'69 F100 Ranger - Canada-born, Atlanta-raised, movie star(?)

[LeoZelig]

More mid-July action.

A rainy weekend gave me the chance to focus on work inside the garage.

The bench seat had been a literal rats nest in the seat back, based on the number of droppings found and damage to the batting. And the foam on the base was in such rough shape, that a complete re-working was in order.

Sear Before.jpg

As I stripped layer after layer, I began to realize how difficult a task re-upholstering would be, and I resolved to find a local shop that could help.

During disassembly, I found two places on the seat back frame that were broken apart. I'm guessing that years of drivers leveraging themselves into the cab took their toll. In this photo you can see one where a diagonal rod goes from the larger tube frame to the thinner frame (green tape with arrows):

Broken frame.jpg

I continued stripping until both frames were back to the steel. It seems the seat was still factory-original, and I documented with more photos that I can share here. If you would like more reference photos, feel free to PM me.

At long last:

Bottom stripped.jpg

At the end of the day, I took the opportunity to look for sources of the leaks in the cab. I found some water was entering at a couple places where the windshield gasket had shrunk over the years. One more clue, down!

[LeoZelig]

A minor update from late-July

The side mirrors were an after-market pair, with cheap chromed plastic bodies, and one with a broken mirror. Time to remove those in preparation for some reproduction replacement mirrors.

Mirror on.jpg

Fortunately, getting the mirrors off was a snap!

Mirror off.jpg

Examining the number of holes in the door, I believe these are at least the third set of mirrors in this truck's life... soon to be four

Door after.jpg

[LeoZelig]

Shifting back to the seat re-work, it was time to work on the seat back.

I brushed away the rust and debris with a wire wheel mounted in a drill.

Next, I welded the two broken spots in the frame. Here you can see the triangle-welded bolster repair I made. I may be sacrificing some flexibility, but I hope that it helps hold up for the life of the seat:

weld 1.jpg

Next I welded the break on the upper seat frame, backing up the weld with some new steel rod, too:

weld 2.jpg

Finally, I painted the frame with, what else, satin black (any Edd China fans out there will get that reference )

finished seat back.jpg

After a couple coats, I was very pleased with the result!

[LeoZelig]

Moving on to early August, and a break from the seat work to focus on the brightwork.

Out truck came to use without any hood emblems or F-O-R-D letters. My wife found a set of letters on eBay, and we found a pair of hood emblems during a visit to Pull-A-Part... for $5! They were in rough shape, but the price was right and an improvement over no emblems at all.

The plates behind the reflectors were falling out, so a little epoxy putty secured them. Also, the spacers were missing or disintegrated. To replace those, I took some fuel line and reamed it out a bit with a drill:

Emblem repair.jpg

After a cleaning and polishing, I think they looked just fine - especially at a distance:

Polished.jpg

Previously, I'd made a couple trips to the Ace hardware store to try to find the right blind nuts, but each attempt wasn't quite right. So I ordered sets from NPD and they did the trick!

Emblems Mounted.jpg

[LeoZelig]

Another relatively small repair in early August.

There had been a light fuel odor, and I knew the filler hose and filler spout seal were in rough shape. Time to swap those out!

seal.jpg

old hose.jpg

In with the new.

new hose.jpg

It didn't eliminate the odor altogether, but I feel like it is lessened... but that could just be the placebo effect

[LeoZelig]

It was late August, and switching back to the seat. After researching upholstery shops in the Atlanta area, and even talking to a friend-of-a-friend in the business, I wasn't getting warm fuzzy feelings that our money would be well spent. So I resolved to give it my best shot.

The new plan: bolster the seat frames, cut some foam, and get an upholstery kit.

In researching on the Web, I learned that these older seats' springs can get loose. One upholsterer on YouTube used jute strapping to bolster the springs, so I wove the strapping across the frame and anchored each end with hog rings:

bottom jute.jpg

Next, I needed to add burlap to replace the layer that had been there originally. I suppose that keeps the foam from pushing down between the springs. Again, I used hog rings to anchor the perimeter:

bottom burlap.jpg

Than I followed the exact same process on the seat back:

upper burlap.jpg

Looking good if I say so myself! I was thinking, "this may be easier than it seemed - I may be able to pull this off"

Little did I know what a giant pain in the rear the rest of this upholstery project would be...

[LeoZelig]

More seat shenanigans, now in early September.

The original foam was a smelly disaster, and a replacement reproduction set is very pricey, so I decided to go with buying and cutting my own foam. A local wholesale fabric supplier turned out to be an economical source, and I bought two 2" slabs of high-density foam, and one 1" slab.

Based on measurements of the original foam, I cut the new foam to the same approximate shape, allowing for it to bend around the frame. Cutting foam is a breeze with an electric knife/turkey slicer - available at fine thrift stores everywhere . For the seat bottom, I decided to use the 2" piece against the burlap, with a 1" topper. For the seat back, I used a single 2" layer.

cutting foam.jpg

The next step was to glue the foam to the frames. When I was taking the original seat apart, I found a fabric strip at both the top and bottom of the seat back foam, and it was hog-ringed to the springs. I supposed it was needed to help form the foam, so I added fabric strips and glued them to the foam, too. Spoiler: the fabric strips turned out to be unnecessary and in the way.

gluing foam.jpg

I used a spray adhesive from the fabric store - I'm sure it was the same as a 3M spray adhesive, but a lot more affordable.

gluing foam2.jpg

I used spray adhesive on the foam for the seat bottom as well, but no fabric strips since the original seat setup didn't have that.

[LeoZelig]

Labor Day weekend, and time to make the final push on the seat re-upholstery.

I purchased an upholstery set from Rock Auto. It was an Acme set, and looked to be the same as what is available from other well-known suppliers - some of the catalog numbers or photos matched exactly - but at a much lower price. Upon first examination, the set looked well-made and solid.

As I started to pull the seat back cover over the foam, it was clear something was not right. The cover wouldn't even come close to the frame anchors for the hog rings! No amount of tugging and pulling would get it better. I found if I compressed the frame springs some, I could get it in the area to anchor. But compressing springs while putting on hog rings - even with my wife's help - was not practical.

I mulled it over with her, and together we came up with an idea: some kind of clamp to keep the springs compressed. More pondering, and we came up with the idea to use zip ties to temporarily compress the springs.

zip tie overview.jpg

zip tie closeup.jpg

While the springs were compressed, I was able to hog-ring the cover in place. While we are talking about hog rings, most of these upholstery kits come with a set of hog ring pliers and hog rings. Let me suggest you get a "real" set of pliers - the ones with the kit are pitiful, but a $10 pair of pliers on Amazon were worlds better. Also, I ordered a variety kit of hog rings of different sizes, and those sizes came in very handy making all the different connections I needed.

I snipped the zip-ties and the seat back popped up, nice and taut!

untied.jpg

[Fordkid68]

Nice work! The seat looks awesome!!

[LeoZelig]

Labor Day proper, and time to bring this re-upholstery job to a close.

I used the same zip-tie method to compress the springs on the seat bottom, but even so it was really tight. Also, it was clear the seat back would not be able to fit in place due to how high the foam was. After some more surgery with the electric knife, I got the shape to a point where it would all fit together:

bottom.jpg

We put the two pieces together and mounted it in the cab. The seat originally had some rubber grommets on the tracks where they meet the cab floor. I cut some rectangular pads out of 1/8" neoprene rubber and placed them under the tracks:

1 8 inch rubber tracks.jpg

Here's the final result:

in cab.jpg

Overall, I'm very pleased!

But let's talk about the Acme upholstery kit for a minute. I still think it was good value for the money, but it had two issues. First, some of the stitching at one of the corners of the seat bottom in the back was not perfectly tight, but it was hidden once installed. The second issue is the bigger one: the fabric panels between the top and bottom sections don't line up with each other by a margin of 1/2" to 3/4", and this is not a misalignment of the covers - the actual size of the panels isn't consistent. This is a big disappointment, but on the bright side you don't notice it very easily. So I will live with it - the thought of removing and returning the upholstery would make me cry

If I had to do it over again, I might spring for the reproduction foam. The pain in the rump of carving and re-carving, and spring clamping to get it to fit... well, if the correct shaped foam could have eliminated that pain, it would just about be worth it.

One other piece of advice to anyone considering taking this on: you can't really appreciate the amount of work that it takes to fully recondition a seat until you do it . But oh what a feeling!

In the end, I'm glad I did it myself. And I hope I never need to do it again

To celebrate, my wife and I took Roy out for his first real drive since we got him. An amazing way to celebrate, rolling around the neighborhood on a beautiful fall day... up until the point where she said, "the truck's smoking a bit," about five minutes into our drive. We were back in our driveway a minute later, and sitting in a cloud of steam .

A quick check of the situation revealed that a heater hose fell against the exhaust manifold and burned through. Fortunately, we caught it early and still had plenty of coolant left - so no harm done. Well, time to move the re-working of the cooling system up a few notches.

[LeoZelig]

Nice work! The seat looks awesome!!

Thanks Adam! I'm proud of how it turned out

[LeoZelig]

Moving on to the cooling system repair and renewing in mid-September.

The fact that the heater core was bypassed was a big clue that the core must have a leak, so it was the perfect time to make that repair while replacing all cooling rubber.

disco hose.jpg

The first order of business was to remove the heater/blower box. Just three nuts on the firewall and I could maneuver it out of its home (I'd previously removed the vent connection):

removing.jpg

I didn't doubt that the core had a leak, but seeing the discoloration on the core itself was a nice confirmation:

core leak.jpg

Time to disassemble and clean up the box, and put in a new core.

[LeoZelig]

During disassembly of the heater box, the blower resistor board snapped in half!

I looked around online and I could not find another one, so I resolved to repair the board. I used 5-minute epoxy to put it back together, and I also measured the resistance values to make sure it was still functional - the repair was a success. And now that I have the resistance values, I could build one or adapt a different one in the future.

resistor.jpg

I cleaned the box as thoroughly as I could without removing the rivets - I know a full rebuild with all new foam for the flaps would be nice, but that's a project for another time.

disassembled box.jpg

I installed the replacement evaporator and replaced what sealing foam I could get to. I removed surface rust and gave all the metal a coat of satin black:

Finished Box.jpg

The blower never ran since I got the truck, so I ran the blower off a 12v DC power supply while on the bench. It fired right up! So any issues must be with the electrical in the truck.

[LeoZelig]

A quick detour from the cooling system. The rear view mirror had been floppy since day one, and one day when I found it and its button mount sitting on the dashboard, I knew it was time to try to fix the problem and reattach it.

Mirror overview.jpg

I noticed that the halves of the shaft that clamp the ball joints looked like they might be bent, based on the uneven gap between them.

Shaft Gap.jpg

Maybe straightening them could eliminate the floppiness. But first it was time to disassemble and clean. I could see what looked like electrical tape around it.

Mount Gunk.jpg

Yep, pretty gunky. Also, I found what looks like teflon tape on both ball joints. Cleaned up the whole assembly.

[LeoZelig]

Continuing with the rear view mirror repair.

Shaf Disassmbled.jpg

After cleaning up the ball joints, the mirror was even floppier. So I took the shaft halves and put them in my vise. Using some towels to protect the metal, I used a pair of pliers to bend the halves to make the joints tighter. Here's the gap after the adjustments:

better gap.jpg

The mirror mount seemed pretty tight now, and after cleaning the rest of the body it was ready to re-mount in the cab.

cleaned.jpg

I wonder if the metal of the shaft halves is fatigued now and will loosen up with time. Well, time will tell...