Does anyone know where I can find Instrument panel Gauge bezels (rings) for my 51 Crosley SS? What other vehicles may have used these same parts?
Does anyone know where I can find Instrument panel Gauge bezels (rings) for my 51 Crosley SS? What other vehicles may have used these same parts?
White Trucks used the same round gauges. Late 40's, early 50's, including some of the trucks they built for the military.
Any easy way to remove the trim rings from "CC" style instrument clusters & speedos?
Coax them off by gently relieving the flange on the back side with a screw driver. I have done my Crosleys as well as many others and had no problems. When you reinstall the ring I used a block of soft wood on the face side and channel lock pliers to carefully squeeze the thing back together. Just have to be slow and tender with the process.
One way to remove some instrument bezels is to carefully chuck the instrument in a metal lathe, run it at a really slow speed, and use a smooth pointed (hard) tool to carefully "roll" the bezel open. A person who has experience "spinning" parts like cups, bowls etc on a lathe might have success. Practice on junk instruments till you get the hang of it. Closing is the opposite - forcing the bezel edge back down with the hardened tool.
dave51117 - 3/29/01
crosley19 - 3/29/01
dave51117 - 3/30/01
With our '48 wagon the gas gauge works on and off, more off than on. It is not affected by banging on the dash or hitting a bump. Hope someone knows the answer.
May be that the wire has a short in it . Or the connection in the wire off the tank may be loose.
Could be corrosion on the sending unit in the tank, the 'wiper' moving along the resistance wire not contacting all the time.
The sending unit is a wire-wound variable resistor. Couple of
possibilities here:
- Corrosion within the sending unit causing an interruption in contact
between the arm and the wire-wound resistor.
- Broken wire on the wire-wound resistor.
- Sending unit not sufficiently grounded to gas tank / chassis.
- Bad connection with wire from gauge attaching to sending unit.
- When electronic gauges or electrically controlled gauges start acting
strange, look for a bad ground or bad connection first.
You have had a lot of good suggestions and this one is not likely since your gauge seems to be on or off. I had a Crosley sending unit with the brass float (some are cork). It had a hair line crack and would suck in gas or push gas out of the float depending on the temperature. So you could go from fully operational to always empty with a vague floating motion of the needle at in between temperatures.
Strange, but I just installed a new sender unit in my tank today. In the instructions that came from Service Motors was a note that read; "The staple in the gasket is for a ground from the unit to the tank". Boy, if there is a weak link in the current flow it's have to be a 60 year old staple
I have received my replacement decals for the Speedometer and Gauge Cluster but I cannot figure out how to get to the old speedo decal without breaking the glass. The rim that holds the glass on is pressed on from the factory. Also, is there a special tool required to remove the speedo needle without damaging anything?
You start with a small screw driver or pick and work it under the lip- slowly keep doing this until the ring comes off. A HINT -- wear a good pair of leather gloves for when the tool slips and tries to go into you hand or finger. You are allowed to cuss at times. Hold the back side of the needle and twist it back and forth-it will come off with a slight pulling.
The temperature gauge is a “mechanical” unit consisting of a bulb with fluid (ether) mounted in the engine, a gauge head (or in radiator for tin block error radiators) mounted in the instrument cluster on the dash, and a tube connecting the bulb to the gauge head. The gauge head is actually a pressure sensing unit. In operation, the coolant in the engine heats the working fluid in the sensor bulb. As the engine gets hotter the pressure in the bulb and tubing rises. The dash head unit simply reads the pressure on a scale calibrated in degrees Fahrenheit.
A common failure mode is for corrosion to lock the bulb in the engine. The tubing is twisted off near the bulb when bulb removal is attempted. In this case, the gauge head unit is known to be working properly, the defect is in the tubing and in the loss of fluid from the sealed system.
For a more detailed description, a number of articles about the operation of this type of temperature gauge have appeared in Skinned Knuckles over the years. The earliest article I have is from the March 1984 issue. Replacement parts Mechanical temperature gauges are still being manufactured and available in most auto parts stores. The goal of this procedure is to graft a new bulb (with fluid) and tube onto the old gauge head.
Find a gauge that has a spiral wound protective cover over the tube. There are some that use a plastic coating. While these can be made to work, they will not look correct. As of October 2004, it is possible to find a suitable donor gauge in California auto supply stores.
The Procedure Caution: The working fluid in the gauge is ether, a highly flammable substance. Do not have any open flame near your work area. Do not use a torch for the soldering operations.
Make up a sleeve from some tubing. In this case the capillary on the donor gauge had a slip fit into 1/16" inside diameter copper tubing found at the local hardware store. The capillary on the original gauge was slightly larger, so the 3/4" long sleeve was drilled out halfway through to make a slip fit for the old capillary.
To keep the ether from escaping we use some crushed ice and salt to create a “cold bath” for the sensing bulb. (Dry Ice is another way to get cold) We might as well be chilling the bulb while we do all the other preparation work. Trim the capillary tubing on the old gauge a couple of inches from the gauge head. Make sure that the tubing has not been closed off when trimming to length.
We might as well do as much as we can before cutting open the donor gauge. So the next step is to “tin” the capillary on the old gauge near the cut. You don’t want to tin all the way to the cut as you don’t want to encourage solder to fill the capillary opening.
Now attach the sleeve to the tinned capillary. In this case we seated the capillary tubing to the limit that we opened up the diameter by drilling. Again we want to make sure we have not closed off the capillary. A piece of stiff wire small diameter can be used to verify that the capillary is not clogged with solder.
Cut the protective spring on the donor gauge capillary near the point marked for the length you need. In the spirit of doing as much work as possible before breaking the seal on the donor unit, we now tin the part of the capillary that will be inserted in the sleeve.
Verify that the sensor bulb is still in the ice solution. Cut the capillary tubing, assure that the center is open and now solder it into the sleeve.
Before removing the sensor bulb from the ice solution, double, triple and quadruple check that you have a good solder joint with no voids or other possible leaks on both sides of the sleeve. When you are happy with your work it is time to check the function.
Immerse the sensor bulb in boiling water while observing the needle of the gauge. It should move up to the 212° F mark. While observing the dial mechanism, you might want to cycle the sensor bulb between the ice solution and boiling water a few times to verify that nothing is binding the movement. The gauge should now be restored to operation.
Calibration If the gauge does not read 212° F in boiling water you have two options: Note the error and live with it. Attempt to adjust the gauge head unit.
The gauge head is a Bourdon tube connected to the indicator by a linkage. The Bourdon tube is simply a flattened tube rolled into a coil. As pressure is applied the tube slightly unwinds. When the pressure is removed, the coiled tube returns to its original position. Adjustment is made by bringing the sensing bulb to a known temperature by placing it in boiling water (212°F) then bending the linkage that connects the Bourdon tube to the indicator. Do not bend the Bourdon tube itself. If you have any doubts about the adjustment operation, then don't do it. You can buy replacement sensing bulbs and tubes at any auto supply store. Getting an original gauge dash head is a lot harder.
Installation Avoid sharp bends or kinking the tubing when installing the repaired gauge. Update My original repair instructions were based on my 1977 repair of the gauge in my car and called for replacing the tubing at the gauge head. This current set of instructions is updated based on concepts presented in the April 2000 issue of Skinned Knuckles magazine. In an article by Bill Cannon a significant improvement is given. The improvement is in splicing the old tubing to the new tubing with the use of a sleeve. This allows you to work away from the gauge head and thus be less likely to damage it.
In the Restoration Forum of the June 2000 issue of Skinned Knuckles A. R. “Dick” Evans (“The Temperature Gauge Guy”) of Dunedin, Florida pointed out the safety issue of working with an open flame near the ether working fluid. Robert Kirk (Kirk's Auto - www.kirks-auto.com) sent this informative article to the Crosley_Gang board and credits Tod Fitch as the source for this information