is angled toward the interior of the car and I don't want to bend anything. I turned the car on and had my dad move the float with a coat hanger. The gauge moved with it. Good news the sending unit and gauge work. Bad news is that the float must have some cracks and gas is leaking into it. Can these be repaired?

 

I pulled my float a while back and it was full of gas. Replaced it with a cork while I ordered a new one and that worked in a pinch.
In the mean time I drilled a hole in the old float and dumped out the fuel.
Two weeks later, after the new float was installed... I got curious and fired up a soldering iron over the old float. Managed to resolder the ring seal and put a cap over the hole that I drilled, all with silver solder and acid flux.
Now I have a spare just incase.

So, yeah they can be repaired. Or you can replace it with a new one or.... a cork!

 

Where would I order a new float for that car? It has an upright tank that's only about 13 gallons.

I don't want to take this one out without having a replacement or a repair plan. Why do it twice? Especially when I can just take the gas cap off and check visually until the time comes.

 

Sunday Sept. 4th

I have my wagon back from the tailgate repair temporarily so it can be in our AOH car Show this Saturday Sept 10th. My wife touched up behind the LTD Crown Victoria nameplates where some of the regluing-glue was showing. She has a steadier hand!

 

I finally got the cruiser back from having the Q-jet rebuilt, so I got to drive it for the first time since May. It seems to run better so I'm hopeful that helps the overall driving experience.
I also took a little time to remove the adhesive goo from the dash. Why is the greatest generation felt is was necessary to put stick-on doodads on their cars ? My dad did it and most of his friends too.

 

Well, it's better than having to fill a drilled mounting hole isn't it?

 

Well... that is the trick I guess.
I had my son-in-law order me one through his connections as a mechanic.
That said... since then, I found one for my car at Dennis Carpenter all Ford web site for a few bucks. But those are different from the style I see is in your '64 Pancho.

I did a quick google search on your car and it seems nobody so far sells just the float. Only complete sending units. Have you thought of retrofitting a bloody cork in the meantime? I mean... what the heck, you have nothing to lose.

 

How much were the sending units with that came with the float? Do you know if my float is plastic or brass? I heard some cars had brass floats, from my dad.

Today, I replaced the rear shocks on the wagon. I also had to add some coil expanders. The driver side was sagging way too much and no one had the coils in stock.

My next project is disc brake conversion. I found a set of power front disc brakes on Master Power Brakes. This reuses my current spindle, would this cause any problems? I haven't found a company that makes one for my rear brakes. Also, I couldn't find the stamp that would have my ratio on the rear end. Any advice would be great. She is going to keep the car long enough to make it safe for her and the kids. Would it be a problem doing just the front brakes? If you know of a good deal for it or something that would work, then great.

One of the problems I am having is the car will stall if I step on the brakes hard. More so with A/C on.