The Great Pumpkin - '71 Duster
Making a little bit of progress on this orange heap lately, have updates on a couple fronts.
First, the rear end housing and brake backing plates have been cleaned and painted. It was first painted 9 years ago (page 1, post #12) and did not hold up well. Besides brake fluid leaking all over it, the two main problems with the previous paint job were A) crummy paint and B) crummy paint that was thin. I used spray paint again but got some decent stuff this time. After it was stripped almost all the way down to bare metal again, I used epoxy primer/sealer instead of self-etching to seal it. For paint I went with 2-3 coats of SEM trim black as opposed to some random off-brand that was $5.99/can from the hardware store.
Though I hadn't planned on it, I ended up using the can of Rustoleum truck bed liner I had to try and help with durability. Now, this is not your typical thick, lumpy goop that dries like undercoating, it's a much smoother texture and has a satin sheen but it does hide a lot of imperfections. Not sure how durable it would be for an actual truck bed but it seems almost perfectly suited for a rear end housing. Obviously this is not a factory-style paint job but even so, you likely wouldn't even notice once it's under the car anyway.
Once the bed liner stuff was dry, I put on one more light coat of the trim black over it which smoothed the texture just a tad more. I like it. Hopefully it holds up. I may use it in the wheel wells of the body when I get to that point.
For reassembly, I sourced a complete new rear end gasket set, new housing end and third member studs with zinc-coated nylon lock nuts and new wheel cylinders, all from Dr. Diff. The gasket kit comes with new axle seals but I'm not sure I need them as the existing ones still look new.
From the multi-color spaghetti farm, the replacement fuse box I ordered last year from Waytek that had been on intergalactic backorder finally showed up. I'm glad I decided to replace the fuse box that was supplied with the AAW harness, it was a poor design that IMO had too many flaws to try and work with it. It's big, bulky and really difficult to modify to my liking.
Look at this thing! The bulkhead connector is on top and the fuse box snaps into the plastic stand-offs protruding from the fuse box itself. Imagine having to put this thing in place while trying to snake a girthy harness that has to make severe bends into the spot where where everything else lives behind the firewall. Can't imagine wrestling this thing into position with a heater box in place. And now try to imagine what a bunch of extra coiled up wires would be like - like I said, a poor design. But that's what you get when you buy a "universal" part designed around a '69 Camaro.
My other main issue with it is that in their inherent wisdom AAW crammed every A body electrical system produced between '67-'75 into one fuse box. (see that line above about being designed around a '69 Camaro) All the power feeds are ganged together so even if you wanted to de-pin it, you can't because it's all physically connected onto one long terminal strip.
Getting rid of the extra wiring requires removing the entire machine-crimped gang terminals and/or cutting the wires off of them at the base. And, because there are two distinct ignition switch styles between '67-'69-'70-up, you end up with a lot of unused wiring that again, you're supposed to coil up and just let hang. That goes against every fiber in my being. I had to cut a few wires in the end to get the rest of the harness loose but it doesn't matter since I'm ditching that fuse box.
After a bit of agonizing over re-engineering the AAW harness I spent all sorts of money on, I went ahead and ordered a different fuse box. The one I ordered is Bussmann 15713. It's a "triple bus" meaning it has separate provisions within the fuse box for battery, accessory and ignition-switched power which is the same as any other automotive fuse box. This particular one is very similar to the one that comes with the AAW B-body harness I have in my Coronet so I was familiar with it. It's a better layout all around.
Last, I sold the Sniper 4150 Stealth I was planning to use and went with a Holley Termninator X Stealth instead. The difference in price was a few hundred bucks. They are very similar systems but the main difference is the ECU is separate from the throttle body. Having the ECU inside the passenger compartment greatly reduces the chances of RFI, makes the wiring a little neater in the engine bay and is not subject to the same heat and vibration as the Sniper. All good stuff.
Going to try and get the underside painted today 4.16.22. have a lot of prep work to tackle before that can take place so going am going to end this here and get to work.
More to come.
Making a little bit of progress on this orange heap lately, have updates on a couple fronts.
First, the rear end housing and brake backing plates have been cleaned and painted. It was first painted 9 years ago (page 1, post #12) and did not hold up well. Besides brake fluid leaking all over it, the two main problems with the previous paint job were A) crummy paint and B) crummy paint that was thin. I used spray paint again but got some decent stuff this time. After it was stripped almost all the way down to bare metal again, I used epoxy primer/sealer instead of self-etching to seal it. For paint I went with 2-3 coats of SEM trim black as opposed to some random off-brand that was $5.99/can from the hardware store.
Though I hadn't planned on it, I ended up using the can of Rustoleum truck bed liner I had to try and help with durability. Now, this is not your typical thick, lumpy goop that dries like undercoating, it's a much smoother texture and has a satin sheen but it does hide a lot of imperfections. Not sure how durable it would be for an actual truck bed but it seems almost perfectly suited for a rear end housing. Obviously this is not a factory-style paint job but even so, you likely wouldn't even notice once it's under the car anyway.
Once the bed liner stuff was dry, I put on one more light coat of the trim black over it which smoothed the texture just a tad more. I like it. Hopefully it holds up. I may use it in the wheel wells of the body when I get to that point.
For reassembly, I sourced a complete new rear end gasket set, new housing end and third member studs with zinc-coated nylon lock nuts and new wheel cylinders, all from Dr. Diff. The gasket kit comes with new axle seals but I'm not sure I need them as the existing ones still look new.
From the multi-color spaghetti farm, the replacement fuse box I ordered last year from Waytek that had been on intergalactic backorder finally showed up. I'm glad I decided to replace the fuse box that was supplied with the AAW harness, it was a poor design that IMO had too many flaws to try and work with it. It's big, bulky and really difficult to modify to my liking.
Look at this thing! The bulkhead connector is on top and the fuse box snaps into the plastic stand-offs protruding from the fuse box itself. Imagine having to put this thing in place while trying to snake a girthy harness that has to make severe bends into the spot where where everything else lives behind the firewall. Can't imagine wrestling this thing into position with a heater box in place. And now try to imagine what a bunch of extra coiled up wires would be like - like I said, a poor design. But that's what you get when you buy a "universal" part designed around a '69 Camaro.
My other main issue with it is that in their inherent wisdom AAW crammed every A body electrical system produced between '67-'75 into one fuse box. (see that line above about being designed around a '69 Camaro) All the power feeds are ganged together so even if you wanted to de-pin it, you can't because it's all physically connected onto one long terminal strip.
Getting rid of the extra wiring requires removing the entire machine-crimped gang terminals and/or cutting the wires off of them at the base. And, because there are two distinct ignition switch styles between '67-'69-'70-up, you end up with a lot of unused wiring that again, you're supposed to coil up and just let hang. That goes against every fiber in my being. I had to cut a few wires in the end to get the rest of the harness loose but it doesn't matter since I'm ditching that fuse box.
After a bit of agonizing over re-engineering the AAW harness I spent all sorts of money on, I went ahead and ordered a different fuse box. The one I ordered is Bussmann 15713. It's a "triple bus" meaning it has separate provisions within the fuse box for battery, accessory and ignition-switched power which is the same as any other automotive fuse box. This particular one is very similar to the one that comes with the AAW B-body harness I have in my Coronet so I was familiar with it. It's a better layout all around.
Last, I sold the Sniper 4150 Stealth I was planning to use and went with a Holley Termninator X Stealth instead. The difference in price was a few hundred bucks. They are very similar systems but the main difference is the ECU is separate from the throttle body. Having the ECU inside the passenger compartment greatly reduces the chances of RFI, makes the wiring a little neater in the engine bay and is not subject to the same heat and vibration as the Sniper. All good stuff.
Going to try and get the underside painted today 4.16.22. have a lot of prep work to tackle before that can take place so going am going to end this here and get to work.
More to come.