1973 Custom Cruiser

Krash, thanks for the thoughts.

I've removed completely the bumper stops at either end of the front under-hood area, and the hood still won't go down far enough. It doesn't contact the bumpers at all.

Good idea on making of those measurements. If it does turn out that the two sides are different, I'm not sure that I could do anything about it. I'd just adjust the doors as best I can. Maybe take it to a body shop and let them have a go. But I might end up having to live with it.

I've thought about whether or not fenders are properly aligned, and I tell ya, the car really looks good in that regard. Even the front driver's side door looks good when it is fully closed. Good, even clearances all around. It's just hard to get fully closed.

 

I think you could fix the roof rack strips by mixing up some epoxy putty and putting some on the screw and some in the hole. Screw the screw in, and put something heavy on the strip to hold it down until the putty dries completely.
You can still unscrew the screw in the future, if needed.

OR, you can take the strip off, fill the hole with the epoxy putty, let it dry, drill it out with a small drill bit and then screw the strip down. It should hold.

David

 

OK, I just now went down to the garage.

The neutral safety switch idea didn't work. I put the ignition in the ON position and tried the tailgate switch at every gear position. No go. I tried holding the switch in the down position and jiggling and moving the gearshift through all gears, including Park. No luck.


As far as making measurements of the diagonals of the front door openings, they are identical on both sides. No evidence that one of them is out of "square" relative to the other.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of taking it to a local body shop and let them give it a try on the hood and door. One place has uncrunched a few fenders for me (and my children in the learning-to-drive era) over the years, and I trust them.

 

This is a great idea. I'll give it a try. Thanks.

 

I have headlights again

Got the new switch this afternoon, stuck it in, and, of course, it didn't work. It would have been too perfect if it had.

OK, so the headlights worked just fine when I pulled the old switch out. To my knowledge, I had done nothing other than pull off the connector for the old switch and put in not one, but TWO new switches, and neither worked. So what he aich-ee-double hockey sticks is going on?

Time for a little troubleshooting, always keeping in mind that nothing is ever as it seems. At this point, the chassis service manual and the electrical wiring diagram therein proved invaluabe.

First thought: is the switch getting 12 volts? I figured that it must be because the new switches DID turn on the dome lights. But I'll check, anyway. Get voltmeter out, attach one lead to ground, and touch the other to the red lead on the connector. The reading is just over 12 volts. Excellent, but I expected that.

So now, which of the six remaining wires coming off of the switch actually goes to the headlights (as opposed to the taillights, parking lights, dome lights, courtesy lights, and instrument panel lights)? The manual says it's the light blue one. That wire actually goes from the headlight switch to the dimmer switch on the floor, and from there wires go to the headlights.

Well, the dimmer switch is just right there on the floor, easy enough to get at, although you have to unscrew it from the floor if you want to remove the connector as the screws go through the switch and the connector to the floor. This way, the connector can't come loose or be kicked off during regular use as it's down there by your feet. Leave it to GM to think of everything.

OK, so I should have a complete circuit (continuity) from the blue lead at the headlight switch to the blue lead at the dimmer switch. Hook up my ohm meter, which has a nice feature in that it will make an audible beep when continuity is present so you don't actually have to be looking at the readout to see if it displays zero ohms. Guess what? No continuity. Hmmm.

This wire is one of the many under the dash that has an aftermarket connector between the headlight switch connector and where the wire enters the wiring harness. I'm guessing that this car got a new wiring harness after the accident, but they reused the old connectors for the headlight switch, wiper switch, and anything else under the dash on that side.

So I jiggled the connector for this blue wire, and I start hearing intermittent beeps from the ohm meter. Aha, I say, an intermittent connection that I must have loosened without realizing it when I was removing the connector from the old headlight switch.

I remove the aftermarket connector and remake the splice. I then attach the new headlights switch, reattach the dimmer switch connector to the dimmer switch, reattach the battery, cross my fingers, and pull on the headlight switch.

Alleluia chorus! You can hear them in the background. We have light!

So I put everything properly back together, try the switch again, and it still works. Then I call my wife so she can witness the event and remember where she was when she's asked one day five years from now she was when light returned to the front end of my Custom Cruiser, and it still works.

Then, to put a sad ending onto this otherwise happy story, I say to myself, "gee, I wonder if the taillights might work now. After all, THEY'RE controlled by the headlight switch, too, and if the old switch was bad, mabye that's why the taillight circuit kept blowing fuses."

Well, I have 10 spare fuses plus a 20-amp circuit breaker that I had planned to use to troubleshoot this problem, so I stuck one of the fuses in, pulled on the switch, and bam, the fuse blows the moment power is applied.

So we still have that problem to tackle.

But we're just happy that we can solve a problem once in a while.

One other puzzle is why the instrument panel lights don't work. They get power from a separate wire and a separate fuse, and that fuse isn't blown. Yet none of the lights work. Suggests another bad aftermarket connector? After all, if one can be bad, so can two. Something to look at.

By the way, I thought you might be interested in what these connectors I keep talking about look like. I tried best I could to get a photo of them. It's hard to get a good photo in that tight, dark space, so it's a bit out of focus, but I think you can get an idea of what they look like.



The wires never actually contact each other. You just put one wire on each side and close the connector. A metal strip pierces the wires on each side and makes the connection. It should be a very secure connection, and I couldn't see why it was intermittent in this one case. But I didn't care enough to try to figure it out. I wasn't going to use it any more, anyway.

 

when it happened to me (TAIL fuse blowing) I had the same thing with IP lights, sep fuse and all, and I was told the IP lights get their power from the TAIL circuit even tho sep fuses. So if the IP fuse blows, it does not take out the tails. My short was in the LF kick panel, blue wire if I recall correctly, behind hood release

 

Thanks for the tip. You're quite right. I looked closer at the wiring diagram, and the power for the taillights comes from a wire that starts at the horn relay junction box, goes through a fusible link, and then goes to a power bus at the fuse box where four circuits take power from it. One of these is the taillight circuit, and the connection goes through a 20 amp fuse (the one that keeps blowing) to the headlight switch. When that's turned on, power goes both to the taillights through one circuit, with no more fuses, and to the instrument panel lights through a 4 amp fuse back at the fuse box.

After looking at this, it occurred to me that another possibility for the short was not in the taillight circuit at all, but in the IP light line between the headlight switch and the 4 amp fuse. If there was a short in that segment, the 20 amp fuse would blow if the headlight switch was turned on.

That should be easy to check, though, because with my trusty ohm meter, I should find an open circuit if I connect one end to ground and the other to the end of the instrument panel light wire from the headlight switch to the 4-amp fuse. If I get continuity, I have a short. I checked this, and there was no short.

The next step in all this is to remove the seats and carpeting, which I want to do anyway, and fully expose the wiring to the rear of the car for both the taillights and the tailgate motor. Maybe then I'll be able to get to the bottom of things.

 

If it had temporary trailer wiring (AKA U-Haul), you can bet that "aich-ee-double hockey sticks" will would break loose in the back. It could be he!!ish!

 

Although I don't see evidence of it now, it very could have because the car does have the heavy-duty cooling package, which is what you would have ordered if you were planning to pull trailers.

 

Look at that! You get to relive your life in the way-way-back! Again.

 

moving forward

I finally had a chance to get going on the interior today. I removed the seats and am ready to order replacement carpeting.

I need some advice. Where has anyone bought carpeting for their station wagon? Every place that sells carpeting surely has it for non-station wagons, but I don't have much luck seeing anything specifically for them. There are three pieces of carpeting in my car, and I'm guessing that's fairly standard for station wagons.

It looks like the front and middle pieces are the standard two-pieces you would get if you were ordering for a sedan or coupe. The front piece and middle piece meet under the front seat, and the middle piece ends at the base of the second seat as it would in a non-station wagon. But then there's that third piece which picks up where the second piece ends and tucks under the forward-facing third seat. Does anyone make all three pieces to fit? I'm thinking that the first and second pieces can be ordered to fit as though the car were a four-door sedan, and the third might have to be custom-made with extra yards of the same carpeting.

Thanks.

 

I've done some more investigating and have realized that those carpet sets are just for the front and second seats as many station wagons do not have a third seat. (duh)

So I'm assuming that the third seat carpet needs to be ordered by the yard and cut to fit. I can do that.

 

These might lead to the right source:
http://qualitycarinterior.com/view-by-car-oldsmobile.html

http://www.originalauto.com/carpetsets.htm

http://www.stockinteriors.com/items...&MainCatId=1&Desc=Olds_Cutlass_Cruiser_Carpet

http://smsautofabrics.com/

 

Thank you!

 

more on the tailgate motor

With the seats and carpet finally out, I did more investigating of the tailgate motor lack-of-power problem. I traced the wires as David Wixom showed back in the other thread in the newbie forum, and I found the connector shown below that he provided a photo of.



My first question is, do you know which side of this connector is the side toward the rear, and which side is the side toward the switch? I pulled this connector apart and hooked a voltmeter to each lead on each side one at a time, and then tried, with the ignition on, pushing the dash switch one way or the other. I figured that, normally, I should see 12 volts somewhere along the line. I found no voltage at any point.

I did remove the tailgate dash switch and tested it with the ohmmeter, and it appears to be fine. One of the three leads to the switch is the power lead, and I tested for the presence of 12 volts at this lead with the ignition on. Nothing, which isn't surprising.

Another question I have is, since the tailgate can be operated from the switch at the rear, there must be another way that power gets to the rear of the car other than through the dash-mounted tailgate switch. What lead is that?


Now, on another sort of semi-related topic, below is a photo of what I think is the "accessory block connector." It's up under the dash on the left side near the parking brake pedal. It shows signs (drippings of melted plastic, sort of like candle wax) of the same fire that appeared on the left side speaker and other things that I talked about a few weeks ago.



According to the service manual, the accessory block connector serves several power accessories, including the tailgate, power seats, power windows, and power locks. This car has only the first two, and those are served, I believe, by the two thick, orange-with-black-stripe wires coming off the lower right. I know that one of them is the power seat lead (the one coming toward us with the black tape wrapped around it) because I traced it. The power seats DO work, and 12 volts is present at this lead both where it connects to the block and at the other end, where it would plug into the seat wiring. I'm assuming the other one is for the tailgate. It also has 12 volts at the accessory block end. My question is, where does the other end of this wire go? To the dash switch? It seems that it would have to split somewhere as there also has to be a way for power to get to the tailgate switch at the rear. Where does this split take place? I hope it's not up under the dash somewhere wrapped in black tape. I'd have to start disassembling the dash to find it. I'm thinking that this lead is the source of my problems.

The service manual is not helpful here as the wiring diagram shows only the connection from the 40 amp circuit breaker on the fuse block to the accessory block, but then nothing more. I see no diagram of power windows, power seats, power locks, or tailgate motor.

While I've got all your attention, can you help me with what that other connector is on the accessory block? I'm referring to the purple wire that's on the lower left next to one of the orange/black leads and goes to a connector that's connected to what looks like a relay in the back to the right of the accessory block. Is that a relay? I notice that, at the top of the accessory block, are TWO wires. One is the thick orange/black that brings power from the circuit breaker. Is the other one just a return/ground?

Sorry for all the questions, and thanks for any help!