The Prodigal Son

Well we got the Pickle home (for a while) from Ron's since he wanted to take advantage of the 8 guy's wanting to spend their tax return on new motors.  I figured there were things we could do here.  So we dollied it back to the house.  I was itching to get to work. We wanted to make a change on the engine.  It is a great engine, I just thought it looked like a crate engine that one would buy at Pep Boys.  I got some finned valve covers for Christmas from Ramjet Racing on Cave creek Road.  Just that small change made a huge change.  We were thinking of going with the finned air cleaner and breathers, but thought better of it.  It seemed a little gold chain-ish.

In preparation for being wired, I wanted to get all of the old wiring out and leave 5" pigtails coming from the gauges.  I unbolted the old fuse box and started cutting.

Then I got it in my head that I wanted to pull the gauge cluster out to clean it off.

In talking with my parents (my partners and historical reference in this project), they said that the last thing you wanted on your car in the late fifties was chrome.  So the cars were nosed and decked and side molding all came off.  They even went as far as to paint over the chrome gauges.  Well that's what looks like happened to these gauges.  When I first sat in the car after its arrival from Tulsa, I remember being a little bummed that their face looked as bad as it did.  Then a few months ago I scraped the front of the gauges to get some dirt off and I found that the crappy, dull finish came off too.  It was like wiping mud off of a gold nugget.  I was pumped.  So I am hoping that there is some nice chrome still under there.  And there it will stay, contrary to the ideology of the greaser who maybe painted it many years ago.