Cowl vent cont.
Things are not always the way you would like. In its original configuration, the actuator that opens the cowl vent door sits directly under the door on a bracket that mounts between the firewall and the bottom of the dash. It has a cam with 3 steps in it, fully closed, 1/2 open, and fully open. It has a lever that is spring loaded that rides against that cam, and when it opens the actuator pushes the door straight up, and pulls straight down to close. There is a lever welded to the actuator that hangs under the dash the multiplies the pressure the actuator has.
There are just a few problems. Since the bottom of the original dash is no longer present, the supporting bracket no longer is present. The actuator that sits under the open vent is rusted solid. The spring for the lever that locks into the cam is a rusted blob and the lever is bent and no longer contacts the cam. The lever that was welded to the actuator to multiply the leverage is broken off the actuator, and finally, the position under the vent door is occupied by the wiper linkage.
Who's idea was it to make this function?
To my surprise, a week long soak in a vinegar bath actually freed up the actuator. With a little more cleaning and a lot of lube, it actually moved like it was suppose to. I made a new lever that locks into the cam, and came up with a spring that would work. Welding a lever on the actuator was going to be easy, once I figured out exactly how I was going to make this work. The actuator would have to be mounted in my dash in a way it was going to work at 90 degrees from its original intent. Instead of pushing up to open the door, it was going to have to push back, except if I mounted it that way, the lever to open and close it would end up on top of the dash, rather then under the dash. It took a lot of trial and error to get it to sort of function like I had envisioned, but then I had to figure out how I was going to actually make mounts to hold it in the position it needed to be in. That took another few days of trial and error. The final resting place has it sitting at about a 90 degree angle from its original position, and it is also turned upside down. The lever I added basically moves the actuator backwards from what it was designed to move. That lever is pretty long, fortunately, everything moves pretty freely. The worst thing that happened is the 1/2 open notch on the cam isn't quite 1/2 open, its more like a 1/4 open, and the spring setup isn't really strong enough to keep it open at that point. It functions in fully open and fully closed though. I'm calling that a win.
Pic 1, Here is the actuator in its current home. This is in the door closed position. In its original position on the 49, the flat area on the upper right side would have been the bottom. The lever going forward would have been pointing towards the rear (and would have been pointing up) and the welded on lever would have been in just about the position of the lever that would have pointed towards the rear.
Pic 2, The actuator is in the full open position here.
Pic 3, The linkage rod is in the full open position here.
Pic 4, Sometimes the process to make this stuff work isn't very pretty, but sometimes the finished product isn't very pretty either.

Then I had to modify the dash cover. Gene