It may not be any better with one less color

I got outside this morning and put more paint on the truck. The front end is now blue. No more red primer showing. It now looks like a blue/gold/white/grey primer truck that someone half painted in their driveway with spray cans from Lowes.

But at least it doesn't look like a blue/gold/white/grey primer/red primer truck that someone half painted in their driveway with spray cans from Lowes. 'Cause that would just look silly.




But even if it does not look like a great paint job, the truck is a long way from where I started.

Tire run around

I drove to a couple of tire shops yesterday to get an idea of the cost to re-shoe the truck. Looks like the cheapest I could get would be at Wal-Mart for about $175. A set of 40K Douglas'

High quality rubber, I am sure.

The meeting will come to order

The fist meeting of TruckinDaddies Truck Club was held this afternoon. Dad and I drove the truck up to Schlotzsky's Deli for some sammiches and sodas with some wannabe club members. The Talker rode home with Dad and I from lunch.

Mom, The Princess and The Boss Lady decided to ride home in the Saturn, with the air conditioning on high, instead of in the back of the truck on a 100 degree day.

Total legal round trip miles, 6. Total mechanical issues, 1. The turn signals are currently not working.

The down side

So that every guy with an old truck doesn't work the system like I do, the state gives out the world's ugliest license plate to antique vehicles. The ugly design alone would keep me from putting it on a car that was really nice.

For a little extra cash, could use original 1968 truck plates. And someday I will. But I have to find a nice set first.

For now, this plate says that my truck is old AND I am cheap. As if someone could not tell that just by looking at the truck... But it is still a good message for tailgaters, I think.

Street Legal at last

Well I took a shortcut on the way to getting the truck road ready. I was going to wait until I was sure that the truck would pass inspection before licensing it. But now we are now licensed and insured. The Antique Vehicle plate is on the truck. Since it does not need an annual inspection with antique plates, we are good to go.

Hopefully this will make it a lot easier to get some more work finished up on the truck. Now I can drive it to the tire shop 5 miles away. Without the Antique tags, I would have to remove the wheels and haul them to the shop to get new tires mounted. Then I would have to mount the new tires and wheels myself. But the tire shops around here aren't going to do it any cheaper that way. Just more hassle for me.

I still don't plan on driving the truck a ton of miles. But it will be nice to be able to haul my antique self over to Home Depot in my antique truck. Right after I get some decent tires on this thing.

Insured

The truck now has insurance. We are mostly legal now. One more stop at the county license plate office in the morning and we will be rolling in multi-colored and rusty style without having to hide from the cops.

Truck Registration

I have decided that I am going to get the truck registered as an 'Antique Vehicle'. That means that I can legally use the truck for "exhibition, club activities, parades and other functions of public interest... a vehicle in route to and from a location for routine maintenance is allowed" but I can't use the truck for "regular transportation".

So I am also using this chance to announce the formation of a new truck club. The TruckinDaddies Truck Club (TDTC) will collect no dues and hold no regularly scheduled meetings. And we will use my garage as our clubhouse for now. That way I can justify driving the truck up to Home Depot. Have to keep the clubhouse running properly and looking good, you know. Membership requirements will be decided later. But if you are checking out TruckinDaddy's blog, then you surely will qualify.

Besides, there are a lot of bugs to still work out on this old truck. So I figure that every trip I make will likely start or end at a parts store. As long as I hit Auto Zone on my way home, the truck is legal. But I still think I'll depend on our newer cars for my "regular transportation", whatever that means.

The real upside to antique registrations, no yearly inspections and $10 a year in registration fees! I bet you can't find a better deal in state government.

SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!

I gave up on the wipers and decided to lube every lubrication point I could find on the truck this afternoon. And after the outside temps cooled off enough for me to lay on the driveway, I swapped out the old Sears front shocks for some new Gabriel Guardian Shocks, $15 each + tax from Auto Zone.

I made a quick stop at the hardware store for some bolts, $5, to mount the new shocks and everything went back together easily.

I love this old truck. Swapping out shocks for $40 a set is my kind of deal. Especially since it took less than an hour and a half, including drive time to get parts!

Afterwards I took the truck for the obligatory post-repair drive. And believe me it is driving much smoother now!

I hate electrical problems!

My windshield wipers haven't worked since I got the truck. A while back I traded for some used parts and ended up with a wiper motor to swap with the original one in the truck.

So this morning I removed the cowl and dug into the wiper system. I got the old wiper motor out without any problems. I hooked the other motor up, but it is not turning either. Likely I have an electrical issue before the motor. But it is entirely possible that I have a bad second motor, too.

So I am stopping for the day. Hopefully soon I can get a buddy to help me test the motor to see if either are working.

Rear Lights

I spent a couple of minutes on the truck today. I received some lenses for the rear brake lights that I bought online. So I got them installed. Still need one reverse light cover, though.

When I opened the box there were 5 lenses. Three for brake lights and two reverse light lenses but both fit the passenger's side. That is what I get for spending $10 on used lenses instead of $40 on new ones.

I went back and check my original emails to the guy who sent the lenses. Sure enough, he told me about the reverse lights and even showed me a picture of all of the lenses. But I am a goof and I missed those pieces of info. I only remembered that he told me he was sending an extra brake lens since two of them had small cracks.

Still, I saved $30 and I can get a reverse lenses cover for a lot cheaper than that I bet.

Update - SInce it has been almost a week...

I got nothin, except driving up and down the street a few times.


Sorry.

Slow progress

Since getting the bed bolted back onto the truck frame, I haven't done much else to it. I have been tinkering with the old boat and outboard instead. But now that I have sufficiently broken the outboard, I now can get back to breaking stuff on my truck.

I replaced the hood hinge bolts a couple of weeks ago, hoping that a new complete set of bolts would pull the back edge of the hood back into proper alignment. I got them put in with The Boss Lady's help, but the hood was still too high by the windshield. Check out the area inside the red box on the picture below.



Last weekend I got it closer, but I gave up after about 45 minutes of alternately loosening and tightening the same bolts. Today I tinkered with the bolts and hinges for about an hour. It is almost lined up properly now. The driver's side is still a little bit high, but only about 1/4 of an inch or so. Close enough for an old farm truck.