Well this weekend I tackled the job of pulling the dash apart to replace the bulbs for the gauges. While I was at it, I removed the clear bezel, wet sanded it to remove the discoloration, then polished it back up.
Surprisingly, now that I have the problem with my hands/forearms, my hands do not cramp up like they used to when working in tight areas or with repetitive motions. Good thing!
Put it all back together and found that the fuel gauge and temp gauge did not work. Removed it and traced out the lines. Found a bad connection to the temp gauge and fixed that with a short strand of copper and a little bit of solder. Removed all of the gauges and cleaned them while I was in there. Put it all back together and still nothing… Checked the fuses and the 3A cluster fuse was blown. A quick run to Autozone for some fuses (all I had was the mini blade fuses) and it was back to working great.
While I was at autozone I bought a new headlight pull rod/knob to replace the broken one that was there. So that was done.
I also picked up a new window crank handle for the passenger side. Put it on and noticed why the previous owner had removed the old one… The window track was broken making it almost impossible to roll the window up once it was down. I had another rear window track from a pickup that I was able to cut off the truck upper bracket and weld on the bracket for my cut down doors (73-75 full convertibles had a different upper bracket). Put that in and tried it again… The window still jumped off… A bit more inspection showed that the window regulator was bent up to the point that it was pulling the window out of its channels. One of the doors out in my shed had a good manual window regulator so I removed that and dropped it into my door then dropped the window back in. ALL IS WELL!! It was a bit of a hassle to get the window back on the regulator, but now that it is in, it works as good as new!
Now that my roof is done, my next purchase will be that 74 Jimmy to cut up! The first thing I am planning on doing is skinning the doors to get the additional supports out of them. Then I will be converting my extra set of doors over to full convertible use.