Up In Smoke

After being closed up in the garage for a few hours today finishing up the exhaust, it occurred to me that I had gradually generated a significant amount of smoke while I was welding.  Upon opening the door it looked like a scene from a Cheech & Chong movie.  No wonder my eyes and throat were burning.

The exhaust is done and I am pleased with how stable it is.  Time will be the test to see if it stays put.  The parts are all Summit parts: 2.5 inch mandrel bends and 2.5" Summit Turbo mufflers.

Here is how it sounds:  Watch on Youtube

Merry Christmas Anniversary

Merry Christmas all!  It was exactly 30 years to the day that my parents gave me the keys to this truck.  Details to that day are written here.  Who would have thought that I would be working on it 30 years into the future.

Cold Weather Progress Day 2

Ran a 5K this morning and put in about 5 hours of work in on the truck.  I robbed a IPVR off of the '69 and it worked!  Afterwards I tacked on the mufflers, turn downs, and hangers, then removed the whole mess and welded it all up.  Doesn't seem too productive, but the time spent re-positioning in my garage soaked up a lot of time.  All that is left now is putting the 2 exhaust units and fabricating 2 mounting tabs for the hangers.  Of course I forgot to take pictures of it all so you will have to wait.

Cold Weather Progress

It was another wet and nasty day.  With all the Christmas stuff done, there wasn't anything standing between me and progress.  It was in the low 40's this morning so I cranked up the new heater and brought it up 20 degrees in 20 minutes.

My first order of business was to find out why that dang fuel gauge wasn't working and determined that the instrument panel voltage regulator (IPVR) is bad.  There might be one in the donor truck but I wasn't willing to go out in the cold rain to get it.  So on to the exhaust.

In small increments of time over the last couple of weeks I managed to get some of the needed angles cut to get the 2.5" pipe to the back of the cab and get one set of hanger mounts made.  Today required a tremendous amount of patients that paid off.  Working with the door closed on the garage is like working in a closet but the heat was worth it.

Bolt it on and take it off was the process and it happened about 5 times for each side.  My focus was to get good clearance and have a position at the back of the cab to mount the mufflers.  By mounting the mufflers under the bed, I am hopeful that this will help with the noise reduction inside the cab.

I picked up some generic exhaust mounting bands from O'Reily's and made the brackets for them out of 3/8" hot roll steel that I had left over from another project.  So far I am happy with the result.

Not so "Winter Wonder Land"

As some of you may have heard, North Texas got clobbered with ice last week.  Temps were in the 20's and what looked like 2 to 3 inches of snow was white ice.  When I walked across it in our yard and didn't leave a foot print or even so much as crack the surface, I realized that my work in the garage wasn't happening without some heat.

My Dearborn propane heater wasn't getting the job done so after some quick research, I found this guy and ordered it on Amazon.

The Mr. Heater Propane Convection Heater does quite the job.  I got my garage up to 82 degrees today and had to turn it down.  So if your question is "what have you done to the truck?"  My answer is that I heated it up to 82 degrees.

Wires, Lots of Wires

I didn't report the 2 days I put in last weekend.  Who the heck wants to see wire scattered all over.  It got real cold on the 23rd and 24th of November so I set up a wiring workbench on the dining room table.  The diagrams were enough to send you to the optometrist so a trip to Kinko's netted some blown up versions.  

On the 25th we headed out for Thanksgiving in west Texas and spent the week with family and friends.  Today I was able to focus on the wiring again to check things before installation.  So far the dash lights, head lights, parking lights, and starter all work.

Picking on one thing at a time seems to net the best result.