Same old

No truckin time lately. I did drive it out of the driveway and parked it on the street today. The first time I have moved it since Tuesday.

Once it wasparked out there I noticed the usual leaks and a new one. The fuel line is leaking at the connection to the fuel pump. And I think it is leaking at the fuel sender, in the cab, too.

Of course, in the grand scheme of truck things...  The wheel paint and pretty hubcaps might not make that much difference.

Bling Bling

Today I finished painting the truck wheels.  A cheap project that looks like a cheap paint job. Two cans of paint from Walmart, $1.88. One hour of prep time. A couple of hours of dry time. And my swap-meet treasure hubcaps installed. What a great look.

Of course, this tire is the only one that I plan on keeping. So I painted the other wheels without masking off the tire. So now all of the other tires have nice silver side walls. Classy!

Oops

Tonight I had a few minutes to play with the truck, so I tried to find a couple of small things to mess with. I noticed a pin sliding out of the gear shift lever. As it was the pin holding it to the steering column, I decided to hammer it back in.

And guess what. It was not the thing to do. Now I can barely shift into first or reverse. And I can't get the pin to slide back down, either.

Oh well, I live and learn. Just not backwards or in first gear.

Milestones.

We hit two major points this weekend, one cool one a little worrisome.

First the good news. The odometer now shows 45323.9 miles. Therefore I have driven the truck more than 100 miles. 100 miles of uninspected, unlicensed and uninsured fun! Hopefully all of those items will change before another 100 miles clicks by.

We have come along way since that first mile.

And now the news that bothers me. I am officially $1000 into the truck. It still may not look like much but I am quickly running out of small things to repair or replace. The worst part of this is that the stuff that is left is mostly going to be expensive. Stuff like body work, paint and repairing the bed floor will all come later and drive that total cost way up.

I'm such a hoser

Saturday afternoon I finally got around to swapping out the radiator hoses and the heater hoses. Since getting the truck running again back in June, I have known that I needed to change these.

AutoZone only had one of the radiator hoses and the heater hoses in stock, so I installed everything I could. Later I stopped at Advance Auto and picked up a lower hose. While I was there I decided to pick up a new thermostat, too.

The thermostat was one of the first things that I replaced on this truck. And I bought one just like the one I removed, a 165 degree thermostat. This time I put in a 185 degree thermostat. I'll see if I notice any difference in performance. One change already, I wasn't sure my temp gauge worked, because the old thermostat kept the needle pegged on the cool side. Today it was moving towards the normal range, but still on the cool side, even after idling for an hour more.

After getting the new radiator and heater hoses installed, I filled the radiator to check for leaks. Quickly I noticed the lower hose on the heater core was leaking like crazy.

Sunday afternoon I pulled the heater core out and cleaned everything up. I must have pulled 10 pounds of junk out of the heater box. Guess the farm mice found a way in there. I am considering not even having a heater, since I don't use the truck in cold weather and the internal parts are all really rusty anyways. After I priced the core at AutoZone, I decided to do without it for a while. I reinstalled everything except the heater core and the heater hoses.

I used a short length of the old heater hose to make a bypass from the water pump to the block. One guy on the truck forums suggested that I just plug the water pump and the block and ditch the hose completely. I might look into that if I really decide to lose the heater.

Best of all. Nothing is leaking. From this repair at least.

Oil pan? Still leaking. Rear differntial leaking? Youbetcha. Rear Tranmission seal still leaking? Well for some reason that one stopped leaking when I changed the oil in the trans. Dunno.

The only hassle I encountered in this repair was pretty easily handled. I had to remove the hood to get the heater box off of the firewall. Evidently you either have to pull the hood or the passenger fender. I dropped one of the bolts and never found it and one was already missing, so now the hood is sitting even worse than before. When I replace the bolts, I'll try to get it lined up better.

A little inspiration is all I need

I have not ventured out to truck in a few days. Too busy to mess with anything else right now, I guess.

Anyways, I read in our local paper that the city is stepping up efforts to tow abandoned cars from neighborhoods. In the past they have concentrated on cars sitting on the roadway that were obviously not drivable. Our neighbor had an Isuzu towed, after it sat on the street for at least 2 years.

Anyways, now they are towing cars right out of driveways. And all it takes is a neighbor complaint. The police department tags the vehicle and tows it 3 weeks later if it is inoperable, my truck isn't, if it has expired inspection tags, the truck's expired in 1992, or if the license plates are expired, the ones on the truck expired in 1969 AND they were never registered to this truck!

So I am thinking that I might need to get to work on my ride. Or maybe I'll just hide it in the garage or the backyard.

Add all that to that the fact that I don't really think the city ought to be able to tow something out of my driveway, and this might get real interesting if one of my neighbors complains about the truck.

Me next

The Talker and I took a truck ride last night before dinner. A couple of blocks, just checking out the neighborhood. When we got home, the 20 month old Princess had been crying the entire time we were gone. "No Daddy, MY truck ride."

I could not resist, so she and I went for a ride on the other side of the neighborhood. In total, the kids and I probably rode 5 miles or more.

The wife? She rode in the truck a while back, and that ride ended in a walk of shame. For some reason she hasn't been begging to go again. (But she did chaperone the kid's ride last weekend. I forgot about that sucessful ride.)