While waiting on roll bar guy to get pipe bent, I decided to do a few small things on Willie. Started to look at dead guages and speedo. So labeled wires and pulled it out.
Sure enough a little oil and work got the spinner going. However the needle was flopping and beyond my pay grade as I studied it. Ohms on the guages showed they were dead and temp sensor not responding. I checked with several restore places, but they were wanting $500 and up to do the whole cluster. The replacements guages are the Omix plus $50+ so not really interested in that if I could avoid it AND would need speedo $150ish. But I did find a NOS on eBay for $200 and it should be here this weekend. I already steel wooled all the connections, bulb bases, cleaned dust off bulbs, etc., so it's already to put in as soon as it gets here.
While in the dash, the light switch was flakey as far as dash lights consistently so I pulled it out.
Took it apart and sure enough crustys where something had leaked into the switch, plus old dried nasty grease. In the rush to show the wife the problem, I forgot to take a pic of the condition before I did my magic. In any event, gave it a good cleaning in side and out, steel wooled the connection spots on the board and slider, added some dielectric grease and it works perfect now. You can even feel the detents as you go from off to parking to headlights and all connections work great. They don't make stuff that good today. 58 years worth of use, couple hours restoring and now ready for another 58 years.
Notice the 58 year old wire connectors. The insulators around the connectors are crumbling apart. They look like old rubber. Plus wires are pretty stiff. Insulation is ok for now. In any event, a new wiring harness from Walcks is probably not too far in the future.
I also installed the used original horn under the hood, cleaned all connector, replaced the rusty steering wheel nut, installed new rubber cap and now I have a functioning horn.
Next on the list, while the dash is opened up, install defroster duct and heater.