I have been trying to finish up several of the little things that require more than just bolting stuff on. After several months of tripping over the lines to the transmission cooler I decided to do the finish install on it. I had mostly finished all the work on it some time ago, but I had wanted to hinge the mount to make it easier to work on the hoses and to make it easier to do in the field repairs if necessary (hopefully not!).

After mounting the front splash pan, grill opening and all the braces for the hood latch and grill bar, all that really needed to be done was to grind a radius on the bottom of the mount to allow the mount and coolers to swing down. Once that was taken care of I dressed the hydrallic lines to keep them from rubbing on one another or on anything sharp. When we were off road racing we used a short piece of hose and a zip tie to form a separator which worked well off road so I figured it should work okay for a street cruiser.

Installed Transmission Coolers

Prior to mounting the splash pan I did a quick fit of the front bumper which disclosed that the hired help once again screwed up and had mounted the bumper brackets on the wrong sides of the frame. So off comes the brackets, and out comes the plasma cutter to blow another mounting hole in the bumper bracket for the top bolt on the steering box. After that small detail was handled I mounted the bumper and bumperettes (Dagmars). I am pretty sure that I can get the front fenders on with the splash pan, grill shell and bumper in place.

After all off that I decided to see how the rear bumper fit as well. Before I bolted up the rear bumper I installed the tailgate, I am still waiting on some longer 5/16″ Chrome Oval Head screws which are needed for the final bolt up, but this worked well enough to get the tailgate on the wagon before it gets dinged up again. This time the shop dummy got the brackets on the correct sides of the car and the rear bumper and bumperettes installed easily. I was really pleased with this since I had done a lot of metal work to both the back of the wagon and also to the tail gate to repair the damage that had been done when the hinges broke and the rear panel rusted out.

Installing the Tailgate and Bumpers

I sure wish I could fire that shop dummy but some how it doesn’t seem to work…