So only one piece under there concerns me, there's a gap on the pitman at the bottom, now this is an original piece as is the rod, mine had no grease fitting, he put an electric gun on it & that's as far as it went, had to back off a tad to get back to 40, I have to look that spec up again not sure if it's different from the links?
Here's the gap?
Hole for the cotter pin is clear.
View attachment 26908
Not sure why it didn't occur to me looking at the photo, but I smacked m'self in the forehead after I looked at my '74...
where's the boot?! That fills the gap nicely. Yours is probably lying around there somewhere. There's supposed to be one on the idler arm too, for the record.
Check out that supposed frame rail. Man, this car is rough.
Whilst I was over at the storage area, I learned a few things.
First of all, the factory interlock switch connector is (was) still on my car. It's the same as yours, only it's
red. $10 says that's how the originals were, but it wasn't called out in the blueprints so the reproduction connectors are black.
Next, the way they rewired the car for the override seems to bypass the system by itself. They certainly went the long way around, though. I'm thinking it was a semi-savvy dealer tech that had his fingers in there, because it doesn't seem likely Chrysler engineering would've signed off on it. I could be wrong. I say "semi-savvy" because there was a much-more direct way to go about bypassing it. He probably kept switching wires around until the car started, since there's no breakdown of how any of the switches actually worked.
Regardless, technically you only need
one connector, and that's just to make things look good. Realistically you
could re-wire the parts on the car and make it work, with one wire left hanging and a bare terminal on the switch. We'll not leave wires hanging. This is a
class operation, man. I'll send the parts with the override switch, keyed so you know where to put your wires.
I also learned, via some vigorous scraping, that the car was the same color originally as your bought-new '74. I've been trying to figure that out since I bought it. The car's been painted six times not including the original factory hue. Near as I can tell, it was black, then orange, then blue, then purple, then a lighter blue, then back to what's left of the current black.
Going (way) back to the steering column, I took some measurements. Unfortunately, the lack of a third hand prevented taking photos, holding a flashlight (it's dark in there!) and keeping the tape measure in place. So I just took a decent photo of the gap from the key-release lever to the bottom of the cluster.
The gap between the lever and the column is 3/4", or very close to it. The face of the lever (where the decal goes) is 5/8" behind the face of the gauge cluster bezel at the bottom edge. There was no way for me to get a photo of the set-back because A) I can't get in the passenger's door, and B) the big hoop in the gauge bezel to go around the speedometer blocks it from the driver's side.
I completely forgot to take a picture of the steering column coupler at the box; I didn't remember that until just now.
If you can get that paint for $8.65 shipped, or if the shipping's under $6, I'd say go for it (and it's a shame they don't have more). Spray-paint prices have steadily increased in the last three years. My
cost on I-H Red went up $12/can!
I'll have a look at the steering linkage on both cars (the '71 is over there as well) and see if I can tell what's happening with yours. I'll bring the camera with me.
