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.
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