Work was limited to three days this week as I had a dental appointment on Monday; broke a portion of a tooth off and am having a silver crown put in. (Couldn't afford a gold one as I've spent my discretionary funds on the truck......
)
In any case a fair number of tasks were completed:
Bob finished welding the bed frame at his home where he's got a 220 MIG welder. He also sanded down the welds before returning the frame to my place.
Cleaned and painted the windshield wiper motors. The grease inside the chamber had solidified and the vacuum "paddles" were stuck.
Welded the frame to the bottom of the bed and, after cooling, bolted it to the frame. (As you may recall, the original bed was beyond saving so I had new bed pieces made up at a local steel fabricator.)
Made up a set of spacers to go in between the base of the brush guard spring "legs" and the inside of the 5" channel bumper. We made these from 1 1/2" heavy wall square pipe, using 1/4" flat bar to seal off the top and provide the "step" for the bottom of the "legs" to rest on. Drilled a 1/2" hole to provide for the bolt heads that hold the individual springs together. We used Allen head bolts to reduce the size of the hole as they will be hidden by the spacer.
Had a set of "U" bolts made up to affix the guard to the back of the bumper. We then put it all together to check for fit and then disassembled it to take to the stripper and painter.
Got some neighborhood help to lift and set the sides of the bed in place and then clamped them to the bottom in preparation for welding both in place on Monday. By the way, when we cut the cross pieces for the bed frame we left the pieces that bolt to the truck frame just a bit long. This enabled us to rest the bottom of the side pieces of the bed on these slight extensions making the job of clamping them on straight a certainty.
Pushed the truck into the driveway where it slopes down to the street and stuck the garden hose in it and did some flushing of each side of the engine. Although the use of air pressure did blow the vast majority of the sediment out, more did come with the water treatment. We'll do the same with a flush when we've installed the radiator and run the engine for a short time.
The fan arrived and I was successful in having the winning bid for the replacement manifold. I expect it'll be here some time this coming week and we can get back to working on getting the engine started. We still need to alter the exhaust pipes, purchase a muffler and install the exhaust system.
Today I stopped by a local specialty lumber store and had the pieces for the gas tanks support cut. They were cut from ash wood, a common wood used in early automobiles here in the US. The top planks are 1" by 6" and the bottom plank is 1 7/8" by 8". More to follow on this task in the near future.
That's it for now!
Regards,
Jim