[Palf70Step]

Felt great to be out driving the old girl again. Over the last couple months I have been dealing with fuse-box, dash wiring, and steering column. This is a bit of a summary of what I did and what I thought about the stuff I used to fixed her up.

I ended up swapping out the factory column with one from a 69 floor shift C10. Not only did I get rid of the one piece unit, I got the later column which fit my new steering wheel mounting better. Most of the issue was the placement of the stuff for the horn. All the wire colors match up, so I spliced my 64 column harness to the 69 column harness. No issues and she works great. I used a HD hose clamp to secure the column up at the dash, and I used both the 64 and the 70 firewall seal for a more airtight fit.

I upgraded my wipers to a two-speed setup from Brothers (made by New Port Engineering). I am super pleased with the quality and the fit of everything. The only thing that disappointed me was that the factory dash knobs don't fit. The two speeds seem to be better than that of the factory ones. What is nice is by changing out the wiper switch, I can have intermittent wipers also (once I get the money). Once I dig up the parts, I'll add a washer motor also.

The fused box/under dash wiring was a really nice kit. I got mine from Classic Parts, but think it is done by American Autowire. Other than 2 wires switched (easily fixed) in the headlight switch, it was really plug and play and seemed to be good quality.

I made a bracket to mount a set of front speakers from my old 70 to the 64 stock location. Eventually the plan is to get a stock speaker bracket and modify it to fit dual speaker. But this gets some more and better sounds into the truck.

The steering wheel I was having a LOT of second thoughts on while the truck repairs were going on. I liked the smaller diameter, but the wheel felt so thin and boney. I was beginning to think I had wasted a lot of money. Other than the horn kit stinks (was bad), now that I have been driving her, the wheel doesn't feel that bad. It still feels a bit tiny (thin in the grip diameter) but way more comfortable than what she did in the shop. It fits the period of the truck and we'll see next month what it feels like on a long trip.

She drives nice again and nothing is falling off or cutting in and out any longer. So it's back to driving her until the next project happens along