Instrumentation

My instrument panel was not operating.  The lights did not come on and the gauges worked intermittently.  I pulled the panel out and noticed that the plastic backing was absolutely disintegrating.  It turns to dust where ever you touch it.

Dirty and decaying instrument panel

Broken bulb socket

I read on Ford Truck Enthusiasts that this instrument panel was used on Ford vans up until 1991.  They changed the composition of the plastic in 1981 and the newer ones hold up much better.  Off to the junkyard!

Right there in the first row was an '85 Ford Econoline.  Just like we had when I was a kid, it was even a diesel!

1985 Ford van with the 6.9 liter diesel

Pristine instrument panel

A lot of these old vans had warning lights instead of oil and amp gauges, but this one had the full set of gauges.  I was in and out in about 15 minutes.

New panel front

New panel rear.  Dirt, but no decay

There were a couple of minor problems.  First this van was a diesel, which means the fuel gauge says "DIESEL FUEL ONLY."  Second, the odometer reading does not match mine.  I decided to switch out the fuel gauges.  I don't want someone borrowing the truck and putting diesel in it accidently.  The odometer I am just going to leave.  The title to the truck lists "99,999" for the mileage ("beyond mechanical limits" basically), so there is no legal issue with an incorrect odometer reading.  I documented the readings of both so one could calculate the correct(?) mileage.  If I ever sell the truck, I will include the old instrument panel.

The fuel gauge swap was very easy, although old panel crumbles every time you touch it.

Mid-swap

Done

Unfortunately, the lights still don't work.  I think I have a problem up stream somewhere, but the new panel looks great in the truck.  I'll update with some pictures of the finished product.

Progress

In addition to the headliner, my friend Andrew and I finished some other projects on the truck last weekend:

I believe that my distributor fouling was caused by the reluctor contacting the magnet in the coil pickup and grinding off material. The coil pickup is almost $30 and the relutcor is $15, but a whole new (remanufactured) distributor is only about $50.  So I decided to just replace the whole thing since it comes with the reluctor and pickup.  Also my distributor already had a lot of gunk it in.  My problem was that if I replaced the distributor, the new coil pick up comes with a plug that snaps into the wiring wiring harness, but my truck doesn't have the plug. The current set up is just spliced into the harness.  

Dirty distributor and ugly splice

So my choices were: A) cut the new plug off and splice it in like the old one or B) find a plug, splice that in, and then plug it up correctly.  I wanted to go with option B, but my local yard doesn't have a truck like mine and you can't buy just the plug new.  Fortunately, by using ShowMeTheParts.com, I found that I could get the same plug from any of almost 250 vehicles.  Surely they have one of those at the yard.

I also wanted to get two door jamb switches.  Again, ShowMeTheParts gave me a list of 75 vehicles that use the same switch.

Sure enough, the we quickly found everything we needed at the local yard.  The coil pickup plug ended up coming off an '85 Bronco.  I also found a rim and tire to use as my spare.  It even still held air.

Coil pickup plug ready for splicing

The door switches were installed in about 2 minutes.  Now my dome light comes on when I open the door.   

We picked up some heat shrink and soldered the pickup plug into place.  After carefully marking the distributor position, we dropped the new one in.  I also tightened up the connection on the low voltage side of the coil.  I think that had something to do with the stalling as well.  I got this connector from the Bronco as well, but decided it would just be easier to tighten mine.  I'll hang onto that one just in case.

Truck fired right up with all the new parts.  It still had some hesitation which I hoped the new distributor would cure, but it runs pretty well and I haven't had any stalling issues. 

Headliner Project Phase 2

So with my friend Andrew in town, I wanted to tackle the headliner.  Mine was completely missing (including trim) and just the insulation was showing.  In a previous post, Phase 1, I described the headliner that I found.  Long story short, it was not suitable to install, but I thought I could use it as a pattern.

I had seen a few examples of people doing it this way.  This example uses fiberboard.  I liked that direction, but I had my doubts that it would be flexible enough.  People use steam to make it conform to the contour of the roof.  I wasn't interested in striping the interior and pumping steam into the cab, so I looked for another material.  I thought something plastic would be a good combination of flexibility and durability.  Andrew went to Lowe's with us and we settled on this stuff:

Headliner material

It is vinyl wallboard .060 inches thick.  It is meant for wall covering in showers and such.  They had some similar stuff that was a good bit thicker.  The thicker material probably would have worked better, but it was $34 versus $19.  The whole point of this project was to save money, so we went with the cheaper one.

It was easy to cut with a utility knife.  We traced the old headliner and cut it about three-quarters of an inch bigger all the way around.  The original piece had cutouts for the screws.  The screws don't actually hold the headliner up.  Instead, the trim clamps it to the roof.  We did not make the cutouts and screwed through the trim and vinyl.  The only exception was on the rear of the headliner, but in hindsight, I would have left those out too.  The vinyl is not as rigid as the original material and it needs more support.

It was good that we cut it big because we only needed to trim in a couple of places.  It went in easy enough.  The only difficult part was finding the hole for the center screw.  There was no way to see it, so we just had to feel for it with a pin.

Here is the finished product.  It sags slightly, but it isn't really noticeable.  I am pleased with the result.