Actually the setup I got was for a small block but I should be able to just make the nice shiny servo rod a bit longer or whatever is required.  It isn't really very high tech. Other wise i cant see where there would be any difference at all. It would be good if I could get a measurement from a big block one just to make sure it will work right.

If I can use this setup as a reference I may have enough parts with some bits and pieces I have acquired over the years or at least enough info/specs to be able to make another so stay tuned!

This will be perfect for another long cruise to Winnipeg!

-- Edited by 66 Grande guy on Friday 31st of July 2015 06:31:30 PM

my 69 442 rag had cruise. But could never find a servo that worked

Dale @ NOS    a poncho supporter

OK!    Here we go with stage one.

I'm posting this as I go along, not after I've done it so I may run into snags along the way or i may get delayed for one reason or another or I may just wander off as old men are prone to do.  It also needs to be said that this is being installed simply to save gas on the highway not because I have optionitus and this is the last one I need.  (picture me rubbing my hands and cackling in evil glee here.)

A bit of background here first.

 I believe Cruise control was a dealer installed accessory until 1967 as the first listing I can find in a brochure as an RPO in Canadian Pontiacs was in 1967. This was the year when GM stopped using the Perfect Circle  electrical setup in Chevs and Pontiacs and went to the vacuum units triggered by the signal light stalk so it became intregral with the car.

As ubiquitous as cruise control is today, at the time I would guess that maybe one car in maybe 2 or 3 hundred had it based on nothing more than a guess.  As hard as these are to find in any kind of shape maybe I'm being generous. 

The one I acquired appears to be for a 1965 chevrolet as the instruction sheets were printed in mid summer 1964. It appears to be complete down to the fuse you would have to install.It is correct for a small block installation and has all the brackets for manual tranny, manual brakes or power brake variations. The difference between a small block kit and a big block kit appears to me to be only the regulator rod (The rod that runs from the power head to the carburator linkage.) The big block rod has to accomodate a lower aircleaner than the small block from what I can gather.

I intend to scan the instruction sheets and the excerpt from the 1966 Canadian Pontiac chassis manual that goes into disassembly, repair and testing of these. I'll post those later.

I have managed to obtain some used parts from various sources as well so I will likelyy use bits and pieces so as to not hack up NOS stuff. Whatever I don't use will likely go back up for sale. I may have to fabricate a regulator rod from scratch though.

Prelim fittings and head scratching has me thinking the picture in the  1966 Pontiac chassis manual can't be the right way to mount it as the location will be at too much of an angle from the carb. I'll have to hook up the speedo and control cables and make sure that wherever I mount it will fit those properly without kinking.

Anyway here we go.

Postscript:  I had tried to upload a bunch of pictures of the kit and instructions but my computer keeps freezing after a couple so I will try at some other computer in a couple of days.

What I've done so far is to modify one of the original mount I had (not the NOS one) to fit the 66 front rad mount and located the main unit where I think it should go. I have moved the windshield washer bottle over as well and hooked up the tranny to main unit cable to make surere it woill make it considering I'm now running the th 700r4 which is a bit longer than the original PG.  I have mocked up using 3/8's steel tubing the regulator rod that would be the correct shape for a big block with a Qjet and now have to rebuild it using the stiffer stainless tubing. Bit tricky working around the shifter cabel setup for the TH700r4 bit a bit of a twist in the final flat part seem to be giving it the clearance it needs.

So far so good.  Will post pictures when I can get to a cooperative computer.

More pics of the kit

So the first thing I did was to install the cables just to make sure they would all meet at a point that made sense for a mounting location. The bottom cable does fit on a a 700r4 tranny stub so that was good to know. The top cable just screwed in to the back of the speedo. I also ran the speed adjusting cable from the control head from that spot back to more or less the under dash location to make that would make it.  Once I had that I laid out the harness to make sure it would be long enough in this car.  All seemed good so I decided that I would have to mount it pretty much in the stock location of the washer reservoir, so that had to go. 

I decided I would have to slightly flatten the top mount as the factory bends may have been right for a 65 chev but didn't work well on the flat top of the radiator mount. Not willing to sacrifice the NOS one in the kit a used a used one that I had acquired heated it up and flattened it a bit.  I tried to fill it with some body filler but got too impatient to do it right (story of my life) so t looks a bit lumpy.  (I'll make it perfect later, yeah thats it.)

Once I had the cable hooked to the brain I knew where I had to mount it so I marked some holes and drilled  the top mount. I then found that the bottom brace (basically a  black painted light duty 3/8 rod with flattened and punched ends) pretty much lined up to a hole in the rad mount. I used a bit longer stud than the one supplied  in the kit to mount it just so it would line up with that hole better.  Felt pretty darn solid with the top a bottom mounts so I worked on making a big block regulator rod from the quadrajet.

I mocked up one from 3/8 steel tubing as the small block one supplied in the kit looked like that's all it was. Once I had it figured I used a piece of 3/8 stainless tubing to make the real one.  The tricky part was making it hook to the bottom hole of the quadrajet linkage so it wouldn't interfere with the TH700r4 cable. Just took a bit a slight bending though.  I then welded (badly) a extra long 1/4 inch nut to the end and used the threaded adjuster from the kit and the retainer to hook it to the brain.

 All the cables ran nicely together so I just used a couple of tiewraps to keep them in place.  I then relocated the washer reservoir in the corner over the horns. Didn't even have to use the reservoir brackets the came with the kit as the old holder just fit nicely in that spot. Just drilled three holes and screwed it in. 

So much for the under hood stuff.

I then had a bugger of a time finding a safe spot to drill a 1 inch hole through the firewall where it wouldn't damage the flat connecters that go under the carpet to the back or  the other wiring but finally found a spot that would work. So shoved the harness through. I had to guess bit to locate the thumbwheel controller as the template supplied (again) was obviously for a 65 chev.

So drilled a couple of holes in that lovely metal dash (where you can actually attach stuff unlike todays plastic world) attached the speed adjuster cable and screwed it in! Plugged in the lights in to fuse box and went to the next stage.

This is the one that kind of hurt. I had to mount the brake cutoff switch. It was a bugger to get in there so I took the drivers bucket out.  Even so, at my age, with my girth,  with my sausagelike shakey fingers and with my eyes that wouldn't focus that close anymore it wan't fun.  I couldn't use the mounts that came with the kit but there was a second square hole just above the brake light switch that I could use.  The switch that came with the kit was too fat so  I assumed that I could use a slimmer plastic brake light switch cause it was the same right?  I robbed one from a parts car and managed to stick it in.

So time to plug it in to the fuse box but the power lead was two inches too short so I made a short extension to plug into the box. 

Time to try it out.  NO GO.

Finally I realized that a brake light switch works opposite of the kind of switch from the kit so to test it I just took out the switch I had put in and hard connected the circuit for now. Still NO GO.  I started tracing the current from the fuse box and realized that it wasn't getting anywhere past the thumbwheel activation switch.  Took the thumbwheel control apart and found that the switch was heavily oxidized so a bit of shining up took care of 50 years of sitting in a box. Now we had power so time for the road test.

OH YEAH! we have cruise!

Now I just have to actually mount the brake safety switch  and it is 100%.  Hope you enjoyed the adventure and maybe one or two of you will find it useful.

This thing work so slick it is almost worth what I paid for it!

Here are some more pictures of the installation:

Sure gonna try!

I must say that yellow barge has almost as many mod cons as any given 15 year old minivan.  kinds of put it in perspective in terms of what people think are totally standard today