I have been very busy keeping my yard from becoming a jungle this past week. I did mess with the truck a bit .. I cant seem to keep my hands off of it!
I got the truck running ... again .... and moved the truck outside. I wanted to take a new walk around video. I lost interest when the truck would not stay running. I have yet to clean the carburetor! so it's my fault I'm sure. The truck ran fine last year and I could move it about the garage, around the block etc. I let it sit part of last year and most of this year doing the work to it. The work has created a lot of dust and I fear it is clogging up my carburetor. I had it covered most of the time, but that stuff gets in everything! Anyway after blowing out the line and pouring gas in the carburetor I had it running on it's own Friday. Of course I went to start it today and it would not start. Gas in the carburetor would let it run for a second before shutting down with the occasional backfire. It was too dang hot to mess with so I left it. I am positive once I remove and clean the carburetor, blow out the lines again and probably the gas tank cleaned that it will fire on up. I did make some adjustments to the cold idle setting and I don't know what I'm doing so I should be able to get that right once the truck will run with me out of it! LOL
You can see the crud in the carburetor ....
Now ... What about those holes?! To make a short story long, the reason I had moved the truck to the center of the garage ... I had noticed the bed was a little out of wack. I had it looking great ... um ... a while back. Since bolting it back on, adding the fenders, moving the gas tank etc ... I never checked on the bed to make sure it was still right. So I started measuring and adjusting.
The front of the bed is pretty close. The bed sides bolt thru existing factory holes. This pretty much eliminates any issues for alignment there. It is off a slight amount, but I have some room for adjustment with the bushing spacers I am using. I also think there is a slight bend in the top rail of the rear panel, causing the corner to have a slight angle up. This is not something you would probably not notice.
I find the back to be about a half inch off. Not shocking news. Without the floor in place the frame has some give. You can easily move it up and down. Once the floor is in the sides will be fastened to the frame via the floor board braces. Looking back now, I have a feeling I am about to learn a lesson in proper way to replace the back end so your floor goes in properly LOL. OK so my focus here will be to determine the best way to put the floor back in and tie the bed side neatly into it. While at the same time leveling up the rear of the bed before I permanently tie in the bed, bed frame and bed sides. OH this is going to be fun!
I had decided I had devoted enough slack ... um I mean planning time for the day, so I decided to go ahead and punch the threaded D inserts out of the bed frame. For those not familiar (or if I'm confusing you by calling them the wrong thing(?) LOL I will verify and adjust the post), the bed frame has 4 cross bars. Each cross bar has (don't quote me, I'm going on memory) 5 "D" shaped holes with inserts that are threaded to allow the braces, to hold the wood in place, to be bolted down. Now for the short of it ... I had broken off a lot of bolts taking the old floor out so I just punched each insert out. Easy, no issues ... just the way I like it!
Next I decided to get the rear lights working properly. I had crossed the two wires for each tail light when I hooked them up. This made my running lights bright (like hitting the brake). I just swapped the wires and that was that. As for my brake lights ... I was sure is was because I had not bled the brakes yet and was not getting enough pressure to activate the switch .... The part that is going to drive me nuts until I fix it ...the yellow wire going to green and green going to yellow! I am not sure how I managed that!
Then I stole my girlfriend from the kitchen to help me bleed the brakes. Now the brake lights are working .. woo I kind of rushed the bleed job because it was so hot. I did not want my GF out there any longer than necessary. I do have pedal and can decide if I need to go over them again once I get the carburetor worked out. I did not get a picture of the actual brake light working, but here is one of the running lights .... Are these upside down? ... I think it depends on if your tag is down or up. I think they were originally above the tail light ??? I'll figure that out LOL
If it is not too hot tomorrow(today) maybe I will get the head lights wired in and maybe even the horn. I would start on the carburetor but I can do that while the truck is against the wall. It will be going against the wall tomorrow evening. While I still have it out it will be easier to work on the head lights.
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