Golden Lion Grrrages
1957 Chrysler 300C
Page 6

We have the power window motor project completed so I thought I would take a quick minute and wash the windows. How big of a job can that be? Well, it turns out there was black over-spray paint on most of the outside surfaces from a careless painter. The job grew 4X. Mineral spirits was needed to remove the over spray, alcohol needed to remove the mineral spirits, Windex to remove the alcohol. But the glass was still not clean. I remembered the hint to use a micro fiber cloth and dang to daisies that did the deep cleaning. I hope I remember micro fiber for the future.

Back to these doggone wheel covers and painting the red center disc. I tried the usual masking and was not satisfied with the result on the outer edge. With the taper of the wheelcover in that area, the masking tape must wrinkle and you don't get a crisp edge. So I started fresh and had the idea, why not get a red decal disc made? That would have a nice crisp edge. But right off the bat I noticed the disc surface is not flat and expected the decal would have to wrinkle on installation. I got out my ancient mechanical drawing tools (1940 era) and cut paper samples. Sure enough, they wrinkle. The decal idea is out.

I'd like to see an original wheel cover with original paint to see the crispness of the outer edge. It might tell me how the factory did it. In any case, I made a mask out of tag stock which covered from the outer edge of the painted section to the rim with another circular piece cut to meet the disc edge. I was surprised when the force of the paint spray from the rattle can was enough to move the mask. The edge was terrible. Forget that one.

I went back to masking the disc area with painters masking tape. I used short sections with overlap. The edge was OK and the OD was reasonably uniform. Then I tried vinyl masking tape, the kind they use for pin striping. This is stretchable and conforms to irregular shapes. The results are better than painters tape. Getting the OD perfect requires practice and talent when applying the tape. I spent 30 minutes on each masking and reached the "Pretty Darn Good" level. I will leave this project there. By the way, there is this ad from 1957 and the wheel centers are not red. I have to say, it looks good that way too. A fella could leave them unpainted and forget all this masking. Here is the video on the wheelcovers.


Moved on to getting the coating off of the white wall tires. Bleche white still has no effect. Someone suggested using a pressure washer. I did. It didn't do a thing. I worked with increasingly aggressive Scotch Brite. Progress was slow and not the best. It is unbelievable how difficult it is to get these new white walls clean! More to do.

I had a minute so I replace the power steering return hose. Someone had installed heater hose. That won't hold up to the temperature and pressure of power steering oil. You can easily tell the wrong hose, it sweats and becomes soft. Power steering fluid is flammable and the hoses are not far from hot exhaust manifolds. Use the correct hose such as NAPA 7-1207.

The package shelf arrived from Quirey. At first I thought it was too wide. The trick is to remove both the right and left interior quarter panels. Even though they look like they don't take up much space, they do. Arc the package shelf at the center and you can install the edges under the rear window gasket. This car also had the rear speaker and rear window defog option. I installed the shelf and located the cutouts from below for best alignment. By the way, I hear SMS also makes rear package shelves, and they will make them to a custom width if need be.
I don't know what it is about interior work, it always take two or three times longer that I expect.

The defogger is unique to 57 (maybe 58 & 59). Notice how it sits down from the mounting plate and has a "chimney". After 1960, the motor is attached right to the mounting plate. This means you can't swap in a newer (and more common) defog. A previous owner had removed this so he could fit the rear AC ducts (since removed) and a new mounting plate had to be made, repairs made to the plastic duct. This little thing took much more work than anticipated.

Let's jump into the new wiring. I have the rear harness installed. It came from YnZ. The front harness came from Rhode Island Wiring. YnZ has the front harness but their price is much higher than RI. Still, the YnZ harness is much better than Rhode Island (correct size terminals and fixtures, all wires labeled).
It is easy to wire the engine bay. There aren't that many things and access is great. I found problems with the old wires -- the generator regulator was wired wrong, one wire to the starter vacuum switch was broken, and so on. Between the service manual schematic and supplied diagrams, this is a breeze.
Under the dash, access is limited and there are many many connections to be made. Do not under estimate the time and effort involved here.
Some of the original Bakelite connectors too brittle to use. The light socket for the steering wheel map light supplied by RI is too small and I had to reuse the original. I also found a broken wire on the starter switch on the back of the pushbutton assembly. This repair required removal of the transmission push button assembly. After removing some dash chrome and the lower housing, the assembly can be coaxed out of the front far enough to access the two 5/32"(?) bolts holding the cable retainer. With the assembly free, I could see the switch is not removable; it is riveted to the case. I was able to solder a new wire and tested the switch for operation. Might as well paint the push buttons. I used Testors again and this time I had some super fine tip brushes. The assembly went back in and tested fine.

Before the under dash area becomes any more populated, we should install the new firewall insulation pad. You might think installation would be no big thing. You would be wrong. You can't install the pad as one piece unless you are working with a bare firewall. There are too many things in the way such as the steering column and brake pedal. You have to cut it and piece it on. This is still a wrestle, during which the pad wants to shed itchy insulation. Install the push pin retainers. The old ones are brittle and break, the new ones are too flexible and you can't push or pound them in; all they do is flex. You have to get to the nose of the push pin on the other side of the firewall, grab it with pliers and pull through. There are some pins you can't get at, the outer ones are blocked by fenders and pieces. You don't need all of them to get a good mount.

We should also now install the wiper motor and arms thinking we need to know where they are so we can route the new wires to safe locations. The wiper feed wire runs from a circuit breaker located on the top mount stud of the gauge cluster. I expect that breaker will be difficult to install. I hot wired the wiper and checked the arms for clearance with the new wires. All set there. I have the wiper switch dangling and so I don't have wiper park -- the switch has to be grounded to make park work -- but I bench tested the system a while ago and park works.
The wiring for the wiper switch isn't bad. It is the wiring from the washer pedal that complicates things. Chrysler had this option where pushing the wiper washer pedal activated the wipers as it blasted out washer fluid. I don't know if it had been working, we'll find out once we get reassembled.

The headlight wiring is a bit of a snake pit. If you replace old wires with new wires one by one, it isn't too bad. I found a previous owner had connected the black wire to the yellow. The black wire is power to the tail lights, the yellow is power to the parking lights. I guess it would work but I am not sure why he did it. By the way, the wiring diagram on page 400 from the 1957 service manual is wrong on the headlight switch. The red feed wire is shown to the circuit breaker when it should go to the B post on the headlight switch body. This error is corrected in the 1958 service manual.



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