Some small projects.

Although I'd put a set of "reconditioned" (well, painted with Rustoleum) tailgate latches on, they still didn't look very good. So I bought a new pair from Classic Industries. You'd think that when they say, "includes hardware, you'd get the mounting bolts. No. Apparently that means you get the chain and pin. I had to order new bolts from LMC trucks. And I finally got around to installing them.

Again, I've had a lot of requests from people wanting to know where I got the blue dots. They came from Dixie Truck Works. They're on page 16 of the catalog, which is on this page.
The part number it DTW-606. They're $25 per pair plus shipping...at least that was the price as of August 2005.

You can also see the Von Dutch Flying Eyeball that Coop (Chris Cooper) painted at the Rat Fink Reunion.

The next little project was kinda done out of necessity. I got real tired of having the Mr. Gasket throttle pedal bind up its cable...especially when it would snap at the most inopportune moments.

So I harvested the pedal and bracket from the 74 organ donor truck that had returned to the roost after about 18 months in storage.

I trimmed and mounted the pedal and pivot plate on the firewall (I straightened it out after I took this pic) and then went to work on the carburetor end.

I had to modify the hell outta the cable bracket because the bolt patterns for the Carter carb and the Quadrajet on the 74 are different. I also cut off all the extraneous stuff (like the kickdown switch mounting bracket) so that I just had a simple piece. Then it got some red paint just for the heck of it.

In this pic you can see the routing of the cable. I had to get one from a 73 Monte Carlo because the sideways mounting of the Carter made a longer cable necessary.

Then I got tired of looking at the broken-off temp lever on the heater control. So I rebuilt the thing with a kit from LMC. It replaces the pot metal arms with stamped steel ones and with any amount of luck I won't break any more of them. You can see the dash plaque I got from the Rat Fink Reunion above the ash tray.

For a long time I'd been watching drops of fluid appear on my right shoe as I was driving along. Since it appeared right after I replaced the master cylinder, I thought the rear seal of the new m/c was leaking brake fluid. So I swapped it out. Still had the drops of fluid. I figgered I must have blown the seal when I was bench-bleeding it. so I replaced it again. Still had drips. It got to the point of real frustration until I jammed my head and a drop light up under the dash and found out that it was coming from the oil pressure gauge. Duh! It was oil, not brake fluid!

So instead of just trying to tighten the fitting up at the pack of the gauge, I pulled the whole instrument cluster out to see if the leak was coming from the fitting or the gauge itself. It was the fitting...which was a good thing. I didn't wanna buy a whole cluster or try to dig into this one. But while it was out, I figgered it was a good time to paint it, since it was looking pretty hammered. I cleaned it up, masked it off and sprayed a few coats of Rustoleum on it, them allowed it to sit in the sun for a while to bake the finish a bit. It seems to help.

When I pulled the tape off, it looked pretty good.

Since my motto is, "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" I decided to deal with the ratty looking tan dashboard. I masked stuff off and gave it a few coats of Safety Red.

It looked (and still looks) pretty nice after getting everything back together. Since several people have asked, the button on the left isn't the ejection seat, it;it's the horn button. I guess one of the previous owners decided that they didn't want to fight with the wiring in the steering column and added the button.

Next on the agenda was the rust in the driver's door. I got tired of looking at it so I removed the majority of the rusted metal and had a much bigger hole than I started with.

I had a hole about the same size at the rear corner of the door, too. I did my best to clean it up with a wire brush then sprayed the rusty stuff with Picklex-20 which I'd read about but never tried. When it dried, the whole area was white. We'll see how it works.

This is how it sits now. I've had a few interruptions recently (dead air conditioning in the house, a yard sale, disposing of my model car collection, etc.) so I've got several laminations of fiberglass cloth making up a patch at both corners. I don't expect it to last forever, but I'm kinda interested in how long (if at all) it's gonna last.

I finally got the fiberglass patches finished and then painted the whole door. I'm gonna have to re-address the dents from not having a retaining stop here one of these days. I have the retaining stops, but the mounting brackets are snapped off on the door frame. I'll have to fabricate something so I can install those and then fix the dented area. In the meantime, it's nice not to see holes in the bottom of the door.

One other thing I did was to install the new fuel sending unit into the tank. I've been fighting a fuel gauge problem ever since I got the truck and I finally broke down and ordered a new sender from LMC. It went in pretty quickly and I was as happy as a pig in mud to see the gauge read 3/4 full (about what it should be) instead of empty or full. I spose it's time to move onto something else...like painting the rest of the interior in red and re-sanding, priming and painting the bed and putting some plywood down in the bed and on and on.....

...and since there's no time like the present, I went nutz and prepped and painted the underside of the cab roof...in a car I'd call it a headliner, but there ain't nuttin there but metal. But it's red metal.

And so's the rear panel. I've got a new dome light assembly to install, so I'll do that when the paint's good and dry. It's not like I'd miss having my "courtesy lights" or nuttin. It's been dark in there for so long I won't know how to act if a light comes on when I open a door. Speaking of doors, I need to do something about 'em now. Jeeze...if I could just resurrect Jim Morrison, we could do "Light My Fire." Ohh..wrong Doors. But the right color. I better take my meds.

More to come.

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