Sixty second review: Brian Darwas’ “This is Long Beach”

 I was trolling through a few free online streaming services looking for a show or a film clip that might help spark some inspiration for me to get interested in life again. My mood has been dire, so,  during a period of misery laced with boredom, I fell upon this outstanding documentary by Brian  Darwas. This is Long Beach was produced in 2013, but it matters little, as the documentary is timeless and utterly, dare I say, charming. Brian cares a lot about his subject matter and it shows in everything he does. I am a lucky owner of a couple of his other productions (a sweet sickness: the flathead movie, and the Devil at your feet) but I particularly enjoyed the way this documentary has been crafted and edited, perhaps even more so than his others. The music was a little toned down and never at any point did it detract from the viewers enjoyment I loved the footage of the hot rod chop, and I got to thinking, you just don’t see too many actual clips of guys taking a saw to the metal and creating something different and cool with this kind of honest detail. The documentary takes us through three generations of the Cavaliers hot rod club interviewing past and present members. Never boring and filmed in a relaxed atmosphere interspersed with snippets of rods in action, I highly recommend you hunt down a copy. 

Atomic Hot Rods

1956 f100 window regulator arrive

I have quietly started gathering bits and pieces to complete as much as I can with what little I have so far. 

I did mention the other week I was planning on NOT using the two brand new electric window kits that came with the project. One was a Dolphin Ezywire kit and the other was a Spal kit. From what I can glean from the Spal kit, you have to use your existing regulator and this mechanism supplements it. I could be wrong, and to be frank, I am not interested.

Instead, gone back to the tried and true Armstrong Method of using your arm to wind the windows up and down. I know people think that is primitive but this is an old truck. 

Anyway, it doesn't matter what others think, I am using these regulators. 

For a language adjusted video of my dreadful frustrations of working with electric windows, have a look at this video on YouTube. 

I know they are old and crusty (like me), but, you know, they just work! 

Thanks to Greg for these regulators. They came up well after a bath and now just need a paint and some grease in the spring and they will be perfect. Had a bit of a fight with one of the cage bolts, but we came to an arrangement and eventually the bolt came out without me torching it, so all sweet! 
 

I hit it with a coat of cheap gold paint. Looks hilariously outrageous, so I think I will rub it back and do it again. This time, in good old matt black. 

Gathering parts for restoring manual windows 1956 f100

Several years ago, I bunged together an old 1954 Ford F100 that I named Dorothy for no particular reason, only that the name seemed to suit the character of the car.

And don't ask me what that means, either. It was a four year project that I more or less undertook by myself with a considerable amount of help of a few welder guys and mechanics.

It was a custom truck, 327 Chev, Welded up tailgate, frenched Cadillac tail lights, Cadillac seat, Chev diff. I came along and added a Jag front and got the thing registered. I had the time of my life and spent nearly twenty grand doing it. Back then, twenty grand was a lot of money. Money I just couldn't replace at the time. So, stupidly, I sold it. Dumb idea. I look back at the whole build quite fondly and don't really recollect any bad experiences with the truck. Except maybe for one or two things: the window glass and the electric windows.

I had a rotten time with a mob from North Wollongong NSW who supplied, at great expense, three sets of window glass over the course of a couple of years. Each one of them broke. Quite easily, and thinking about it now, I was probably buying inferior glass. Because tempered glass is pretty strong. The crap they sold me broke just by looking at it. Well, I guess if you are us ugly as I am it probably would break. I attributed a lot of the breakage to electric windows. Like I fool, I was entranced with the idea of having electric windows in the truck rather than the old school wind up variety. But it proved to be a complete pain in the arse, to pardon my English. I bought a set of Dolphin Ezywire electric windows and proceeded to burn one of the motors out in the process. I think it was in part due to the Autoloc switches that were designed to replace the original winder arm mechanism whilst retaining the original window winder handle. 

Well, they never worked properly. The window handle never sat properly in the grooves and use to flap around as though it would fall right off the spindle, which, until I ran a grub screw through, it did. One of the reason I think it killed the motor was that I think it never properly cut off when the window wound down or up, and I think the motor must have stayed engaged and burnt itself out. I don’t have any other explanation for it. I replaced the Dolphin mechanism with a EL Ford Falcon unit, but it was not idea as the channel was curved and even though it was not hard to stick it in a vice and straighten it, I don’t think it was ideal. Another thing, the entire structure of it didn’t lend itself to being easily adapted to the inside of the f100 door. Not without a fair bit of work. I fabbed up quick little brackets from stuff I bought at Bunnings to make it work, and it actually sort of worked, but I was never happy with it, and it literally took six weekends of my time to get the thing to work. 

I just don’t think it was all worth it, and now this new project has two sets of electric windows. Another Dolphin set and a Spal set, and another set of Autoloc handle mechanisms that put the fear of God into me when I see them, because I just don’t think I can deal with doing all this again.  And when you think about it, this is an old truck, and what really is wrong with manually operated windows? What is the big deal with winding them down yourself? It isn’t hard to do, and it’s not like changing gears all the time. It’s an old truck. So, with that old school mentality firmly affixed, I went on the scrounge to find a set of window regulators and found them on Facebook. Greg sent me some pictures of these which are soon to arrive. They look pretty good and normally I wouldn’t be considering second hand window regulators as the spindles on these things are sixty years old, but they look pretty decent and should clean up very well, so more money to spend on other things. I snared these for $120 all up.  

Another guy on Facebook (Adam) sold me a set of rails that the regulator fits into that houses the window glass. These arrived the other day, powdercoated and looking really good. 

So, I have managed to replace both doors’ mechanism for not a lot of money. Always a bonus! Stay tuned as we get this stuff together.

Alternative to Jag intermediate shaft Ford Courier

Quick video I made to show you what a Ford Courier intermediate shaft looks like. I was planning on using this on the F100 as I was going to soft mount the front end like I did with my last truck. However, the engineer says we don't do it this way any more. Despite that, I still think soft mounting is a better way and more neater. 

Found a great deal on a set of headlight buckets!

Guys, I have just found some rocking horse s**t, or something near enough to it; a set of brand new headlight buckets to suit the old tart. The set that came with the truck were ordinary to say the least. In fact one was completely and utterly rooted, to pardon my English/ Australian. Rusted right through with the thinnest wafer of metal holding it together. Well, I have since discovered that there is a pickup supplies shop up north whose name I will not mention rips people off to the tune of making over 100% profit on everything they sell, and sadly, if you need stuff, there is not a lot of options. Well, guys, I have found a couple of gems! 2 brand new 1956 Headlight buckets for less than half the price these other mob are charging.

One thing I learnt along the way was that the 1953-55 buckets differ from the '56 in a couple of ways. I believe the '56 may have one extra spring mount and a quick way to spot the difference is you will notice in the '56, there is no curved edge of the face of the bucket. Have a gander. 

  This is a 1953-1955 F100 headlight bucket. Notice around the edge of the bucket, the lip is turned up. You don't have that lip on a '56. 

This is the '56 version. 

1956.

1956 f100 speedometer killer!

 Has anyone ever had this happen? Looks like the spring finally said I've had enough and just unsprung itself!

I was planning on just changing the top part of the gauge cluster over to a nice chrome piece when I discovered this!

Kinda changes things now a bit. The speedo needle thing is totally missing, so can only assume someone in the past must have been

messing around with it and ripped its guts apart.

I wasn't overly concerned because I was lucky enough to have a spare instrument cluster, but when I pulled it apart, found I was short-changed too!

This one at least had the speedo with its spring intact, but the poor little speedo needle has gone from a Big Mac to a Junior Burger! The orange rod has disappeared!

Nowhere to be seen. Somewhere along the line in this truck's history it must have belonged to a speedometer killer.

1956 f100 gauge differences

 Rifling through some parts,  found a box of bits in which contained two 56 instrument clusters.

Thing is this: both are obviously 56 instrument clusters, but the gauge layout is different. So, I suppose somewhere along the line someone changed the arrangement of the gauges. Anyone else struck this?

On the top cluster they are all gauges, but gauge 2 on the left says ch/dis which I am guessing is battery and yet gauge 4 is ammeter (I am assuming) as it has 0 10 30 reading on the gauge. Why have both? Gauge 1 is fuel and 4 is temp, so they are kinda normal.

However: the cluster below it has temp and fuel reversed and the middle two gauges are idiot lights. They look like factory items.

To cut a dreadfully long-winded question to size: is there a CORRECT line up of gauges? Not that it really matters.

I decided to pull the clusters apart as I wanted to change the top of the cluster bevel with a new chrome one, and discovered things were not as good as they seemed...