Picked up a new project this past Tuesday. A 1951 Plymouth Cambridge. Mostly stockish for now.

Getting ready for safety inspection and when trying to sort out the turn signal issues decided that between the PO aftermarket wiring harness hack and the remaining original wiring falling apart I'd just completely redo the electrical system. Since I plan to put AC in it at a later date the 12v conversion is happening now, rather than later. Makes more sense to just get it done during the rewire.

So, step one, remove generator, install alternator. Note, going as all Mopar as I can. See the alternator? It's spec'd for an 87 Diplomat.

beautiful car. Good idea on the 12v conversion.

This will be fun to follow.

I don't understand the level of some people's hackery. In the following picture you see where some prior person's attempt at a repair. Seems someone threw in a new wiring harness in this car. But rather than be professional about it and replace the crappy old wiring in it's entirety they just spliced in to the original stuff as convenient. In this picture you see a dash light, where they used a Sta-Kon (hack one) to tie into the old wiring that has it's cloth covered insulation literally falling off and has been missing for so long the wiring is oxidized. They make replacement contacts with a pigtail to fix this exact issue, all else failing you could have slipped some heat shrink over the old wiring to at least keep it from shorting out.

Hack two for the day. in this pic you will see a Sta-Kon, a bullet connector and a Scotchlok crimped to two original wires with the insulation missing.

This and more is why I just decided to completely rewire the car.

Pulled all the existing wiring out. Picked up a 22 circuit kit from Speedway.

So, today I carried on with the rewire. Put in a solid 12 hours on the Cambridge. Funny thing, when my son first saw it he said "It looks like Doc Hudson", which is exactly what I thought when I first saw it.

I pulled all the old wiring out, not sure why Mopar decided the headlight dimmer switch need to be mounted under the floor with the wiring connections exposed to what ever crud there is on the road. Found the only rust on the car, a nice hole right next to the switch.

Pulled all the lenses and housings off the car, cleaned them up, painted the insides of the rear housing white as they were covered in black over spray, apparently it's been repainted at least once. Originally it looks like the housing were just galvanized white metal of some sort.

All the rubber grommets are completely dry rotted and fell apart in chunks as I pulled the old wiring out. So I have a list of grommets to buy.

Reassembled the gauge cluster as far as I could. The actual bezel itself is awaiting new switches, not stock replacements as those are available but not cheap. So I am putting it switches from another source, once I test fit and mod, as needed, I'll paint the bezel.

Pulled the horn button off. The horn button looked all rusty. It's not rust, it's actually Bakelite. So I cleaned it up, got the remains of the original paint off and repainted it. That steering wheel is worse than I thought. Might have to pop for an aftermarket wood rim one.

Tightened up the parking brake as it was only applying at full travel, found the brake light switch. It's back by the driver's side forward leaf spring mount, ???

Started installing the new wiring harness. I have it in the car, with most of the wires laid out where they need to go and started taping some of the wiring up, using wire harness tape. Got the aftermarket turn signal switch installed and connected up all nice a neat with the wiring harness taped. No sta-kons allowed. I did have to splice the flasher input and indicator wire together. Used an uninsulated butt connector, crimped and soldered with heat shrink.

Got to the point where I need my Molex connector kit to finish up the interior wiring. Need to extend the brake switch wiring because the kit assumes it's on the pedal assembly not 10 feet aft.

Pulled the blower motor out to compare to the dimensions I have for the A body blower motor. We'll see if it'll fit and function, which reminds me I have to extend that wire too because the blower motor is located right behind the grill and not on the fire wall or inside the pass compartment.

That sums up today's highlights

Can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with the stock coil here. In the process of running new wires to it so I pulled the power lead off, the points are still connected as delivered.

Got the rear light housings painted and new grommets.

Got the GE Nighthawk lights installed, they stick out about 3/4" past the headlight retainer.

Here you can see the new VR mounted and wired, put in a ballast resistor and replaced the original 6v solenoid with a 12V one, using the I terminal to bypass the ballast in start.

At this point if I pulled the original 6v coil out and put in the new 12v one I could hot wire it and run it, well put in a 12V battery too. I might do that tomorrow.

Got the charging system running.



Finished up all the wiring forward of the core support, that includes the heater blower motor. Put 1157NA bulbs in the front.

Finished up all the engine compartment wiring, replaced the old 6v coil with a 12V unit. I do still have to swap out the condensor, but that isn't technically wiring.

Finished up the tail light wiring. 1157 bulbs in the back. Finished up the license plate wiring as well, I forget what bulb is in there as the bulb I took out was a 12v one so I put it back in.

All lenses and housings were taken apart, cleaned thoroughly, painted as needed and reassembled with dedicated grounds to each housing, except the headlight housings as the bulbs have a dedicated ground. all connections were rewired with new contacts and wires. All dedicated grounds run to the battery to body junction in the engine compartment.

Tested all functions I could, turn signal switch works properly, hazards work properly, hi/lo beam functions properly. Only issue I ran into was the connector at the base of the steering column for the turn signals, had to fully seat one pin.

The horn will wake the dead. Sounds like a train. I startled myself when I tested it.

Mailman delivered my Ebay wiper motor. It looks pristine compared to my old one. It functions as well as it looks and it parks properly. That needs installed.

Still have to finish wiring the dash, prepped the guage cluster with new switches. Heater wiring and wiper wiring under the dash needs finished. All the wiring is run, just need cut to size and connectors installed. Relocated the wiper swich to the gauge bezel rather than atop the dash. Going to reuse the original wiper switch to power my hidden audio system.

Have to pull the back seat, anyone know how? I know how to do later one where you use your knee to push the bottom cushion back to unhook. Once I get the seat bottom out I can run the wiring back to the trunk and finish the back.

I hope to get it registered Monday after it passes safety inspection.

Well, that was fun.

I spent about three hours on my head today sorting out the wiper linkage connection. I didn't take it apart and the FSM was less than clear on how it goes together. Maybe if I had a parts book it might have helped.

Well, I got it sorted so that's the key take away. I might have to put in a dropping resistor because they wipe real fast. The linkage has felt washers that are to be lubricated with engine oil once a month. Yay, not. I wonder if I can find some oilite bushings for a reasonable price. Well, there you go, Aircraft Spruce has them for $0.35 each, I wonder what the minimum order is?

The obligatory blood sacrifice was extreme, I lost chunks of flesh, literally. Sorry, no pictures for that. Remounted the front license plate holder.

Tidied up the wiring, put the rear seat back as well as the side panels I took off to run the wiring to the trunk. Vacuumed out the interior, put the floor mats in the washing machine, they cleaned up nice. Too bad the entire carpet couldn't go in the machine.

I have a whole list of stuff that needs redoing or restored but right now I need to get it inspected. I had hoped to get that done today, but I got a late start as Saturday mornings are laundry time for me, I am kind of afflicted with the Sheldon Cooper disease where certain things need to be done at certain times and if they aren't I don't alike it.

As it stands, the wiring is done, all the lights work, the turn signals work, the hazards work. Wipers work, Monday I take it for inspection and register it.

That's it for now.

Friday update...

Didn't get any chance to do any work on it during the week, paying work needed doing. I did get it inspected and registered Monday and my military plates should be coming in the mail eventually.

Parts have been arriving all week. New wipers and arms. The old ones had some sort of funky fishhook looking attachment at the blade to arm connection. I do need to step down the voltage because it wipes real fast right now. Torn between a dropping resistor and a motor controller.

New 12v heater blower motor arrived. The old 6v unit is in sad shape, insulation falling off the wires. The replacement is one for a factory AC A body that looks like it can be made to work.

some electrical connectors to tidy up the job and replace temp connections I put in for the inspection. New speedo cable with some firewall grommets to seal things up as needed.

Decided to upgrade the gauges, once done I'll post a pic. Picture of old gauge cluster to ponder.

No one mentioned it, but the problem is that the points are attached to the negative terminal of the coil, this was a positive ground system and the points should have been attached to the positive terminal.

It ran but I have seen other brands not even start hooked up backwards.

Spent most of Sunday sorting out and organizing my tools in my new tool cabinet, got tired of my work bench being covered in tools.

Got the the Cambridge's heater blower motor upgraded to something new and 12v capable.

After this morning's trip back from the grocery store it moved to the front of the line.

I wrote it up on my webpage.

Relatively speaking it was fairly painless.

But, and we all knew this was coming, the snowball rolleth.

I may have mentioned that the heater controls were somewhat of a mystery to me. So I spent some quality time with them to figure out what did what.

Left knob is temperature, simple enough and last weekend I sorted that out and lubed that control cable. You pull the knob, it opens a water valve on the head and hot coolant flows thru the heater core.

Next knob to the right is the fan speed. This is the only electrical part of the controls and it has three positions, all the way in is off, one notch out is low speed, second notch out is high speed.

Third knob to the right is air off. I had no idea what it did, trying to pull it didn't do anything, turning it unscrewed the knob.

Last knob was defrost, it is a control cable that pulled out some to give me air on the base of the windshield, not much air but a bit.

I decided to work out how this was supposed to function. I pulled the radio delete plate, pulled the glove box and I ended up pulling the air plenum. Disconnect the defrost duct and two nuts on the engine side of the firewall out she comes.

Two control cables are attached to the plenum, the defrost cable and the air off cable. The air off cable was all bound up. I disconnected it from the plenum end and worked some cable lube into it from both ends and straightened out a kink. This freed it up and I was able to reinstall it so that it now properly controls the flap on the input to the plenum and doesn't bind. This shuts off any airflow into the plenum from the engine side of the the setup.

Next I got to work on the defrost control cable, it sort of functioned initially and all it really needed was lubrication. This cable controls the flap that directs air from the floor to the defrost duct. It is located right behind the air off flap. I also lubed up all the pivot points on the flaps.

The lube I used is specifically designed to go on with a fast evaporating carrier and lubricate dry without attracting dirt or dust.

I now have a very good understanding of what and how my heater system functions. Sorry, no web writeup for this as my phone was down to 8% and got put on the charger.

Not too shabby a day considering I did my grocery shopping and had to spend 2+ hours with the cable company getting rid of them. Seems you can turn in the equipment at the local office, which took 50 minutes of standing around till I got to the counter. But they can't terminate the contract, I had to call a number to do that. The "retention team". Lol, he got an earful. No cable means more time and money for the Plymouth.

Fun reading of your exploits. Neat car! Brought back a lot of memories. Years ago while in college I bought one of those at a farm auction for $30.00 and used it as a winter beater.

I remember vividly trying to sort out the heater controls. Not what you'd call intuitive. I also got confused over the coil wiring as the car wouldn't start at the auction and I was of course used to negative ground systems. I initially thought the wires had been reversed and that was the problem, but then found a fuse in line to the coil that was blown. A new fuse cured everything.

The car always started, no matter how cold out, although on bitterly cold nights I'd bring the tired 6V battery in the house. We used to take it out and try to get it stuck in snow. The thing was so rusty the bench seat rocked back and forth with the floor pan, or what was left of it.

The following spring I was done with school and moving on so drove it to the junk yard. I felt guilty junking the poor car.

Anyway, keep the updates coming. Enjoy following along.

Got more done on her.

Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. I started out trying to find a set of wiper blades that would work with my arms. No dice.

This is what it had, I am looking to go with something still readily available.



I bought a set of Anco 41-02 universal arms, but as I should have remembered, universal means fits nothing. In this case I cannot find any blade that fits that arm. Though it fits the Plymouth's pivots just fine.

So I Rain X'd the thing for now. Gonna email Anco and [censored] them.

I then got my Polk Audio 5x7's installed. I had to make my own spacer/adapters for them, used some 1/2" oak I had left over from another project. Still waiting on the amp to arrive to finish up my custom hidden sound system.

Was gonna knock off for the day when I realized it wasn't even noon so I pressed on. Been wanting to test fit a set of roll P255/60R15's on cop car rims I had in storage. Well they fit with loads of room to spare. I could comfortably put 295's back there with plenty of clearance. However, while I was there I saw the rear brake lower pivot bolts were very loose, as in I saw daylight between the nut and the backing plate. These are supposed to be torqued to 55-75 ft/lbs. Digging into that I found the axle shaft nuts, two piece axles here, were at best finger tight (142 ft/lbs minimum). Good news is that the hubs were the easiest I have ever pulled.

I ended up doing both the major and minor brake adjustments front and rear and torqued the hardware to the specified values. The PO included an FSM. But I guess they never opened it up. Once I got the brake adjustments done I now have a good brake pedal. Went from needing two pumps for brakes to 2" and brakes. Guess I don't need to rebuild the master. Funny thing is the brakes stuff looked all new, but the adjustments were so far off the brakes were iffy.

Here's a shot of the meats