by Dawgboy Sun Apr 21, 2013 11:10 amHey guys,
Dawgboy here. I ran into a certain Gothboy on another forum we frequent, and he clued me into this forum. Happy to see much more activity here than on Slantsix/allpar/sweptline in the van sections. Especially since I come from the FSJ forums which were extremely active.
So I am in San Diego, CA, and have a '64 A100. It was first a Ma Bell van, number 5510 in the A100 series, first year of production. In '68, it was sold to the Palomar Mountain Observatory, where it then lived as the painter's van, never leaving the compound until 2011. I was employed there at the time i bought it for $50.00, and it had been parked for 3 years at that point. Still, I dropped a battery in it, poured some fuel in it, and it fired right up!
Van has 93000 miles on it and is all original, with no mods other than the driver door being replaced. In 2000, during the winter, the Observatory Mechanic rebuilt the engine and tranny with all MOPAR parts, including bearings, rings, valves... Has less than 10K on that rebuild.
So this is an LG170 with 3 on the tree, and it has a heater... I started working on it and found the fuel filler hose to be bad... Impossible to find! they had replaced it with a radiator hose, which crumbled in my hands... I replaced it with a cut down stainless elbow for a Honda Turbo charger, and some Gates 2 1/2" Fuel hose. Next I replaced the fuel sending unit and pickup, and did the shocks, and then started tackling what I thought were just bad lights. Turns out the entire wiring harness had fried with the ammeter. those 2 10Ga wires had melted together from the ammeter, all the way back to the starter, and in process melted the Harness...
I spent about a year thinking about that and doing research, and finally bought a Ron Francis "Classic MOPAR" harness, which has all the wires and pugs I would need, but turned out to be too short. Well, I spent the last two months wiring it up, splicing, soldering, Etc, and as of this morning, everything is done except the lights! So I am going to go do that now, and leave you folks with a link to full res images of this rustless piece of MOPAR History.
Also, this is my first MOPAR, but I grew up working on cars and have owned many, including a 69 Club Wagon shorty (E300), a 74 Waggoneer, a 78 CJ5... And My ancient father is a restorer/Collector. He leans to Caddy's and has a '36 Fleetwood convertible we did a ground up in, and a 27 Touring car, and a couple Graham Paiges.
Apparently I am not worthy of external links, so I guess I won't post my tinypic album that is at:
tinypic.com/useralbum.php?ua=aTokU7VTrA93rKrKVepwTQ%3D%3D
Dawgboy here. I ran into a certain Gothboy on another forum we frequent, and he clued me into this forum. Happy to see much more activity here than on Slantsix/allpar/sweptline in the van sections. Especially since I come from the FSJ forums which were extremely active.
So I am in San Diego, CA, and have a '64 A100. It was first a Ma Bell van, number 5510 in the A100 series, first year of production. In '68, it was sold to the Palomar Mountain Observatory, where it then lived as the painter's van, never leaving the compound until 2011. I was employed there at the time i bought it for $50.00, and it had been parked for 3 years at that point. Still, I dropped a battery in it, poured some fuel in it, and it fired right up!
Van has 93000 miles on it and is all original, with no mods other than the driver door being replaced. In 2000, during the winter, the Observatory Mechanic rebuilt the engine and tranny with all MOPAR parts, including bearings, rings, valves... Has less than 10K on that rebuild.
So this is an LG170 with 3 on the tree, and it has a heater... I started working on it and found the fuel filler hose to be bad... Impossible to find! they had replaced it with a radiator hose, which crumbled in my hands... I replaced it with a cut down stainless elbow for a Honda Turbo charger, and some Gates 2 1/2" Fuel hose. Next I replaced the fuel sending unit and pickup, and did the shocks, and then started tackling what I thought were just bad lights. Turns out the entire wiring harness had fried with the ammeter. those 2 10Ga wires had melted together from the ammeter, all the way back to the starter, and in process melted the Harness...
I spent about a year thinking about that and doing research, and finally bought a Ron Francis "Classic MOPAR" harness, which has all the wires and pugs I would need, but turned out to be too short. Well, I spent the last two months wiring it up, splicing, soldering, Etc, and as of this morning, everything is done except the lights! So I am going to go do that now, and leave you folks with a link to full res images of this rustless piece of MOPAR History.
Also, this is my first MOPAR, but I grew up working on cars and have owned many, including a 69 Club Wagon shorty (E300), a 74 Waggoneer, a 78 CJ5... And My ancient father is a restorer/Collector. He leans to Caddy's and has a '36 Fleetwood convertible we did a ground up in, and a 27 Touring car, and a couple Graham Paiges.
Apparently I am not worthy of external links, so I guess I won't post my tinypic album that is at:
tinypic.com/useralbum.php?ua=aTokU7VTrA93rKrKVepwTQ%3D%3D
Last edited by Dawgboy on Sun Apr 21, 2013 8:01 pm; edited 3 times in total
