Everybody needs to rest, sometime

Since getting the truck brakes functional, I guess the truck has decided it likes being stopped.

I have not bee able to get her running for more than a couple of minutes in the past week. I managed to get it out of the street and back into the driveway. After that, no dice.

I have not had time to even peek under the hood, so no idea what is wrong.

Brake work

I finally bought the neccesary hoses to bleed the brakes. $5 for a one man brake bleeding kit at Harbor Freight. What could go wrong? Actually, everything went fine. I got the brakes bled within 15 minutes. And now I can stop on a quarter.

Which is pretty good for a 3500 pound truck without power brakes.

One year later

The truck has been at our house for one year. My goal was to have it legal by this time. We still have a few things to do to get there, but all in all, it has been a good year.

Here is a post from one year ago:

Our's is the 5th house on the left, with the cool old Chevy truck in the driveway

Lots of changes since then. Most notably, only one child is in diapers now.

I would go snap a picture, but it is butt cold and windy out there, so just use your imagination.

Non-truck week

The Boss Lady was off work this week, so I haven't played with my truck in a while.

Last Sunday I did a little more painting. In the center of the grill there are two black bars. They are not real noticeable, but I ground off as much surface rust as I could and painted them black again. I took some photos, but the difference does not really show up. Believe me, it looks good on the truck.

After that, I only moved the truck out of the garage to make room for our new Saturn Vue, a long awaited replacement for the 2000 Ford Windstar.

Hopefully we can limit the miles we put on the Vue and since the kids and I don't often drive as much as the wife, I get to drive the new car.

Feeling a little guilty about getting a new car without having a job, I washed and waxed The Boss Lady's 11 year old car this afternoon. Tonight the boy and I took it to the carwash to get it vacuumed out. Monday the wife and I will both be cruising clean cars.

Mine is just a lot prettier.

Truck day

We are having a party here for fifteen couples and their kids this evening. So I am avoiding the house and playing trucks.

This morning I ground as much rust off of the front bumper as I could. I did not deal with the big dent on the driver's side. Or any of the other dings. That will have to wait for some real body work. Once sanded, I hit it with a couple of coats of red primer and followed that with a few coats of white industrial enamel. After this stuff dries, it should be pretty tough.



While I was at it, I threw a coat of paint on the rear bumper, too. It is in pretty rough shape, so I did not spend much time prepping it for paint. It got a couple of coats of the same cheap silver spay paint that is on the wheels. I am going to dress it up a little bit, though. I am going to get some red paint and paint in the name of the dealership that is stamped into the bumper.



All in all, I think it looks pretty good. If the white looks OK when it dries, I'll probably use this same paint on the white parts of the grill.

By the way, this is not the mod I blogged about in the last entry. That is a replacement oil pan that I will install sometime later, since the truck has quit leaking oil. For now.

A practice in plagarism

This morning I received the next truck mod. Stay tuned.

Not bad for $11

UPS dropped off my tachometer this morning along with the new satellite receiver. Of course, TV won out, and I waited until the wife got home to work on the truck. I bought the tach for $11 through Ebay.

It took me about an hour to hook up the tach. The hardest part was running a wire through the firewall to the ignition coil. I ran it through the same grommet where the oil pressure tubing runs. Hopefully that won't cause a problem.

My gauge cluster lights are not working right now. I suspect that the dimmer switch is bad. The tach has a light that should be tied to the gauge lights. Instead I ran the tach power and light power to an ignition switched tab on the fuse box. All this really means is that for now, if the truck is running, the tach is lit up. Someday I'll change that.

All in all I think it looks dandy. By the way, My truck is idling at 900 RPMs. It sounds good, but I think that might be a little fast.

Seven concerned citizens

I am up to seven people asking me where the truck has gone, now that it is parked in the garage. One is a neighbor from our block. He drove by and asked while we were riding bikes in our gravel free driveway this morning. Another neighbor stopped and asked while on her morning walk a few minutes later. A few days ago one of our friends asked The Boss Lady about it.

And finally, this morning, while they were making their rounds, the recycling truck drivers stopped and asked. An hour later the yard waste truck driver stopped at the curb and yelled his inquiry. "Where that cool old truck go?"

Sure is nice to have neighbors who care!