Thursday, June 10, 2010

Catching up!



It's been a couple of days, so I should do a little catching up...

Cleaning out the Cab
Since I was in a bit of a holding pattern on Tuesday waiting for the carb kit, I decided to clean out the inside of the cab. With a little help from the 7 year old, I pulled the seat out, and we, literally, washed the inside of the cab out. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that there was at least a 1/2 inch of dirt/dust/crud in all over the floor board of the cab.

The good news is that it's clean now, but the bad news is that it's rusted much worse than I thought. I found rust in every place that is predicted on all the websites/documents about these trucks. Apparently, someone had tried to patch the rust in the floor board with a quick patch of fiber-glass strips...it didn't work! So, there is cutting and welding in my future.


Carburetor Kit
Kit came in Wednesday. I talked some to both "Dads"- and figured that I could do it but it might go better with a little help. I called a friend (Thanks, Gale!), with some experience in both having worked with these old trucks, and with rebuilding (tractors- but hey, I'll take it). H came over this morning and we went through the kit.

It seemed to go well, but after re-install, the truck still wouldn't start on it's own, and I eventually took it off and took it to the mechanic who does all our work on our "real" cars. He looked it over- thought we'd done a good job, but the needle valve wasn't closing. We thought we had that fixed, but when I got it home, same problem.

I tore it back down- with the air horn removed the float/needle valve work perfectly, but as soon as I put it back together, no go... So, there is something that's keeping the float from shutting off the needle valve. I suspect it is the float hanging up on the "modern"- meaning sort of "universal"- air horn gasket. At any rate, I'm on the right track now. I just don't think I'll have time to play with it before I leave for nationals.

Best moment of the day- when I finally figured out how carb actually works! I don't think I'm far from getting it right.

In the meantime, on the advice of my Dad, I pulled the spark plugs and made sure there was no raw gas in the cylinders, and replaced the spark plugs while I was at it.

I'll be taking a break while I go to nationals next week, but still hope to have the engine running "on it's own" by the end of the month.

The Book
The book that is supposed to be the best "beginners" book for re-building finally showed up today. How to Restore Your Chevrolet Pickup- and I'm glad it did! I'm already learning a lot!

That's all for now.




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