67 Ambassador Convertible

That Bronze engine really looks pretty in that green engine bay!  Aren't you glad that you didn't have to paint it AMC blue!  Great looking detail on the engine!

Been busy with life and lots of little stuff on the car that by themselves are not a big deal, but when you put them all together real progress has been made. Since my last update I have cleaned/de-rusted and painted the driveshaft, installed new U-joints and installed it on the car. Got the radiator out of the attic that I had boiled out a year or two ago, and decided that I did not like the crummy paint job that the shop did. So I stripped all the paint off the tanks and mounting brackets, straightened the bent fins, and applied a nice couple of coats of black paint. Then I moved on to the fan shroud which was no fun to strip and sand the surface rust and prep it for paint. Lets just say that I am glad that the warehouse where I work is heated and that I have keys to it and can work on the weekends because that was one dusty messy job that would have had me kicked out of the house had I done it there. The end result is that it too is now painted a nice semi gloss black and matches the radiator just fine. Next was all the under hood A/C stuff. The car did not have A/C originally, but I have collected all the necessary components in add it on. I have elected to go with a Sanden compressor and modern cross flow condenser along with all new barrier hoses so that I can use R149 in the system. Flushed out the evaporator, installed a new expansion valve and now I have a system that should be good to go and hopefully not give me any troubles in the future. With that all done I made another trip into the attic (its getting kind of empty up there) and retrieved the  front bumper which I had re-chromed a while back, blasted and painted the brackets, and got it installed too. Also have all the under-hood plumbing completed - heater and radiator hoses, vacuum hoses, new steel line to the transmission modulator, and since they are not available, I had to fabricate new rubber lines to connect the transmission cooler lines to the radiator. I am now working on installing the dash and all the rest of the electric, but it is getting late so I will do another update with pictures in the next day or so.

Looking good Dave !
You'll want to flat black areas surrounding the rad and the condenser like the factory did before you put the grille in. You don't want the green areas showing through the grille. Don't forget to put "L" shaped, black plastic block off pieces at each end before you wrestle the grille back in.
A question on the dash lights. In the pic they look more green than blue-green. Is this just a color inaccuracy in the picture or did you remove the factory light filters and change out the lamps to green LED's ?

Next up on the list was to paint and install the top mechanism. Painting was fairly easy, bolting stuff together, not too hard, getting everything to line up.......well that was another story. One that young children should never hear.

Top mechanisms and all the bows minus the rear one. Waiting on a delivery of additional tack strip.

After lots of trial and error - mostly error, I have things fitting about as well as can be expected with the so-so weatherstrip that is available for the big convertibles. Still I am grateful that something is available at all.

Was missing about half of the weatherstrip retainers which are a form of tee bolt with a sheet metal head, so I drilled and tapped some thick sheet metal, cut some all thread and welded them up. I forgot to take any more pictures of the process, but they all turned out looking like the one that is by the pencil in the picture.

While I was waiting for the tack strip to show up, I dug out the new grill and tun signal housings that I bought at the Nationals in Cleveland and got everything installed. Since this project is wayyyyy over my original budget, I have decided to tackle the top installation myself. Hopefully I will be posting some pictures of a successful install soon!