New Stuff
Been very very busy lately and I haven’t gotten nearly as much done on the truck as I had hoped. But a lot has happened! So I’m going to spread it out over a couple of posts lest it end up being six pages long. First things first:
The welder looks like he is going to work out perfectly. In fact, I already have all my panels and I’m ready to take him the truck – I just haven’t had the time to do it yet. Funny thing happened on the way there, though. I had been working extensively on the electrics under the dash – rigging up some new lighting for the instrument cluster (more on that later). All the dash items were working fine when I got done – I swear. I got up early to take it over to the welder and see what he thought. I started her up and headed to the highway – which requires a turn or two. Yeah, that’s when I noticed that the blinkers weren’t working. About 15 minutes later I realized the windshield wipers weren’t working either. Ha ha! Excitement. So I made the hour long journey with clinched butt cheeks praying that it wouldn’t rain (which it seriously looked to be wanting to do). I got there and he looked it over and gave me an estimate – $600. Sounded good to me – so I said I’d be calling him soon. I then spent an hour being chased by a rain cloud on the way back. It caught up with me about a mile from home – but I squinted a lot and made a distressed face to protect myself, so I made it ok.
Somehow – and I’m really unclear on this – I managed to fry like 5 of my fuses. They pass a continuity test fine, and their resistance is fine – but for some reason they weren’t working. I replaced them and everything is good now.
It was exciting at least.
Next post: dash pad restoration.
EDIT 2014 Update:
So the welder ended up just kind of slapping the panels in there. It was a horrible job. I don’t mean “it looked bad” (which it did) but it is structurally unsound. Recently, the backplate of the inner rocker literally came off in my hand. I’m not going to fool with it right now because I just can’t face getting further behind the eight ball. It would require totally redoing those panels. Honestly, it is beyond my skill level. I will address them in a few years when I repaint the truck.