The heat’s back, and with it the humidity. We’re in one of Baltimore’s common weather patterns where it’s hot and sticky during the day, a quick thunderstorm rolls in sometime in the afternoon, and immediately the heat returns, stickier than before. It’s enough uncertainty that I’m not driving the Scout in fear that I’ll get it soaked—something I’d like to avoid until I get the inside of the tub sanded, POR-15’d and coated with bedliner. Which means notime in the immediate future.
Drawing class went moderately well last night; I got one good drawing out of the evening but I feel like I’m learning more about technique. I definitely need some heavier watercolor paper to stand up to the brushes, but for now a basic sketchbook will work.
June 21, 2011
This Saturday I’m heading up to a friend’s farm to help clear out and sort his collection of IH parts, and connect back up with some Scouting friends I haven’t seen in months. It should be a really good time (here’s to hoping the weather holds out) and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.
Next up, we have the parade to prepare for. Mama has been doing some beautiful work out in the yard cleaning up the flowerbeds and trimming the bushes in the front of the house; I never realized what a difference it made before now. There’s a pile of cuttings that need to be hauled out, and I have to find time on Sunday to rent a chainsaw in order to finish cutting our dead cherry tree down, as well as the two apple trees that will never bear fruit. There are a million other small things to do before the 4th, and I hope I have enough time to get to all of them.
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This weekend, I finally solved the mystery of the rear bench seat. When last I’d attempted to swap out the bench that came with Peer Pressure (a fantastically ugly, ripped pillowed vinyl) I was stymied by two latches that hook around posts mounted on the inner wall of the wheel well. The latches were too high and didn’t catch the posts, making the seat an unsafe proposition for any passengers I might be transporting. (in the event of a sudden stop, the seat would most likely shift forward, squishing passengers between the seat and the seatbelts they were buckled into).
Saturday evening, while moving three benches around the garage, I finally noticed something missing from the original bench, and everything suddenly made sense. IH mounted two feet on the bottom rear of each seat, which propped it up off the floor by about 2″. These feet were missing from the bench the truck came with—they had been knocked off with a hammer. I reasoned that once the feet were gone, the seat sat lower on the floor and the latches were able to swing under the posts correctly. So I busted out the POR-15 and painted up two mounting brackets in preparation for Sunday afternoon.
After I’d knocked the feet off of one of the spare benches (no pillowtop, thank GOD), I sat it in the bed, adjusted the sides, and bolted it into place just as easy as could be. The only thing left to do now is scoot the Tuffy console forward about two inches so that fold becomes fold-and-tumble. And, after unbolting the set of belts it came with, I can get rid of the original bench and reclaim that much more space in the garage.
Sunday afternoon I took a quick trip down to visit Brian H, who has taken a Sawzall to his driver’s floor, and we shot the breeze for a half hour or so. He’s making adjustments to his cab before welding in all new metal—floor mounts, rocker, the whole works. What he’s got done so far looks good, and his welds are really coming along. He’s trying to get her back on the road for next weekend’s trip to Bennett’s farm…I’m pulling for him.
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The Wal-Mart radio that came with Peer Pressure was OK from a sleeper point of view. It worked fine (once I’d added speakers) but it was a lot like a Chevette: You’d never go through the trouble of actually trying to steal it. After using it for several months, I remembered why analog tuning sucked so bad back in the day: stations went in and out of tune with alarming speed and frequency.
Thus began the replacement process. I pulled the old unit out and put it aside. A dremel wheel attached to my corded drill cut most of the hole for a DIN-9 sleeve, and an angle grinder trimmed the hole to fit. Once I’d made an allowance for the radio, I needed to get a constant power source to it in order to supply power for the memory and presets. Fortunately the new positive battery cable I’d added when the starter crapped out had a pigtail right from the terminal, so I soldered a 14 gauge wire to a male lead, fed the wire through the firewall at the heater wire, and soldered a 5-amp inline fuse to the end. Once I got everything connected to the radio, it all went back in with a snap, and I took the extra time to replace a couple of bulbs in the speedo (the ones I could reach, at least) before replacing the dash panel. Voila! Digital tuning, iPod accessibility, a CD player, and a detachable face.
New head unit
It looks like I’m going to need to drop the A/C ducting in order to get anywhere near the underside of the dash, which is a drag, but I won’t miss it since it doesn’t currently work. Plans for another day…
My next short-term goal is to POR-15 the seat mounts and put a rear seat back in; I’d like to use one of the nicer benches I’ve got so that I can get the other two out of the garage, but that’s going to take an afternoon of adjusting that I don’t currently have.
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I haven’t gotten much done with the Scout lately, but I’ve been slowly amassing parts. One thing that has been crawling closer to completion is the radio install, but we’re not quite there yet. The DIN sleeve is in the faceplate but it needs to be trimmed a little more to fit. The head unit itself needs a source of constant power to retain the programmed memory, so I have to find a way to get a 12V wire from the battery to the dashboard. Thankfully there’s a female pigtail off the battery connector that I can tap into, so I’m going to pick up a length of 12 gauge wire and a box of connectors, pull the inline fuse from the old radio, and run it into the dashboard. I also have to rewire the rear speakers with something heavier.
While I had a little time with Finn Sunday afternoon, I replaced a couple more bulbs in the dashboard, but the one I swapped out for the left indicator light isn’t working. It also happens to be the most difficult to get in without disassembling the entire speedo assembly.
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Last week, I got a small package of J-hooks from SSS, which should complete the list of parts I need to drop the gas tank and install the poly replacement. Well, except for some kind of catchbasin for the gas I’ve already got. I’ll probably either siphon it into the Saturn or just go buy a Rubbermaid container.
I also found a post on the Binder Planet which has some more detailed instructions for running constant power to the head unit; unscrewing the fuse box should reveal two bus bars, one with switched power and one with constant. They each will accept female spade connectors, which means all I should need is a length of wire and the proper spade connector.
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Looks like someone boosted my tunes
Last night I finished grinding a dash cover plate down enough to fit a DIN-9 sleeve for my spare Kenwood radio. I stole out into the garage at 10:30 and pulled the Wal-Mart special, marked off the relevant wires, and test-fitted the Kenwood. Unfortunately, there was no juice. I think part of the problem is that the new deck needs constant power and switched power from the key; I’ve got switched power but noplace to draw constant power from the battery. So next I have to figure out how to make that happen.
In other news, I ordered two replacement J-hooks from SSS yesterday in preparation for my gas tank swap. Now that the weather is calming down, I need to set aside a day to make that happen.
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Eraser wheel at work
I took a little time out last night to try out a tool I’ve had sitting on the workbench since March. Given the fact that it’s been raining constantly this week, I pulled the instrument panel cover off the truck and put the eraser wheel to it in order to remove adhesive residue from a factory-installed sticker. When I say eraser wheel, I really mean eraser wheel; it left eraser shavings behind that could have come from a drawing class.
Finished product
It did make short work of the adhesive, though, which then prompted me to try the Dremel tool I’d bought around the same time. The goal is to install a DIN-9 sleeve and a Kenwood head unit I’ve had laying around since we sold the Jeep: it has an iPod input, a CD player, a removable face, and most importantly, digital tuning. The Wal-Mart special works fine but stations fade in and out in the space of a quarter-mile, which means it’s useless without an iPod. I got about 2/3 of it cut before I ran out of cutting wheels (I ground them down to nubs) and I’ll have to widen it out some more, but it’s looking much better than the hack job I inherited.
Opening opened
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6-1 crawl gear makes pulling dead bushes a very simple task.
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Thanks Mr. Clean!
Update: Saturday morning, Evil Mr. Clean and I took a brief jaunt out to Crazy Ray’s in Mt. Airy to see if we could find a radiator for Heavy D. What we found was much better pickings than the Jessup location, which is geared more towards later-model cars. Mt. Airy has late-model stock too, but they have rows of 50′s-era iron and some trucks I never thought I’d see at Jessup. We found a 200-series truck of the same vintage as his and had the radiator and shroud out in ten easy minutes. I pulled the washer bottle for the motor mounted underneath. Behind that was an 800 with a V8 in pretty poor shape, from which I swiped the speedo dial. I wanted to stop and pull two more, from a 50′s Chevy pickup and a flat-fendered Willys Jeep, but we were pressed for time. (I did grab a replacement dome light for the Saturn, which made me happy).
We headed back to the house to swap out my starter with his spare. It took a little doing; the top of the starter doesn’t allow for a thick box-head wrench to get a bite on the bolt. Once we’d wriggled it loose, the whole unit came off pretty quickly and we had the replacement bolted in in minutes. After taking some time to clean the electrical leads with some sandpaper and patch up a bare patch of copper with some tape, we reconnected the whole unit and turned the key. Success!
After lunch and a parking lot comparison of the two trucks, EMC left and I had a little time to spare. I tested out the new wiper bottle I’d scored and then used some spare hoses and fittings from the Wheaton Scout to connect my windshield washer nozzles. Success!
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I’m suffering some new starting woes this week, which have me in the dumps. I swapped out the positive battery cable on Sunday thinking I might be able to fix my intermittent starting issues, but when everything was hooked up and ready, I got no juice to the starter at all. I’ve been getting loads of help from the Binder Planet from guys who have much more experience than me, and I’m slowly making progress on a diagnosis. Tonight I’m going to try jumping the solenoid to see if that might be my issue, and the troubleshooting will continue.
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