I almost forgot to mention the 6×9″ speakers Santa left under the tree for me, which will fill two jagged holes in the inner bulkhead and finally provide some form of in-flight entertainment. The current radio will stay until I make a proper DIN-sized cutout in one of the spare dash panels I’ve got, and then I’ll replace it with the old Kenwood from the Jeep. Thanks, Santa!
Santa brought me, among other things, the Dave Emmanuel book for my Thermo-Quad. With this, a copy of the 1972 Chrysler manual, and a copy of the 1982 Federal Mogul manual, I should be in pretty good shape. I’m going to pick up a second spare carb in January for dis-assembly and tinkering so that I’ve got a complete bench model and one for practice.
Peer Pressure is back in the garage now that the dumpster is out of the driveway, which makes me very happy. Chewbacca’s demise was hastened by being left outdoors in the elements, as well as exposure to road salt, so Big Purple will stay off the road as much as possible during inclement weather until I can get her undercoated and protected.
I chose an absolutely glorious day to drive up into Monkton/White Hall to meet with a nice fellow and buy a spare Thermoquad for Peer Pressure today. Apart from one minor hiccup with lousy battery cabling, the old girl ran like a top, and we ventured out into farm country, blowing up clouds of leaves and passing by cows, horses, and IH farm equipment of all vintages. Erik is a real nice guy with a stable of drool-worthy trucks, and he gave me my pick of two Thermoquads. The one I chose looks like it was recently rebuilt itself, and comes with all the associated hardware I’ll need in case of replacement.
Later in the afternoon, I got a call from Mr. Scout, who was in town and behind the wheel of Chewbacca on her maiden voyage across the Bay Bridge. He stopped in to say hi and we looked her over; the work he did is spotless and the truck is beautiful. We took a short spin up the block and he made me get behind the wheel for the return trip. She feels great; the engine is strong, the brakes are sharp, the wheel is straight, and the truck feels tight, like it just came off the showroom floor. Well done, sir. You’ve made me proud.
I ordered a set of plug wires from RockAuto yesterday afternoon, as well as five dash bulb sockets and lights. Originally I was going to buy a gas tank sender and get the new tank ready for installation, but I suddenly came to my senses and realized that I don’t have an entire weekend to deal with that project. So, I ordered wires to go along with the plugs I’ve already got, and I figure I can get them installed in a couple of hours.
I also worked with the third bench seat a little more, and have it almost to the place where it’s ready to go in—but I have to do some POR-15 work on the mounting plates and bed before it goes in for good. The bed itself needs a good media blasting and sealant coat soon, because there’s some light rust coming up under the purple paint that I’d like to mitigate immediately as well as some flaky areas around the wheel wells.
I’m moving up my plans for a welder to near the top of the list, because I see some metal repairs in my future.
One thing that happened yesterday that I wasn’t expecting was a complete failure of the emergency brake mechanism. I stomped on the pedal as I parked at my destination and it just bounced back up at me. So I’m going to have to spend some time underneath with the cable assembly this coming week to see what’s going on.
I took about a half hour last night to try and install my third spare bench seat, but wound up having similar problems as the first one: The bench is aligned too far to the left, so the catches don’t meet the pins at the base of the wheel wells. With the third seat, I can probably adjust the lateral travel (side to side) and bang the catches outboard with a hammer, which might give me enough room to center the seat and meet the pins. If all else fails, I can go back to the original bench, but my reason for pulling it was its lovely pillow-top vinyl design and busted zippers.
The other thing I found out was that I installed the Tuffy console too far back, so the fold-and-tumble is more like a fold-and-lean. So I’ll have to consider drilling new holes sometime in the future.
The other day, while waiting at a stoplight, I happened to notice the small headphone jack on the faceplate of the RoadGear (Wal-Mart) brand radio in the Scout. Intrigued, I filed this away for future investigation.
This afternoon, I pulled a 4″x6″ speaker from a spare dash and plugged it in to one of the lamp cord speaker wires coiled on the floor and tested the radio out. Success! I was pulling in stations, which means A. the antenna is connected, and B. there’s power to the unit. It even turns off when the key is out, which means it’s connected to the accessory circuit correctly. Next, I plugged my spare iPod into the jack and held my breath. Success! The headphone jack auto-switches to the accessory (something the fancy-shmancy Kenwood in the Jeep can’t do).
Lastly, thinking I was pushing my luck, I tried plugging the iPod charger into the cigarette lighter to see if it still carried power. Success!
I can hardly believe it. Now, to find a cheap pair of 6×9 speakers to cover up the big jagged holes in the rear walls.
Peer Pressure is back on the road and running like a top. After a long three weeks at the mechanic, the carburetor problem was finally solved; the reason for the leakage was a set of tiny O-rings which were actually supposed to be X-rings. Once he’d torn it down for the fifth time and put them in, she buttoned up and ran like an excited puppy at the edge of an empty field. I’ve had her out on several junk runs, a trip to the Home Depot, a trip to Columbia, and into Baltimore City on a day with record-setting heat, and the temp gauge stays obediently on the left side of the indicator. She starts with one twist of the key and idles like a satisfied kitten. Best of all, the obnoxious stink of gasoline and rich exhaust is almost completely gone—there’s less exhaust backwash on this truck than there was on Chewbacca, as a matter of fact.
I finally broke down and bought a new battery for the Scout this weekend after the donor battery from the Jeep decided it couldn’t crank the engine over anymore. While I was dealing with that (crank engine, jump out, twist the terminals down, jump back in, crank engine, repeat, repeat), the driver’s door latch spun itself around 180 degrees so that the latch would just prang off the striker uselessly. So, I tore the driver’s door down again and got inside to see what was happening with the mechanism.
A little backstory: In order to get the latch body out, the window needs to come out, and then the guide track closest to the handle. One bolt on my track was pretty well frozen but a little PBBlaster made short work of the other three. Once I had the track pulled away from the edge, the latch came free, and I compared it with another one I had in my spares (it’s the one on the right). Somehow the cam had gotten completely turned around and jammed itself into place. It had been “repaired” at some point in order to fasten the main pivot arm into place with a flattened bolt and nut, and the clip holding the door release rod was long gone—so they replaced it with a locknut hastily threaded onto the end of the rod. Instead of wasting time trying to fix the original, I shot the spare up with plenty of white lithium and used that instead.
While the driver’s door bolts were soaking, I tore the passenger door down and pulled the original regulator in there out. It looks to be a replacement unit like the ones sold by LightLine dealers (some of the original paint is still evident under the rust). I dropped the new one in, greased it up, buttoned the door back up, and then remembered that I need to tighten the outer door handle. D’oh! Eventually the window will need to come out and be replaced, because there’s some serious rust happening at the bottom of the channel on the inboard side, but that’s why I’ve got spares.
I also finished fabricating a strap stay for the bikini top out of a cut-down decking bracket and bolted that into place, as well as replaced six of the original grade 5 bolts holding the rollbar down with grade 8 hardware. I still have to drill four holes for bolts at the feet of the rollbar, which were never installed (there are only two on each side).
Finally, I’m going to order a ThermoQuad rebuild kit today. Wish me luck!