The Snowball Saga - '68 Standard Revitalization Project by Blitz

5 minute(s) of a 767 minute read

Well I guess I should kinda wrap this up! Many of you probably know that I just went through a big life change, move, etc. and I'm still getting my bearings. Before the move, there were a few things to wrap up.

The charging issue turned out to be the voltage regulator. So that was fairly straightforward.

The cooling issue was a combination of things. For one, I was informed by members here that the aftermarket temperature sending units don't read accurately, so it was reading hotter than it should have (verified with a laser thermometer). So I scrounged around in the WCCC junkyard and found an original Autolite sender. Now the gauge reads much more accurately.

Secondly, I had the wrong fan clutch. For some reason, WCCC was carrying the wrong one at the time. This has since been remedied (link to fan clutch). As shown in the pic below, the one I had was too short and didn't place the fan far enough into the shroud.

Here are before and after pictures. It's a little hard to tell the difference because the fan is in a different position, but you can kinda get an idea.

Finally, one of the last loose ends was to install the taillight protectors in the trunk. The repros are a good snug fit. I didn't end up using screws to affix them, they fit firmly enough in place on their own.

And that was about it before hitting the road! Before leaving, I had to go through all my remaining parts on the shelf and get rid of things I didn't need. So before trashing my original windshield, I snapped a picture of this decal for posterity:

And that pretty much sums it up! Here's one last picture in my garage in Salem before I left that house.

And then I drove it about 1,000 miles down Interstate 5 to Santa Barbara! Crazy times. What a wild ride it's been.

I have a lot more to say about it, but instead of being redundant, you can read more about my life changes here and more about the general story of the car in my ROTM write up, in which I found some more vintage pictures of my grandparents with the car, and talk about my early history with it.

There are still some little things to do. I need to seal up the edges of the vinyl top and / or install the stainless retainer strips. Still kinda psyched out by that for some reason. There will always be little projects and I'll probably continue to post them here if they're worthwhile.

Thanks for following along! It's hard to believe this saga is basically over. It's taken up such a big chunk of my life, and it was the biggest challenge I've ever undertaken. As I've said here and in other threads, there's no way I could have done this without the help and expertise of others, and without being at WCCC to use the shop space, tools and parts available there. Words can't really sum this whole thing up, so here are a few pictures of the finished product.

The end for now! And you can bet I'll be putting it somewhere in the 2020 calendar...  :D