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A 1974 Ford Capri was my first car that I ever owned. I bought it used in 1977 and it came with the 2.0L in-line four with the twin-barrel carb. The shifter linkage (all rods were exterior to the transmission) and the front suspension bushings were nothing to write home about. Made in Germany which meant it had Bosch electrics...good thing too.
But the car for its time as well as now, had great styling. A nice car.
Not my actual car, but the same color with the tan interior. I bought it off a Shatner in Montreal. I said, "are you related". "Yes, William Shatner is my uncle".
It's been a little slow lately, but today things started to break loose. I finished the headliner last week, and so today I picked the Capri up from the glass shop with both front and rear glass back in place with new rubber and chrome lock strips. The car is finally weather tight for the first time in many years. In honor of the new all-weather capability, I quickly installed the new/restored period-correct wipers. I'm also working now on final gauge testing before reinstalling the dash pad.
And more good news! The new seat covers arrived from France this afternoon. Will share more on these later, but initial impression is they are really nice.
Tim Current: '26 911 Carrera S - PTS Verde British Racing Green
'24 Cayenne S - Algarve Blue Metallic
'21 718 Cayman GTS - Black
'22 911 Turbo S - Carmine Red
'21 718 Cayman GT4 - White
'11 GMC 1500 Quad Cab 4x4 - Black Musik-Stadt Region
More fun with electrics. While working to refit the dash today, I installed the gauge cluster for testing. And everything worked... at first.
While testing all the warning lights, suddenly I caught a whiff of magic smoke escaping, and the dash illumination lights all came on by themselves, and would not go out. After pulling the cluster back out I found that there were some rather crude repairs to the printed circuit at some of the bulb "sockets", and one of them shorted and burned a section of the circuit. [Big sigh!]
So add another foreign country to the parts sources list. So far I've bought parts from Germany, England, Denmark and France. Now I found that there is a shop in Australia that has reproduced the printed circuit sheet for these cars. I've started the order process now.
While I wait, I removed the damaged traces so that I could install the gauges and drive the car while I wait. Apparently the only damage was to the dash illumination. I don't plan to drive at night, so I can get by until the new part arrives.
Pretty amazing transformation in such a short time! That car takes me right back to high school (not that I could afford one). Any idea why the flexible PCB burned out? Would be a bummer to install the new one and have the same thing happen?
Tom wrote: Sat Apr 27, 2024 2:33 pm
Any idea why the flexible PCB burned out? Would be a bummer to install the new one and have the same thing happen?
Someone "repaired" a broken contact tab for one of the gauge illumination lights with aluminum foil. With all the jostling of me R&Ring the cluster several times, the piece of foil moved and shorted. The new circuit sheet will fix it.
