Weekend Fun

Ok So first off, I woke up Saturday morning and turned on my desktop PC ... it would not find the hard drive! So I may or may not be able to fix that ... how is this related to the truck? I take the pictures with my digital camera and pull the memory card and transfer them to the PC ... well my laptop does not have a slot for that paticular card, so you are gonna get some grainy, crappy pictures from my iPhone!

Saturday I pulled the traction bars and ground them down to bare metal.I put the bolts in the vinegar jar to soak for a few days. I will probably take them out Monday. I noticed one of the bars had "NATIONAL" embossed on it ... I will have to research to see what part they made if any. EDIT: I searched online and found a midget car parts company National and in their catalog they sell short radius rods. I would say this is what they are made from but I'm not sure. Then I hung them up and painted them with the flat black rust reformer paint.

Traction

Then I dumped out the nuts and bolts for the pressure plate, rear of the drive shaft, shocks and gas tank from the vinegar and tok a small wire brush to make them pretty much like new. I took several pictures with the digital but they wont get posted until I can transfer the pics to my laptop. I also took before pictures of two parts from the traction bars and plan on taking after pics so you can see how well the white vinegar works.
The bolt heads for the rear of the drive shaft and the pressure plate have 'BP" I think ... stamped into them. I will be curious to find out what that stands for.

Drive Shaft Bolts and Retainers

Pressure Plate Bolts

I also sanded the shocks and painted them with the Ford blue engine paint.

Waiting their turn to go back on :O)

Mocked up for the picture

Not too Bad

Today I did some more rust removal on the rear and the axles and painted that.

That's a dust smudge on the lower part of the housing

Then I put a little JB weld around the stem on the gas tank for good measure and painted that area. I put the sending unit back in and dumped the vinegar from the tank. I then mounted the tank back on the truck and installed the filler neck. I still need to do some work on the neck, but I did not want the tank to just sit open as I plan on putting gas in it to move the truck once the trans is back in. I stir up a lot of dust while I'm out working as well and I do not want that in the tank.

Tanks back in

Plugged the old return line and got the hose back on

Then I climbed under the truck and cleaned off the area where the oil is leaking from the oil pan and located the area I needed to address. Once I found the area I then took the grinder and wire wheel under with me and got it all cleaned up. For now I used the JB weld to stop the leak and shot some paint on it to hide it all. In the future the plan is to get a good pan of normal capacity and do away with this extended pan.

Can you tell where it was?

I also removed the exhaust the rest of the way out from under the truck. Well at least the one side that was in the way of getting the trans out. I will need all of the room I can get when I go to put the trans back in by myself!

Looking good

I spent the rest of my time cleaning up the mess I had made and getting a few pictures with both cameras so I could at least post something on the blog tonight. I will add/ replace pictures later on.

I am thinking the throw out bearing and pilot bearing will show up tomorrow. I will take some time in the morning to check over the trans for leaks and clean any dirt and oils off the fly wheel.