The Blue No Door

That is so clever how you "hooked" the threaded rod through the frame. At first I didn't get it, looking at the photos, but then I understood that you can feed the u-bolt in one hole and get it to come out the other. And then you've in effect got two studs coming out!

Of course us Sportvan owners don't need to bother!

Those exhaust pipes look great!! Who's not going to share? I'll set aside some cash for you for next time you visit!

Don does the knob and stem come out of the four-way flasher like it does in a headlight switch ? Would the stem from a headlight switch work for a replacement? The switch is on my 65 but there's no knob or stem.

Don those end look just like the ones on my 64 & 65's. I got the 2 plugs coming from TS and the 1 from vans harness. My guess is you plug the 2 off flaser in to the 1 on vans harness and the 1 on flasser into the 2 on TS?? How about mouting it on the other side of where the heater switch is??

My blue van had that exact same flasher switch. It was mounted underneath the dash, very out of sight. I don't have a photo of it installed but in this shot you can see the holes drilled in that support. The two close together holes is where the flasher was mounted, pointing straight down (so you'd pull the knob towards the floor). And this huge relay was mounted further down that support. Not sure if the relay is really necessary. Do you guys have one on yours?



And you're right, the plugs simply go inline with the two existing plugs. Just disconnect them and put the flasher's plugs in between. Very clever!

Troy put a trans cooler like that on his ND. He mounted it on the pass side frame behind batt box. Works good and easy to hook up too.

Tom I would have never thought to put it that far back??? Thats a very good idea, tucked up out of the way away from all the other crap and short lines too

My radiator has the tranny cooler built in because it came with a PowerGlide. But since we are always trying to keep our engines from overheating, common sense would tell us NOT to run the tranny fluid thru it. However, the instructions from Bowtie Overdrive where I bought my rebuilt 700R4 say to run the lines thru the radiator even if you do have an auxiliary cooler. AND they say to run it to the radiator FIRST, which I'm hesitant to do. Why not AFTER it's had a chance to get cooled thru the auxiliary cooler first?

Here are some excerpts from their lengthy instructions. They are for a 700R4 but should be applicable for any automatic tranny:

Always run the transmission fluid through a transmission heat exchanger built into your radiator. Most installations don’t even require additional coolers if the radiator system is well designed. When you plan to tow, you should try to over kill this requirement. If you must error while designing a cooling system for your transmission, please do so on the safe side of the equation, on the side of supplying a little more cooling than is needed, rather than not quite enough.

The number one cause of failure with these transmissions is continuously running the transmission fluid hotter than it is designed to tolerate or frying the fluid during a single catastrophic incident. Considering the cost of a high performance motors and these automatic overdrives, we have never been able to understand why the Hot Rod community in general has such a cavalier attitude about the cooling requirements of these two costly items. We have had professional custom car builders tell us they don’t have room for a cooler in the radiator! We’ve had them tell us their customers don’t want ugly hard lines going to the radiator. Just because you don’t have room for a heat exchanger in the radiator or don’t like the looks of the cooling lines won’t stop their fluid from burning up!

Use the largest flat tube cross-flow style cooler you can afford. Install this cooler in front of the car’s radiator. Force air to be drawn through this cooler by mounting it as close to the radiator as you possibly can. These types of coolers are only effective when air is actively flowing across the fins and tubes. Make sure your cars cooling system has a fan shroud and the fan is positioned correctly in relationship to the shroud. The size and quality of the cooler is meaningless if air is not forced to remove the heat by flowing over the fins and tubes! If you live in a very cold winter location you will need to install a proper bypass system to control the direction of fluid flow through this cooler in the wintertime. You can avoid over cooling the fluid this way. These bypass systems avoid over cooling by changing which cooling device the fluid flows through last. In the summer time you want all the cooling you can get, so you want the auxiliary cooler last in the system. In cold winter climates you want the radiator water to maintain proper transmission fluid temperature so the fluid needs to flow through the radiator cooler last. Some areas get very cold and stay that way through the entire winter. In these areas you should completely bypass the auxiliary cooler from the system during the winter season.

Stop the vehicle and open the hood. Feel the return line from your cooling system. When you touch the return line, do so with caution, use a quick, light tap to determine if the line is scolding hot. You should be able to touch this line without burning your hands. Even the outgoing line shouldn’t be hot enough to burn you if you touch it momentarily. If you feel very high temperatures on the return line you should add a cooler. A transmission temperature gauge will help determine what is occurring. If you error on this topic, please do with too much cooling. The temperature gauge is recommended even if you don’t plan to tow. 150 degrees F or less should be indicated with a temperature probe (sender) positioned in the pan. The fluid can be seriously overheated if pan temperatures exceed 150 degrees F. This happens because overheating is occurring in the converter, not the pan.

My flasher switch is mounted in the same place as Vanagain's was except it's positioned where you pull the switch toward the driver's seat instead of toward the floor( I think). I'm not sure how it's plugged in but I know that it is because I was going to remove it until I saw the factory plugs on it. I thought it was something that someone had added on. I'll take some pic's and post them when I get back home.