Blue My Mind, 1972 Ford Maverick

[HotRod47]

Today was a great day here...Christmas in September.

UPS dropped of the Cal-Tracs from Calvert Racing, then not 10 minutes later Fed-Ex pulled in with the rear disc brakes from Vintage Venom!!

I am beginning to think I should have named this project "Empty Pockets"!!

Lately I have sold some extra stuff on Ebay that has enabled me to buy a few things. I now have the whole front end in primer. I am going to paint the crossmember and frame rails soon so I can put the front suspension in the car finally. Now that I have the boxes that came today I will be able to put the rearend together and be able to put the car on the ground and make it roll!


I bought an IDIDIT tilt steering column for the car. So for the last few weeks that has been my focus. I had to fabricate a new column mount both at the dash and the floor. They came out nice. Because I am modifying the dash I didn't even try to make the stock mount work. I could have, bnut it would have put the column lower than I like. So instead I bent a piece of steel strap around the column, put two 90 degree bends in it, drilled a couple holes and it now mounts right where the two bolts that hold the brake pedal arm and the support are above the column. It really fits nice there. At the fire wall I took a piece of sheetmetal and cut it to shape where the stck column goes through and the foam seal are. I drilled the hole for the column, bolted the metal in place, slid the column through the hole and tack welded it in place. I have since removed the assembly and welded everything up nice.

A you can see in the pix I have made a lower dash extension. I don't really like the look of the stock shelf. I welded some threaded studs to the bottom of the dash, drilled the appropriet holes and can now just unbolt and remove it as needed. If you look you can see that I added a piece of exhaust tubing to "frame" the column. I think it gives a nice look to it and finishes it off. To the left of the column on the lower extension will be the wiper switch as well as the headlight switch. To the right will be the ingnition and the radio.



I have also been playing with ideas on where and how to mount the gauges. I am not sure what I want to do here.
Here are some pix for you.....thought I had pictures of the column on the computer but don't. I will take some tomorrow and update the post.