Getting wired

We are still a long way off from driving Marge around town. But Rick is making progress and I don't want this truck to sit forever, so I am still working on little things.

Today I replaced the battery cables. The ones on the truck might be original equipment. Regardless, the insulation is worn through on the positive cable and the negative is easy to replace. So they both went. It was a little tricky getting the positive cable bolted back to the starter, with the starter installed. But I got it done.

I also started checking out some of the wiring that has been pieced together over the years. My grandpa obviously did not believe wire connectors of any sort were necessary. Every splice, and there are LOTS, is made of the two wire ends twisted together and wrapped with electrical tape. Ugly, yes. But it obviously worked for a long time. Hopefully my wiring will work as well and look a little better, too.

Second coat

Here are a couple of pictures of the roof and hood after a second coat. Actually, about half of the hood is just has one coat. After I wet sand, I'll put at least one more coat and admire my handiwork. After that, I'll likely wait a week or two and then wax the heck out of it all.

The roof and hood, Compared to the original pics, It looks pretty good.
The hood. Notice where I taped around the emblems. Classy!

It certainly is not a perfect paint job. But I think it looks pretty good for $45 and a first-timer truck painter.

Liar Liar, Primer on Fire

I said I was not going to start on the rest of the truck until I saw how the roof turned out. Well, I was encouraged because it looked pretty good so I started on the hood and cowl.

I am trying to decide how much disassembly I want to do to the truck. I am not sure that I want to strip the trim and badges off of the truck right now. It would surely look better if I pulled it all off, instead of taping over it. But, I am concerned about breaking the badges during removal, especially on the front edge of the hood, where there are individually mounted letters, spelling out CHEVROLET.

I don't have the cash, or the want-to, to replace all of the trim pieces. So I might tape and trim around them and do the best I can. Here is a pic of the roof, after one coat of paint, and before wet sanding. Compared to the starting point, It looks pretty good, streaks and all.

Red Oxide Primer

Yesterday, I made pretty good progress on the cab roof. I decided to wait on the hood and truck sides until after I see how the roof comes out. If it looks like carp, then I can just throw in the towel and hopefully won't have done any extra damage.

After grinding the worst rust off and hand sanding a lot more, the roof was fairly clean. Not perfect, by any means. If your body shop left it like that, I am sure you could sue 'em. There are a few dings and a lot of pitting up there, but that is getting primed and painted, too.

I sprayed some red oxide primer on the cab roof and called it a night. I asked about the primer at Wal Mart. They guy that recommended it had a 65 Chevy sitting in the parking lot, covered in red oxide primer. Said he did it two years ago. It looked like a big dirt red old truck, so I was satisfied with his idea.

But I also bought some blue paint. I am going to try and cover the cab roof this afternoon. Even though I trusted his recommendation, I don't want to trust the primer for two years.

Progress Pictures

This is a front view of the truck, that I have posted before. Now compare this more recent picture of the hood. A long way to go, but it is looking better.

Here is another shot from this afternoon.

This picture is a before shot of the cab roof. Hopefully I'll make some progress on it soon.

Battle of the rust

This weekend I have been playing with a couple of ways to remove rust from the truck. I had some naval jelly so I smeared that around on the hood. It did a pretty nice job on worst rust. I also played with a wire brush and some steel wool.

All in all, good results. The hood looks 10 x's better.

I am thinking that I might just work one body panel at a time, trying to get the rust knocked down and then I can prime and paint these areas afterwards. It might make the truck look like a patchwork quilt for a while, though. Next, I want to tackle the cab roof. I think I'll save the bed for last.

I'll post some pictures Monday.

Driver's Door Handle

The push button on the outside door handle has been screwed up since before I brought the truck home. At first I thought the push button was missing. Luckily, it was just wedged, cock-eyed into the handle.

I got out there this afternoon and was able to get the push button operating properly again. Without opening up the interior door panel! Of course, this was only possible, since the rubber and felt gaskets that keep the window frame rattling and keep the rain and wind out, are no longer attached to the window. Mostly, these gaskets are crumbled and laying in the bottom of the door, in a bazzilionty pieces of rubber and felt.

This was not a permanent fix. But now I know how to get everything lined up, next time it happens. A shim, that holds the button in place and assures that it contacts the internal mechanism properly, is missing. I suspect it is laying inside the door, covered in little bits of rubber and felt gasket crumbs.

One of these days I will have to open the doors up. But I hope to repair/replace everything that needs attention at the same time. Until then, I'll keep peeking in through the opening left by the missing gaskets.

Not so mysterious, now

The Hole of Mystery, that I blogged about earlier? Turns out it is called a clutch inspection cover and no big deal. But the other night I removed it and cleaned it. I knocked a few of the worst dents out of it and re-installed it.

Could not do anything about The Hole. Guess it will just add character to the underside of the truck. Believe me, the topside of the truck has enough character (also known as holes) already.

I also went online and found a parts number for spark plugs that they sell at Wal-Mart. Since they are half the cost of the auto parts store, I'll be heading back out there, soon enough to get plugs and light bulbs for the dash gauges.

Odd Things, #'s 5 and 6

What's this called? No, not the hose, the filter. It came off of the passenger side head cover, and vented from the air cleaner through the hose. I have asked over at the 67-72 Chevy Forums, but no one told me what it actually is called.

Now this part, they knew what it was. No, not the spark plug, the other piece. It is a non fouler. If a spark plug is getting ruined, you could screw the non fouler into the block and then install the spark plug. Now I know.

When it came out, attached to the spark plug, I was wondering if I was in big trouble. Had I really screwed up and removed something that was not supposed to come out of the block? The plug and non fouler were so rusted together, that I thought maybe part of the plug had broken off in the cylinder.

Glad that is not the case.

I tried to find some cheap spark plugs last night, at Wal-Mart, but their cross reference materials only went back to 1973 on the computer, and 1980 in the printed book. And since they only had Autolite spark plugs, I could not tell which to use. So, no plugs installed. Maybe this weekend.

Carb Off, Round 2

Sounds like a good name for a diet program, right?

This afternoon, once the party go-ers were gone, I got to work re-removing the carburetor. Since I was taking it off, I decided to remove the manual choke cable, that I broke an in or two off of, when I installed the carb last week.

And since that was coming out, I decided to start gathering the engine parts that I need to obviously replace. Plus, I wanted to start cleaning any other parts that I removed. So now I have lots of pieces of my truck engine sitting in a box in the garage.

Spark plugs and wires? In the box.
Cap and rotor? In the box.
Carburetor? It's in there, too.
Starter? Yep.
Ignition coil? Why not.
Distributor? Was in the box, but I reinstalled it. Hopefully correctly.
I only removed it because I dropped the cam oiler right down the distributor shaft.

I sealed all of the openings up, so I can take my time getting some of these parts replaced. And hopefully, once these are all reinstalled, or in the case of the carb, re-reinstalled, that 307 will come back to life.

Car Night

The Home Depot by The Boss Lady's school hosts 'Car Night' on Saturday evenings. I went out to see if any of the local guys from the Chevy Web Forum were there, with their trucks.

The one guy I met has a great looking 69 Chevy truck. And appropriate for Austin, Texas, it is orange with a white cab roof. Very cool ride. I also saw a guy from our neighborhood who has a cool Ford, red and white, with white vinyl interior. Now that is a cool ride, baby! I learned tonight that it is a 1964 Ranchero. I blogged about his ride, over on AtHomeDaddy, back in October.

In other truck news, I tried to deal with the leaking carb this morning. No success to be had. A remanufactured unit will fit nicely in there. And if it leaks, it'll have a warranty. The bed renovation is complete. I bought a piece of pressure treated plywood and threw it on top of the rusty steel floor. Problem solved.

Temporarily, I hope.

I fought the carb

and the carb won.

Rebuild - done. No problems getting everything cleaned and put back together. Yeah!

Getting everything hooked back up, not much problem, except with the manual choke cable. Once I figured out that I was trying to thread it through the retaining block, while holding the retainer upside down, life was much better.

Until the leak showed up again. Yep, the one that convinced me to rebuild the carburetor in the first place. Back then, I was hopeful that one of the gaskets had simply failed. Guess not. I think it is leaking through one of the linkages. But, which one? Dunno, don't care. I'll be looking for a professionally rebuilt carb, soon enough.

I must have really done a number on the carb adjustments, too. There was not even the slightest glimmer of starting up tonight.

Of course, once I saw the gas leak, I was not really that interested in getting her started, anyways. My firebug days are over. Just ask Rick.

Odd Thing # 4

There is a hole in something. Don't know what the part is called and I don't know what it does. But I bet the hole is not a factory option.

See the Hole of Mystery, here.

And please, no jokes about my High School years, or puberty... This truck is a classic, show some respect, man.

Aww Hail

After getting the last of the seatbelts removed from the truck, I left the windows open to let the truck air out. Just like I have done almost every day for the past week. And after we ended up with a melted crayon in the minivan yesterday, I decided to open those windows, too.

While the kids and I were out for a late afternoon walk, we almost got drenched in a thunderstorm. And then the hail came. So we went inside a neighbor's houses to wait out the weather. And then I remembered the windows.

Too late to do anything about it, so we waited for dry skies and then we darted home. Or as darting as we could go with a three year old splashing his way home, barefooted, in the over-flowing gutters.

Seatbelt Free

After letting the stuck seatbelt retainer bolt soak in PB Blaster for a few days, I was able to remove it this afternoon, while the kids were napping. After I got it out, I ran the shop vac hose into the space behind the seatbelt retainer. 37 years of accumulated oily dirt and crud can really choke a vacuum hose.

Once done, I celebrated by mowing the front yard. PAR-TEE!

Cleaning day

This evening, I pulled the front wheels off of the truck. I was going to check out the brakes. But I decided not to open the drums right now. So I started scraping 37 years of gunk off of anything that I could reach. An old flathead screwdriver seemed the best tool to do the trick. And what a pile of gunk it was. I'll try the rear wheel wells some other time.

I fought a little more with the driver's seatbelt bolt. But I gave up quickly. That bolt is stuck and still installed. Once again, I gave up quickly. Maybe another night.

A little more

Last night I installed a battery in the truck, so that I could check out the lights. Most of the exterior lights are working. Except that I could not get the reverse lights or license plate light to burn. Especially now that I know the sidemarkers are just reflectors, NOT lights. D'oh!

The cab and cluster lights don't seem to be working. The high beam indicator was working for a while, but he gave into peer pressure and quit, after about 10 minutes.

I also got the retractor end of the passenger seat belt removed. But the bolt holding the driver's belt won the fight. I'll have to mess with it another time.

Cleaning the cab floor

While I was outside yesterday, I cleaned a little more on the bed floor. Most of the glue from the old sound deadening pad is gone. I think I'll have to hit the last of it with a wire wheel. I also hit the underside of the bed with the waterhose. It is amazing, the amount of red clay that has stuck to this truck over the last 37 years. Of course, It really got there during the first 25 of those years and has just been stuck in place for the past dozen years.

I seriously considered pulling out the gas tank yesterday. But I will have to do something with it, once I get it out of the truck. So installed, it stays. I also thought about opening up the carb, but I got some advice recently. The idea is that I should do the entire rebuild at one time, from disassembly, to completion. Much less chance of losing parts. I think that is good advice. Now I have to hit up NAPA and get a rebuild kit.

Odd Things, #s 2 and 3

This picture shows a sticker that is on the inside of the glovebox. It lists every factory installed option on the truck. Actually only two entries are options, the Heavy Duty Rear Springs, and the Ammeter/Oil gauge.

The other lines tell the model#, the interior color and the paint color.

This is one of the reasons I was assuming the truck had a 307cid engine in it. Because no optional, larger motor is noted.

And here, you can see the rear step on the outer edge of the bumper. Here , is a view from a different angle.

This step is actually just a cap, welded over the end of the dealer installed bumper. I don't know if I will try to save the steps, but I would love to save the bumper. Across the bumper, stamped into the steel, is the name of the dealership where my grandfather bought this truck in 1968. It reads "Miller Chevrolet/Buick Rockdale,Texas".

You might notice that the taillight lenses, sidemarker reflectors and reverse light lenses are not installed on the truck. I have almost all of the parts, but I pulled them off to clean them up and to check out the wiring and fixtures. A few of the lenses will have to be replaced, but most are in OK shape.

The Easter Bunny brought me a 307

I have been searching for the front engine code stamp on the 68. It is supposed to be on the right front of the block, lower on the block than the head cover. Confused? Yeah, so was I.

Guess where it was. Right where it was supposed to be.

I got out there while the family napped, and hit the entire area with some WD40 and super fine steel wool. 37 years of gunk comes off pretty easily this way. And after 10 minutes of scrubbing and doubting, there it was. Shining back at me.

V070WA

And after some searching on the net, the code evidently breaks down like this...

The build location
V= A V8 Engine, made in Flint, Michigan

The build date
07= Seventh month of the year (July)
02= 2nd day of the month

The engine CID
WA= 307 Cubic Inch Displacement.

Now commonly known as a 5.0 liter V8

Cool! I have been wondering since I first decided to bring the truck home. After chatting with people on the net, who know everything about these old trucks, I assumed it had a 307 in it, but it is great to now know for certain.