Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

After locating a new and appropriate Auto Gage vacuum gauge for my 55 Chevy wagon, I ordered the gauge via Amazon. According to listing for the gauge at Summit Racing, the box includes a snap on chrome bezel. If the bezel isn’t included, that’s no big deal. I have some very nice chrome paint that will make the black bezel pretty much match the other three gauges.

I won’t get the gauge until tomorrow, and I’ll have to wait until after the cruise-in Sunday to install it, and if necessary, paint the bezel.

I have a couple of things I want to do on the wagon prior to Sunday’s cruise. The list includes:

• Buy bottled water to give away
• Pack Whiskey City Cruisers lanyards to give away
• Pack Whiskey City Cruiser ink pens to give away
• Wash the wagon
• Replace the screws in the rear seat bottom hinges
• Charge battery
• Blacken tires

GPS SPEEDOMETER SETTING. I downloaded and printed out the manual for my GPS-based speedometer in the wagon. The unit has a setting for brightness, which I wanted to adjust because driving back from my wife’s work a few weeks ago after dark, the damn speedometer was at maximum brightness and it was damn near blinding me as I drove.

The unit has 10 levels of brightness, plus an automatic setting that should dim it automatically. Should. I really won’t know how the brightness level changes until after dark. Hopefully we’ll see it dim sufficiently. If not, then I’ll probably have to do what I did last time — pull the power plug.

I’m looking forward to the cruise, which is our group’s last for the season. The next job is to get the car decorated for the local Christmas Parade.

In addition to purchasing new, large style LED Christmas lights, I’m going to need to buy a AGM storage battery to power the electronics.

Oh! And speaking of inverters, I found the first inverter I purchased several years ago that I ran on the 1956 Plymouth. Its a 2000-watt unit, though I don’t expect that any Christmas lights — particularly LED ones — are going to need that kind of capacity.

The goal, of course, it to have the Christmas lights not only lit, but much more visible since they’ll resemble the large, old school string of Christmas lights. I better start gathering boxes to wrap for the on-roof package pallet!