I have so many tools that I had to buy a bigger tool box lol. I bought a nice little husky one from home depot. With all the pockets and stuff inside. Its a sweet carry bag and fit about 50% of my tools nicely in it. Makes it nice for toting in the junk yard but my drill, and hammers, and ratchets and sockets wouldn't fit nicely so I have two boxes now lol.

 

In the last 2.5 mos;

I have put in about 10 gals of gas and burnt about 2 gals of it cooking the tires in the road and running it up and down the street so it doesn't sit in the same spot too long.

The cold weather killed the battery to the point it turned over once and that was it until I gave it a jump start. I brought the battery in the basement and recharged it so it works like new now.

Last week, I went out to move it and found there was no brakes!! I went about 10' forward and went to use the brake and the pedal went to the floor so I stopped by means of a snowbank!!! EXCELLENT!!

 

Open differential - Power takes the path of least resistance. If one wheel starts slipping, forward motion stops as all the engine's torque is transferred to the spinning wheel.

Posi - Power still takes path of least resistance, However the "friction material" will transfer PART of the engine's torque to the wheel with traction giving some forward motion.

Full Locker / Spool - Applies 100% power to both wheels, while under power for the locker / full time spool. So as long as ONE wheel has traction you will have forward motion.


For general EVERYDAY street use a Limited Slip / Posi unit is more then enough.

For snow / ice use Open units seem to be more predictable, they tend to not kick the rear end out in a RWD vehicle. Posi's tend to cause the rear end to want to come around on the driver while under power, lockers more so.

 

So it just depends on what your driving location will be? I know that my Dodge has a long bed and no locker and sometimes the bed will try and kick around on me as my pickup is 4x2. I guess if you know how to combat the spin around that would be good.

 

I finally added the finishing touch to the interior of my truck, making it the coolest thing on the road in north Georgia:



Yep, a gift of fuzzy dice from the in-laws. It's OK to be jealous.

 

Awesome Fluffy Dice!!!!

Too bad they aren't quite color coordinated with the truck.....


I've had a red rabbit's foot hanging from my rearview for so long, it's now pinkish-red....... I don't even remember who gave it to me.

 

That was my thought as well when I first got them, but it turns out that the blue contrasts quite nicely with the red of the truck. That truck is seriously RED all over, it doesn't really need any more.

 

Oh yeah, blue will certainly stand out nicely in a red truck.

I've thought about updating to fluffy dice in my truck, but I have always hated having stuff blocking part of the view out the windshield. Besides, that rabbits foot has been in there for at least 12 years now......

 

On another note, I found this pic in another thread showing what the gauge cluster *should* look like at night:



Guess I got lucky when I snagged my tach/trip cluster. Mine lights up like that. Only downside is all the needles are faded to white, except the speedo, which is a pale yellow/orange.
I had planned to use some floroscent orange paint on the needles before installing the cluster, but wanted to see how well it was going to light up first, along with checking for any bad bulbs I may have missed.
I want to swap the bezels to the 85/86 base model style (gray mesh weave) sometime soon (gotta get them first), so I'll repaint those needles while it's apart.

 

Well, the old girl turned a quarter million miles today....treated to her a nice oil change and lube....

 

HA!! Mine looks nothing like that...as a matter of fact, you can't even see half of that in mine. I have the base model gray "weave", and I like it a lot actually. I have never been a big fan of the faux wood look myself(personal opinion).

I have my old John Deere hat in the dash of my truck. Between wearing it and it sitting in the dash from time to time...it is no longer black. It is more like brown. I actually had a girl in a Texas Roadhouse ask me where I got my hat, because she had never seen that color before.

 

Not so much what I did to my truck as what I did with and for it. Drove it ~200 miles picking up: Plastic interior trim panels to replace the disintegrating ones on mine; rear view mirror through which I can actually see; hood as mine is hail-damaged; instrument cluster w/tach & trip; windshield trim; trim above the grill; electric window switch bezels; clock; and black dash trim - both instrument and radio.

That leads me to the question of how to mod the radio bezel to accept the clock? I didn't buy the trim that went with the clock as that was the burled wood stuff that was in bad shape and didn't match my door trim at all. So, I don't have it to look at re the clock. Anyone have a shot of that?

Also, I agree w/jthorngate3 on the lighting. Got back after dark last night and until it was truly dark I couldn't tell I had dash lights. RW's pic inspires me to fix that awa paint the needles, which are badly faded, on the new cluster. Which brings up another question: Can I replace the odometer portion, or preset it, so the original 68K miles is properly represented?

 

Cut out the rectangular areas where the clock stuff is, I'd suggest a razor blade or Xacto knife.

 

Gary, you've seen my cluster at night, so you know it wasn't always that dark in yours.
I swear, I did not remove the factory colored bulb covers, and only pulled the bulbs out to dust them off and check to see if they looked good. I was just going to see how it worked, then pull it back out to paint the needles while hunting for a better cluster bezel to modify to accept my non-factory A/C ducts. It looked so good, I just left it in place.....

Josiah, can you get me pic of those? I've seen the gray base bezels out of a truck, but can't say I've ever seen them installed with the cluster and radio filling the middle. I'm thinking that would look better than simply stripping off the (peeling) woodgrain and painting over it with a gray color.

 

That's the way my dash cluster looks at night now, thanks to swapping out my old no-tach cluster with my "new" one. Some of the needles are faded to white but I'll eventually color them as someone mentioned in another thread. I don't know wheter the bulbs dimmed in my old one, or if there was just too much dust blocking the light (there was a ton of dust), but now I can see it a night a lot better. Only other difference is I swapped out the blank shift panel from my old cluster to the "new" since I drive a stick.

Other than that, the only other thing I've done in the last couple weeks was beating my head trying to solve the problem of my truck stuttering or dying on me, but I'll eventually get that narrowed down.