I crossed a couple of things off the list on the Travelall while I had good weather and a clear schedule:
- I wired the electric fuel pump into the switched power circuit, so that I stop forgetting to turn it off when I get out of the truck
- I moved the vacuum advance hose to the manifold port and plugged up the port on the carburetor where it had been. I had them mixed up. The port I was using is above the throttle blades, which means it only sees vacuum at throttle and doesn’t advance the timing at idle.
- I pulled the small metal bracket off the dash and hooked the speedometer/odometer cable back up
- With that done, I took her for a ride around the neighborhood, and she ran really well! There were some stumbles at first but when she’d warmed up it smoothed out.
- After I got back, I dug through my bins and reinstalled the choke cable. Firing the truck back up, I noticed that she ran worse with the choke open all the way, which makes sense; I’d set the timing with the choke open 1/3 of the way, and that had an effect on the air/fuel mixture.
- Then I moved her in the driveway and pulled the door cards off to expose the mounting bolts. After some fussing with the driver’s door, I got it to line up and close well for the first time ever.
- I messed with the passenger door for a while until I realized that the top hinge pin is broken—I think jacking the door up and wrenching it back and forth must have snapped the pin. I dug the spare hinge out from the green truck, and cleaned it up.
So next up on the list:
- Install the used temperature sender from the green truck’s manifold and see if that works
- Pull the passenger fender off, remove the broken hinge, and replace it with the green one (which is now wire-wheeled, etch primed, and painted red)
- Put the timing light on it and text/reset the timing again with a warmed up engine and vacuum advance unplugged.
- Clean up the insides of the two front doors (rust converter in the channel, vacuum the bottoms out, and spray in some Rust-Stop)
- There’s still one dash light missing, which I need to chase down
- Grind out any rust on the outer edge/underside of the drip rail, treat it, and paint it
- Continue putting bolts in the rear bed floor
- Put the metal surround back on the shift boot
- Figure out how to wire in a dome light
If I can keep ironing out the problems, my goal is to drive it 12 miles to Brian’s house this weekend for a workday. We’ll see.