66 Town and Country wagon

[Guest]

looking to buy a set of rear emblems that fit the T and C wagon..apx 5" long with plastic insert "Town and Country" and a NOS or mint factory cruise control system.. fits <BR>in dash also may fit Plymouth Fury and dodge C bodies same year..Thanks email me oldwagonman@yahoo.com JIM

[NTX5467]

Howdy, Jim --

The underhood items on the C-body factory cruises might well be identical, but the way it looks, the instrument panel items will be unique to the individual car lines. Not to mention, cutting some holes in the instrument panel casting.

The '68 Chrysler cruises were the modern type that go up into the late '70s, with the control module on the left inner fender skirt and such. The '68 used a particular turn signal lever that was unique to the first year, but it operated the same as the later ones.

When the speed limits dropped in the '70s, I was in Lubbock, TX at Texas Tech with our '66 Chrysler Newport 6 Window sedan. I went out to Fenner Tubbs C-P out there and talked to the guy that did their cruise control installations (when that speed limit dropped, doing the Dana/Perfect Circle cruise installations was a gold mine). The guy said that he had done one on a '66 Chrysler and everything from the middle '70s fit perfectly. All it took was to elongate horizontally (toward the front of the car) the square hole where the turn signal lever was. Pretty painless.

I then looked a little closer at a new '74 Chrysler at the local dealer and noticed that the relationships between the instrument panel, engine, cruise mount area, etc. were all so close between the '66 C-body and the later ones that it was not funny. Everything would fit with basically no problems--other than the hole on the steering column.

You might be wanting to keep everything "factory", but the later system is a much nicer system in my estimation (having memory and accel features) and you can still find everything in the salvage yard too. The earlier systems had two adjustment screws for "cut in" and "engage" whereas the later ones only had the "engage" adjustment.

What is really bizarre is that I found a factory accessory cruise kit for a '66 Chevy in a bunch of NOS Chevy parts at a dealership in the '80s. I thought I could adapt it to the Chrysler as they were both similar systems, EXCEPT the Chevy kit mounted the control module up by the radiator and had a long rod going to the carb. I passed on that deal bigtime.

Just some thoughts . . .

NTX5467