Headlights Replaced

Today I replaced the Halogen sealed beam headlights on the wagon. I replaced them with a set of clear lense headlights. These are like modern headlights that have a bulb that is replaceable, so you don't have to replace the entire headlight if it blows out. I had seen some sets for sale on eBay, for a ridiculously low price of $4.99 a set, which to me says really sh!tty quality.

So I searched around, and found a set for sale at LMC Truck (http://www.lmctruck.com/). I just browsed through the catalog, and the headlights for the Aspen are the same headlights that came on the 73-80 Chevrolet and GMC trucks, 7" round in diameter. I ordered up a set (along with their heavy duty headlight harness) to throw on the wagon.

Here are the components: 2 lights (w/bulbs) and the heavy duty headlight harness. They heavy duty headlight harness puts relays into the headlight circuit.



BEFORE

The old Halogen sealed-beam headlights




AFTER

Here are the new headlights installed. It doesn't look like much from the photos, but in person the look is definitely different. The light output compared to the old headlights is much greater, a "night and day" difference.





Side by Side Comparison

78 Aspen SuperCoupe Sedan Delivery

Sometimes you see the strangest things on eBay. I found a listing that was labeled 1978 Aspen SuperCoupe Sedan Delivery, and of course that caught my eye. The auction was for a 1978 Aspen wagon that has been converted to a 2 door Sedan Delivery, and then done up Aspen Super Coupe style. It looks like the rear doors have been welded shut and sheetmetal has been used to cover over the rear door windows and the rear wagon windows.

As far as the SuperCoupe pieces, it looks pretty close to having all the right parts. I'm not sure about the sweep of the dark maroon up the rear of the wagon, but that's keeping the paint job inline with the SuperCoupe.

A/C Heater Control Replacement

On one of my recent junkyard runs, I pulled a pair some parts from a 1991 Dodge Daytona. One of the pieces that I pulled was the A/C Heater control. Looking at the vacuum hookup on the back, it looked like it would connect right up to the Aspen, so I snagged it to see if it would work. Here's the piece on my workbench.



Here's the backside of the unit, with the wires unbundled and stripped.



After consulting the wiring diagrams for both the Aspen and a Daytona, and some good ol' fashion jumpering wires, this is how far I was able to get it to work.

The Aspen has 4 fan speed settings (Low, Med-Lo, Med-Hi, and High) and the Daytona has 5 fan speed settings (Off, Low, Med-Lo, Med-Hi, and High). I was able to get 4 of them working, sort of. When the unit was set to Off, the fan would be on Low. Set to Low, the fan would be on Med-Lo, on Med-Lo, the fan would be on Med-Hi. When it was set on Med-Hi, I got nothing. When it was on High, the fan blew High. For the most part, I could live with that.

The vacuum workings was another story. The vacuum port did hook up just like I thought, but it didn't work with the right settings. When the floor button was pushed, the air came through the dash vents. When bi-level was pushed, it came through the defroster vents. When the defroster button was pushed, air came out of the floor vents. That part I couldn't live with, so I put that project on hold and installed the unit from the Town & Country.

Instrument Cluster Refresh

While I had the dash apart, I also took some time to freshen up the instrument cluster. The clear plastic cover was scratched and the inside of the cluster had gathered up some dirt and dust over the years. I had purchased another cluster from eBay a while back, and used it for parts to fix it up.



The clear plastic cover was cleaned and polished with Meguiar's Plastic Polish. I wiped down all the dirt and dust from the gauge faces. I also discovered why the coolant gauge doesn't work. The printed circuit board is cracked at the left connector, and the contacts for the coolant gauge are busted. Time to get a new circuit board. I'll be on the look out for one of those.



The last piece of the Instrument Cluster refresh was to be the installation of the silver faced dashboard (to replace the scratched wood grain dash). Here's why I still have the wood grained dash.

I previously ordered a radio delete plate for an Aspen/Volare/Diplomat police package. The plate is a bolt in piece that replaced the radio. I bought it in the event I ever wanted to install it to mount some gauges where the radio goes.



I then saw a silver faced dashboard on eBay. It said that it came with the radio delete as well, so I assumed it was a second version of the piece I already had. Imagine my surprise when it showed up and the radio delete was an integral part of the dash piece.





I didn't install it yet, because I would have to cut out the piece and I'm not sure if I want to actually cut up the piece. Stay tuned...

Shelby Charger Bucket Seats

These seats were actually installed by me about 8 years ago. They are bucket seats out of an L-Body Shelby Charger. I'm not sure what year they were out of, when I found them at the junkyard they were already out of the car. The bucket seats mounted up perfectly to the seat tracks out of the Aspen. The center console in the photo is a custom unit that my dad built to fit in between the seats (It will be replaced with a factory R/T floor console and floor shifter for the automatic soon). The seats were covered by some generic maroon colored seat covers that had gotten pretty tattered, they'll be replaced soon.

Also to note, I assumed that since the L-Body buckets would mount up that any mid-80s Chrysler bucket would also mount up. I purchased a set of buckets from a G-body Daytona (1991). The mounting holes on those bucket seats were too wide for the Aspen/L-Body seat frames.

New Stereo Installed

It's been awhile since I have put any work into the wagon, but this last week I was on vacation and I did spend some quality time with it. The engine is still in the Town and Country, so there was no work done with regards to the engine swap. But, I did install some of the donor parts during my projects last week.

Before I got the car from my dad, it was broken into and the tape deck that was in it was stolen. Nothing else but the tape deck was taken, probably some sort of gang initiation. :)

For the year that I've had it, it has been without tunes. This week I fixed that problem. Here are the components that I installed into the car.

• Panasonic AM/FM/CD/MP3 Player
• Blaupunkt 3.5" 2-way speakers (front)
• Blaupunkt 6x9" 3-way speakers (rear)

Initially, I wanted to install larger speakers in the doors of the wagon. I used the Town & Country to compare, and there is a cavity in the door for the speakers to mount. I pulled the door panel off of the Aspen, and sure enough the same cavity was there. However, since the Aspen didn't have any power options, there is no wiring routed to the doors and thus, none of the panels were punched out to run the wiring through the door jam. I could have mounted the speakers and routed the wires, but that would have required removing the doors completely to gain access to drill some holes to run the wiring. Too much work for what I wanted to do this week.

So, I mounted the speakers in the upper dash area in the factory location. That meant taking the entire dash top and front off to get everything mounted.



Here are the 3.5" speakers mounted in the factory location.



The first part that the Town & Country gave up were the rear speaker mounting brackets that mount the speakers to the tailgate. Here you can see the speakers mounted in the brackets.



The Aspen did not have rear speakers installed from the factory so I had to fish speaker wire through the cavity in the tailgate. Then I had to remove the entire left side interior trim to route the speakers up through to the head unit.



The next part that the Town & Country donated to the Aspen was the rear tailgate trim with the speaker cutouts. The piece is still the tan color that it was in the Town & Country, and it will get dyed when I complete the interior color change over.





Here are a couple of photos of the new head unit installed. It also has an AUX plug on the front, which will allow me to hook up my iPod to it. You can also see the cracked heater control unit in this photo. It was secured with thin wire to keep it attached to the dash.

This was the next part that the Town & Country has donated, a non cracked A/C - Heater control. You can see the replacement in the last photo.