Here’s the fifth video in the Project Slowflake series, where I went over to Brian’s for two days to hook up the battery to the power pack with the aftermarket wiring harness, and test it out to see if it would run. When we sorted that out, we cracked the battery pack open and pulled the wiring harness apart from there. With that done, we made a bunch of measurements and started planning out how to organize the batteries in the truck.
Weekend Update
I got the driveshaft back for the Travelall on Thursday. They wound up completely rebuilding what I brought them: they put a new yoke on either side of a larger driveshaft and connected that to the original slip shaft from my truck. The old driveshaft was 2 1/2″ in diameter and this new one is 3″ so there’s some extra beef. I hit it with some self-etching primer and black paint on Friday afternoon and let it cure in the sunlight. Saturday morning, after running some errands, I crawled under the truck and put it back in. This was straightforward, and when it was done I took her for a run around the block. I wound her up as fast as I could close to the house and it looks and feels like the vibration is gone—which is excellent news. I felt so good about it, I took the truck out three times over the weekend to run errands.
Then I put the Scout up on jack stands and started tearing into the hub on the passenger side in order to swap the rotors. All of the videos that I have seen talk about taking the faceplate off, then pulling a snap ring out before removing the outer section of the housing. None of the videos show exactly where that snap ring is, and I don’t see it on my hub anywhere. I pulled the driver’s side off to see if I was missing something, but that looks exactly the same as the passenger side. My spare hub is a completely different design, so I can’t use that as a baseline. So I put the whole thing back together to cogitate on it a little longer.
Doing some organizing in the garage during the weekend, I went looking for some weatherstripping and stumbled on something I forgot I had: a used speedometer cable from the green truck. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to slap myself in the head, because it would only make sense that I would save something like this. Brand new, these cables are $60, so this was a great find. I cleaned the grease off it, filled it with silicon spray and put it in the truck. The needle hops around a bit, but it’s working, and the odometer spins, which is great news, because now I can track gas usage again.
Another quick thing I looked at were the locks on the lockbox under the rear seat in Darth. I’ve had these finger-tight since I put them in, and now that the truck is on the road I need some secure storage. Both sides have needed adjustment since I put them in. The driver’s side needs a new slot to be cut into the side of the box for proper alignment with the key, and the passenger side needs a longer catch made for the lock mechanism. I think I’m going to draw up a design and have SendCutSend cut me two new ones instead of trying to cut and fabricate one here. Along with that, I have two modifications to make to the C-series cupholder I designed—I want to increase the diameter of the cup cutouts by at least 1/2″ to allow for some rubber bumpers around the edge, add a little more height to the gusset at the bottom, and have them cut the two bolt holes for the seat hoop. So I’ll gang those two orders up and maybe save a little on shipping.
Wednesday Musings
Back at work, I’m sitting through some training sessions for new operations software and multitasking while they go through stuff I’ll never need to know, so I’ll list out some updates here while I’m thinking about them.
I dropped the driveshaft for Darth off at a shop in Baltimore on Monday. The quote to fix it is a bit more than I was expecting, but I’m not going to find one of these just laying around a junkyard, so you gotta do what you gotta do. The shop caters to the large trucks in this area and the guy I talked to was sitting in front of an industrial lathe the size of my car, which gave me a good vibe.
The next big thing I want to tackle are the front brakes on Peer Pressure. I can’t find a shop around here who will touch her— I keep hearing, “We don’t work on anything over 20 years old,” which makes me nervous for the 19-year-old CR-V in our driveway, but I digress: I’m gonna have to figure this out myself. There are YouTube videos, of course, in varying degrees of quality, for removal and installation, and I’ll have to study these for a while before attempting this myself. I think the only thing I’d really need is a large 2-1/16″ socket to take the big retainer nuts off, and I found one on Amazon for $14 which will be here Friday.
Something I’ve been curious about ever since I got the new PT Cruiser seats is a little switch on the driver’s side. I’ve never known what this thing could be, so I did a little sleuthing this morning and found that the seat height is adjustable.
Which makes me wonder if it’s locked in a higher position than normal. I’m gonna put 12 volts to the switch and see if it will go down at all.
Beauty Shots
EV Swap, Week One, Day Three
Here’s Day 3 of the EV swap project. This video covers removal of the 196 engine out of Slowflake, where we took the whole thing out as a unit, pulled the transmission off, and hoisted that back up into place on the truck. I did spend another two days with Brian this week on the project, so now I’m only three videos behind.
Darth At Work
Looking at this photo, I have decided two things: first, I need to clean and rattle can spray the driver’s door to match the passenger door. Second, I’m going to paint all of the wheels white.
Running and Driving and Hanging Brakes
Here’s a video update from the past couple of weeks.
This covers the timing, rehanging the two front doors, working on Bennett’s pickup and saying goodbye to Mr. Hanky, and a 40-mile round trip in Darth Haul divided by a stop in his driveway to diagnose and free up the brake system.
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EV Swap, Week One, Day 2
Here’s the second day of the EV swap project. It’s taking a lot of time to go through the footage, but I’m making headway. It doesn’t help that I’ve got another pile of footage of the Travelall from the last week to go through again.
It appears I never posted the first video here, so I’ll fix that right now.
Braked
Well, this weekend was a journey. Mostly a good one; a lot of good stuff got accomplished, and I spent a bunch of time with friends, but it wasn’t without its challenges.
We had a workday scheduled at Brian’s place in the country to work on Heavy D, Bennett’s long-sidelined pickup waiting for welding repairs, a windshield install, and re-assembly of the front clip. The last time I was out there I’d bent and formed a complicated section of metal to weld to the front of the firewall but Brian’s commercial welder was too strong to work the sheet metal without blowing through it. We were also going to help Brian move his pickup around and place the bed on the frame to free up space, and see what other stuff we could get up to.
My plan was to drive Darth Haul out there for her first short-distance trip, so I worked on the engine timing and fuel system on Thursday. I was having issues with the fuel pump pulling debris from the saddle tank up into the pickup and clogging it, so I rigged the boat tank up with a length of hose and put it on the passenger floor. After loading up my tools, welder, and welding bin, I hit the road at about 9 and took my time getting out there. Brian’s place is about 20 miles away, and I took back roads to avoid any high-speed sections. The truck did very well! Shifting is smooth, the engine is strong, and the brakes worked well. I noticed a vibration at 40mph and heard some rubbing in back, which foreshadowed later events.
At Brian’s house, I helped he and Bennett to clean out Mr. Hanky, because our friends Chad and Liz were coming down from Pittsburgh to possibly buy it. Bennett has had it up for sale since Nats in order to free up cash and space for a cleaner Scout, and they’ve been in the market for another project for a while. They arrived at 11 and he showed Chad the truck while we caught up with Liz. By 1PM the deal was done, and we helped them load the trucks up with a pile of extra parts. It was bittersweet to see Hanky drive away, but it’s great to see him going to a good home—it reminds me so much of selling Chewbacca to Carolyn to give to Brian—I know they’re going to do a great job reviving him.
After moving Brian’s pickup and freeing up a bunch of floor space, we had pizza delivered for a late lunch and then set to work on Heavy D. The first big task was to re-install the windshield, and luckily the rubber was designed exactly like what I put in Peer Pressure, so I knew how to align it in the channel. Between the four of us and with judicious use of glass cleaner, we got it in place and then used plastic putty spreaders to guide the edges into the channels, then fold the locking flap over.
With that done, I set my welder up and put the patch in place, ground it down, and got it ready for paint while Brian and Bennett started hanging fenders. Within about an hour we had the truck put mostly back together and ready for a test fire. The carb was mad at being ignored for a year, and didn’t want to run properly, so Bennett will have to go back and diagnose that. By 5PM we wound down and set course for home. I took Bennett back to his place, but noticed the truck working harder as we drove. Stopping for gas I found all four wheels hot to the touch, which told us the brakes were dragging. By the time we got to his house the passenger rear was smoking slightly. We pulled the wheels off and cooled them down with a hose, then banged the drums off with a hammer. The pads were all the way extended, which meant that the system wasn’t releasing pressure. It was getting dark, so he gave me the keys to his CR-V and I drove that home after parking Darth in his driveway.
The next morning I got there at 9 with all of my brake tools and fluids, and we started troubleshooting the system. After tearing apart and rebuilding the rear drums three times, we tested the master cylinder upstream and verified it wasn’t the lines above either axle. So we disconnected and bench bled the master until it looked clear, then connected everything back up to test. It looked like the brakes were grabbing and releasing, and a test drive verified this. While under the truck I also noticed a huge dent in the driveshaft, which explains the vibrations above 40MPH.
I packed up my tools, extended my sincere gratitude for Bennett’s knowledge and time, and set course for home. She ran well and didn’t feel like she was struggling the farther we went. The brakes and clutch felt good, and I got her home with no problems. The wheels were hot when I checked them after parking it, but not scalding as they had been before. It may take another bench bleed to really kick the issue, but for now, I’m happy she’s back in the driveway.
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Pizza and Beer Run
I got Darth Haul running well enough to take her down the street for a pizza and beer run. I’m having a little issue pulling gas from the tank, and after a little roadside troubleshooting I believe there’s something in the tank clogging the pickup. I’m planning on driving her 12 miles out and back to Brian’s place on Saturday, so I’m going to take the boat tank and a length of fuel line with me for backup.
I did get some more of the tasks checked off the master list:
The temperature sender from the green truck did in fact work—I heated it with a heat gun and then hooked up the wire and grounded it, and it tested properly. So I pulled the sender from the Sniper kit out and swapped this one in. Good to have another working gauge!
The passenger door hinge got swapped out, the door adjusted, and now the door closes correctly for the first time since I bought this truck. I had to get a bolt to put in one hole because it was stripped, but it went successfully. While the doors were broken down, I did clean them out, swab them with Rust Converter, and spray on a layer of rattlecan IH Red. And at the same time, with some fresh H-F wire wheels, I cleaned off the drip rails, masked them off, and used that same rattlecan to cover them in red up to and on top of the edge.
Finally, I dragged all of the timing tools out, plugged the proper vacuum hoses, and attempted to dial the timing in again. It seemed like every adjustment I made retarded the timing even more than before: reducing the air/fuel mixture while adjusting the dwell, all the while keeping an eye on the timing and vacuum. It’s running OK now, although the idle is still high, but it’s not dieseling anymore at shutoff, which is nice. I’m hoping I can get the heads at Brian’s to help me work on it a little more.