Thread: 1956 Chevy 210 Handyman Wagon

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I guess I didn't understand, but the lawn mower comment has shown me the light!

It's looking good!

Took the car out Friday nite. And had to have it hauled home... Battery. Junk. Dead. Wouldn't take a jump or a boost.The thing is it has started easily with no hint of battery problems... Don't understand. Anyway, I called AAA and they came and got it. I sure have been liking that AAA service lately.
Saturday morning I called them again for a Battery Service. They came out, checked the battery (sure enough, bad cell(s)... putting out only 71 amps. Toast. The tech put in a new battery and the car fired right up. He did a systems diagnostic while the engine was running and found nothing wrong with the start, charge or grounding systems. We'll see how it goes.

Yesterday I pulled the tail lights from the wagon to check the bulbs and replace the rubber body gasket. Opened up a can of worms on the "wiring job" when I pulled them out.
Badly twisted and taped connections, crimp-on connectors and cheap azz bulb sockets with broken prongs that hardly stayed in.
So, needless to say I am now on a mission to correct the wiring and make the tail lamps serviceable.
I'll get some pics today of the mess and what I am thinking of doing if the AAW parts aren't up to snuff.
If ANYONE has replaced the sockets with something sturdy please chime in. Looking for a long term fix for this issue.
Mark

Here are some pics of the carnage.
One of the cheap bulb sockets. Note there are only two prongs left. There "were" six. One was gone when I removed the lens. I pulled the bulb to check it and broke three off trying to re-install it. The other broke off as I was trying to figure out how to get the socket to stay in the housing... Not gonna happen.

Some of the wiring... drivers side. Passenger side was identical. At least they were consistent.

NOW! This is what I'm thinking. Late model bulb socket. Modify the '56 housing to accept the new style twist in.

The sockets even have the correct color leads coming out of them. Yellow = left, Green = right, brown = tail lights and the black is ground for the socket.

As installed.

Made a rubbing of the housing the lights came from. Not a lot to remove here. A little work with a Dremel and a carbide and the new sockets will drop right in...

The new sockets lock on a plastic post when they are turned into position. I will replicate the post with a 6-32 screw. Drill and tap the housing for the screw and it will work great.
What do you all think? Do it?

Decided to go ahead and jump into the mod. Took about a half hour to get things set up, make a "good" template and throw some Dykem on the housings.
Here is the good template. Made out of heavy card stock centered to the lens mounting holes and located with some aluminum rod in the bolt holes.


Used a Dremel with a fiber blade to block out the notches. Hogged out most of the material with a small carbide and then sweetened up the slots and oversized hole with a small grinding stone.
First test fit. The hole is still kinda rough.

After a little more fitting and a bit of a hair cut to get the tabs to slip over the shoulder of the new hole.

The new socket in place.

This went pretty quick, about two hours start to finish and now I have a sealed bulb socket. Hope you like it.
Mark

Great job! A good fix for certain..

Very Nice!

A very nice touch now your good for another 60 years

Friday afternoon I picked up the new tires and wheels. I pulled the trigger on these Monday morning. They were at the house Tuesday but there was no one around to sign for them. I got the rims from American Racing (Wheel Pros) Wednesday and all of the tires came in to Discount Friday. I dropped the rims at Discount Thursday afternoon and they had them ready to go when I stopped after work Friday.


These should look pretty sweet holding up that old wagon.

I've been working on the wiring the past couple days. OMG! What a MESS! It's just beyond me why/how people can butcher a wiring harness the way they do. Twisted (badly) connections, shoddy tape jobs, no heat shrink and wires looped and tangled all over the place. It just boggles the mind!
This is some of the stuff I pulled out of the car.
Tail light "wiring"...

Driver side headlight "wiring"... Note there is no headlight connector and the low beam wire is ripped out of the terminal. Let alone all of the taped joints are ripped apart in the fender.



This is what I started with of course. Keep in mind the car did have brake lights and turn signals. One headlight worked (guess which one) and it had no park or tail lights. It still doesn't. I will hit the fuse block and dash harness tomorrow to figure that one out.

Between yesterday and today I got the tail light and left headlight harnesses rebuilt, also rebuilt the tail light housings themselves with all new gaskets (there were none in the housings when I pulled them out...).
The drivers side as I was hooking everything up and running conduit.

With the housing re-installed. The ground plug for the socket is to the right of the B/U socket.

The passenger side before re-installing the housing. The ground is plugged in and you can see the back-up light wire ready to plug into the wire from the housing.

This is the new tail light wiring from under the car. I still have brake and turn signals but no park or tail lights. I think this is much better.

The old headlight "wiring"...

Very professional looking work...

These are the new headlight harnesses I got from C.A.R.S.

Once I got these installed they actually plugged right into the American Autowire harness connectors that were buried in tape in that first photo. Once every thing was re-connected and all of the connections heat shrank, I covered it all with convolute and hung it in an Adel clamp from a hole in the fender. It's very solid in there now and out of the way.
I have two working headlights now and the high and low beams both work! I will rebuild the right headlight harness tomorrow and start tracking down the no see'um tail light issue...
Mark

Remember that the stop lights go through the the turn signal circuit and you should have only 3 wires to the rear, four if you count the ground.

Yup, three wires. Park lights, Turn Signal and Back-up. The car has a complete American Autowire harness so this re-wire has gone pretty smooth. I'm just fixing all of the hack work. I'll get under the dash tomorrow to chase the no Park Light issue. I am very afraid of what I will find under there...
Mark