Steering on Peer Pressure has gotten…sporty since I put the new tires on. What was once a pretty stable platform has gotten wandery and looser, which makes me nervous when driving at speed. I bought a caster correction kit from Super Scouts a month ago or so, and realized pretty quickly that the installation is more than I’m prepared to take on. So I called the alignment shop I’d used before Nationals and asked if they could install it for me, which they agreed to. So I’ve got an appointment for Saturday morning, and hopefully I’ll see a difference when it’s complete.
Meanwhile I got my rebate card from General Tire in the mail, and the clown who has been hounding me to buy my tires for $100 lower than the asking price got back in touch with me this week. Fuck it. I want them out of my garage. With that cash (providing the guy actually shows up) I can order an aluminum radiator and new hoses, and set that aside as a fall project, if it doesn’t get too cold too quickly.
Finally, I pulled the shitty switch out of the fiberglas panel in back of the TravelTop. I don’t remember having this switch in Peer Pressure, which was a stock 1978 model, so it’s a new thing to me. As I was attempting to unscrew the live lead from the dome light, it was sparking (!!!) so I know I wasn’t seeing things last week. I marked the position of the switches and pulled it out, wrapping the live lead with some electrical tape.Â
Examining it closer, it’s a miracle it didn’t burn the truck down earlier. It’s just the barest of mechanical parts with a flimsy plastic switch in the middle, and it appears to be missing a pin or other conductive metal object that was spring-loaded, providing resistance when toggled. I can’t find any mention of it on any of the IH parts sites and there’s no serial number printed on it anywhere. It’s clearly a factory part, as there’s a mount built into the fiberglas panel, but I don’t see any sign of it on the electrical diagrams in the manual (there’s just a straight run from the passenger’s taillight up the rear pillar to the dome light).
More sleuthing to follow.
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