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Looking good. I believe the cigarette port has power at all time, so you can smoke without the key on
As far as the LED bulbs, some are directional dependent. The dash LEDs I got from SuperBrightLEDs (online store), they identify if the are polarity sensitive and dimmable.
Looking good. I believe the cigarette port has power at all time, so you can smoke without the key on
As far as the LED bulbs, some are directional dependent. The dash LEDs I got from SuperBrightLEDs (online store), they identify if the are polarity sensitive and dimmable.
you are correct, there is a polarity. I checked each bulb and marked the bulb holder before reinstalling and also checked the correct polarity on the PCB(diagram in one of my previous posts), but I guess I could be 180* off on all of them.
I can’t leave well enough alone, can I?
i was planning on cleaning up the hood hinges. There’s 45 yrs of grease and dirt on them. I hit them with a wire wheel on an angle grinder then took a brass brush and screwdriver to them before spraying them down with Zep and water. That pile of dust is what came off after the wire wheel.
then I noticed that the PS hinge was loose. Decided to take it off, take it apart and weld a few of the rivets. I contemplated spraying them off the truck but didn’t want to take the other one off.
i feel like Clark Griswold with the nulepost in Christmas vacation.
Vent windows out. Hardest part was drilling out the rivet. Line up the bottom hole and the cut out for the hinge first. If you try to start in the corner, you’ll likely be off by the time you get to the post hole. Decided to keep the PS seal alone as it was in good shape.
Getting ready to start the part I’ve been avoiding, electric. The old rear harness was chopped off mid bed. I got a new rear harness and started laying it out today. Original harness has 4 wires plus fuel sender wire.
Yellow-left brake and turn
green- right brake and turn
black with red stripe- reverse
brown- running lights
green with stripe- fuel sender
tracing everything back to the dash shows 2 additional wires that join the rear harness just outside the firewall. One for the fuel sender and one for the transmission. All of them are taped together with electric tape. I decided to splice the new harness in just after the transmission wire peeled off and added a new wire to the fuel sender.
the side marker lights in this harness came off at the rear of the harness so I spliced longer wires to reach the side marker lights at the front of my flare side. Replacing license plate lights as well. Pretty sure the ones I removed are original judging by the corrosion
I’m pretty sure I need to replace the turn signal switch as well as I previously want able to detect any power in any of the rear wires before hacking things up.
This is why I have trust issues. Figuring out the wiring with new rear harness. Instructions state that yellow wire is turn for L side and dark green is turn for R. Harness is labeled well, but walking around PS rear I noticed that the turn wire was yellow. Started unwrapping the loom and this is what I find.
dark green turns into a yellow wire, light green becomes dark green, tan splits into tan and brown. Not sure why they wouldn’t use consistent colors all the way through, but feel better that I checked it now.
i initially went out to get some bondo on a panel and 2hrs later, have the dash taken apart again attaching vacuum lines I forgot to reconnect on the thermo unit and start tracking down electric issues for the gauges. Also re-torqued u-bolt nuts on the rear axle.
Got some new LED taillights in. They have 4 wires, so support a back up light. Kind of a bummer since I spent a bit of time sorting out the existing ones. I figured having back up lights would be safer.
also discovered that my license bulbs work. I had the headlight switch on and reconnected my neg battery cable and was surprised to see those on. I need to sort out the other brake, turn etc. I currently don’t have power to the dash lights so there’s more to investigate
i also decided to strip the paint off the rear light brackets and repaint them with the rest of the truck
Big step today. Got the bed, tailgate and hood in primer. Garage isn’t big enough to do the cab at the same time so i’ll save that for another day. Time to start blocking it out
I discovered that I wasn’t able to get the primer under the rails. I’m assuming the flares need to be removed to get there. Hopefully no one looks under there.
a few runs but not bad for picking up a paint gun for the first time
Big respect for all the body guys out there. I started the block sanding process and it's taking a while. I'm starting w/ 320 and plan on finishing w/ 400. A friend told me to block w/ 320, then 400 and then wet sand to 600. This is not going to be a show truck and I have lots of known pitted and dented areas in the bed. Might skip the 600 step, plus I'm doing a non metallic color and plan on doing a satin/matte clear coat.
Should I be using guide coat on the areas that I know are clearly bad? I know there will be areas that I won't be able to sand out the low spots. I hear that paint doesn't want to stick well to guide coat.
This took about 2hr so far. Almost done w/ one side of the bed.
Chugging along with sanding. I found that block sanding the inside of the bed was going to be impossible. This is not going to be a show truck and there’s plenty of dents, dings and pitted metal. When block sanding, I was burning through areas way too easy while other spots continued to be low. I found that I would knock down most of the texture with 220 on a short foam block, then powder guide coat, then use a maroon scotch brite pad on a foam block to eliminate the 220 scratches. The flexibility of the maroon pad allowed me to remove the scratches without burning through the primer. I read that this gives you the same scratches as 400. When comparing the scratch patterns, it’s pretty similar, possibly finer than 400. This is certainly faster than 220, 320, then 400. I’ve got probably got around 10h of sanding so far and have about 60% of the bed done. Hopefully it’ll go faster from here.
And just like that, 4hrs later, the hood is all sanded down to 400. I’m going to paint in 2 batches since my garage won’t hold it all at once. I’m doing the bed, tailgate and hood together then the cab separately. I’ll get the first batch in sealer, base and clear. Wish me luck
