Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I started going about once a month after I hurt my back (again!) last July cleaning out my mom's house.

Trouble is I keep hurting myself again like a couple days ago moving stuff around in my office :(


I have a lot of lumbar pain from all my years of logging ;) :lol:

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

It's bogus. Funny money. Very poor counterfeit job with either a front on both sides or the back on both sides and no blue streak on the $100. Could probably be passed as real, but not by me!

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Snow melted the past few days so I put my driveway gravel back in the driveway. Next nice day need to put the turf guard back on the plow

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Rented an insulation blower and blew in 49 bales of cellulose into the attic trusses of the garage/shop addition. Trusses have a nice space for storage. Now if only I could get the concrete contractor to show up and pour the floor!

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Over the weekend we re stacked the wood in the basement gives us a little more room putting it up to the floor joists

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Since I'm retired now and spending a lot more time in the garage I installed a heater today. Had to run a new 220 line which went pretty quick. The instructions said one lag bolt in the middle of the bracket was good if you wanted to swivel the heater. Seemed a little to flimsy to me so I bolted it to the ceiling with three bolts. This is a 5000 watt heater that is suppose to be good for up to 500 sq ft. My garage is 20X25 so the math works out right on the money. It was 36 degree outside so I set it on medium and after an hour it was up to 58 degrees so that's where I set the thermostat. With a light jacket that's all I need.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Technically this is not working on my truck.
Two weeks ago I brought home a new project. It's a 1980 Camaro Rally Sport.
28,000 original miles. Zero rust. Interior is almost perfect. I had to replace the head liner last week. No cracks in the dash. No splits in the seats. It's true time capsule. Bought from the son of the original owner. The dad bought it new in 1980 for $7400 out the door. The son gave me the original window sticker, invoice, sales brochure and I found the build sheet under the rear seat. Van Nuys build.
The body is all original paint with a few nicks and scratches but I am not going to repaint.
The bad it has the 229 V6 three speed on the floor. They were junk in 1980. Solution to the V6 is the 2012 6.2 LS on my engine stand.
It will look like a barn find on the outside and modern underneath.
See pics.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Here at the beach. I got out this morning and installed a new GM mirror in the little red coupe and new gas pedal assembly. It's a much better system than what I had. It's all in the box. It is very smooth with no jerking at all now when I give it the gas.:chevy:

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Technically I am supposed to be off work until January 4 but had to go to a Frito Lay plant today and try to get a new flow meter installed so they could get a line running. Factory sent the wrong transmitter so I didn’t get home until four in the afternoon and still did not get them going. Frustrating as now I gotta work even more on my time off to get the correct transmitter shipped and make another trip to install.
I was planning to finish my power disc brake conversion while I was off and have not touched it yet.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I put the legs on my new sofa. What a disaster. What seemed like an easy job was anything but easy. When I would try to drill holes I'd hit something. I don't know what. But whatever it was it broke two drill bits. This thing was terribly designed and came with screws that were way too big. And of course I was out of shorter ones. So a trip to the hardware store and 4 hours later I finished it.

Now I have do the loveseat. :dohh: Round 2 Here we go again.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/gallery/...Bad_Design.jpg

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Happiness is a warm shop.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Well, I got my Jeep back from the shop finally :)

Dang, that thing is sure small! :lol:

But it's going to leave a lot more room in the garage. The 4runner is now going to have to sit out under a tree.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

That is quite a find,I have never seen a paint scheme like that before,kinda rare,changing from the V-6 to a LS is a great idea, V-6 std reminds me of the 1981 Malibus we made at GM that went to Saudi Arabia.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Great plan! Will you have a build thread somewhere? Thanks

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Better see a build thread in the Alternate Tinkerings section!

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I was a line tech at a Chev dealer ship when this car was new. People thought the V6 would get better gas mileage than the 305 and it was just the opposite. Super restrictive cats, egr, air pump, retarded timing made these engines real dogs. I think GM just cut the front two cylinders off a 305 V8 so they never ran smooth. Front sheet metal is already off getting ready to pull the engine.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Have you started a thread in alternative tinkering? I'm in to watch....nice care by the way. :metal:


Never mind, I found it. Thanks for starting it....

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

That odd-fire V6 was a real POS, and yes, they were a lobotomized 305 V8.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

So, not the same as the Buick V-6 that ended up in a lot of Jeeps ?

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Buick made good V6s. Started out as the 3.2/198 in '62. It was a V6 engine designed to be a V6 engine and was a superior design. It got bumped up to 3.8/231 cu in (3800) and that's the design Kaiser bought in '67. GM bought it back about 10 years later during the energy crunch. By then AMC had bought Kaiser. The 3800 was actually derived from the aluminum 3.5/215 V8.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Weren't the 80's and up Chevy V6s a 60* engine or did those come later?

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

The 2.8 was a 60 degree for sure, I had one in an ‘87 S10 blazer about 15+ years ago. I’d assume the later 3.0, 3.1, 3.4 are as well. That 2.8 4x4 S10 blazer was quite possibly the most gutless thing gm has ever built. 0-60 in 45 minutes. The 4.3 was the best thing that GM ever did for the S10.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Agreed.

We got a fleet of new S10's at work years ago. Only one of them was a 4x4 with a 4.3 and a/c.

I was the supervisor and I assigned the trucks. Take a wild guess on which one I assigned to myself. :)

Rank does have its privileges.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

-
I'm repairing a 2004 Chevy pickup instrument cluster this morning. Some of the backlights work but that is all.

LockDoc

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Those mechanics sure look a lot like electronics. Who says there's no future for TV repairmen? :lol:

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Holy Smokes! That right there is why I bought the extended warrantee!

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Looks good leon, I’ve done a few of the 2003+ clusters and there bad solder joints and gauge motors. Not too bad if you have a good solder gun.

Yesterday we replaced an old circa 1955ish 145 Waukesha on a produced water injection well at work. It committed suicide by dropped valve earlier in the week. The last of a dying breed we’ve got. There’s enough guys around here with interest in old equipment and engines I thought some may find it interesting. We replaced it with a CAT turbo 3306 natural gas.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Was that old govt surplus?.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Stuff just doesn't last anymore. A mere 65 years and it quits :lol:

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I fixed a newer 42" LED TV a couple of months ago. A gal gave it to me because it wasn't working. I replaced one of the LED strips and gave it back to her. She was using a 24" inch one from her bedroom as the living room TV. You couldn't hardly see that thing from her recliner. She was a happy camper....

Not too bad to work on once you have done a couple of them. The stepper motors had already been replaced on this one but there were a lot of cold solder joints on the resistors.

I have a soldering iron that I modified just for working on them. It now has a really fine tip on it. You need a solder sucker too, for removing the stepper motors..

I was able to get this one repaired by re-soldering all of the resistors (29 of them) and replacing a few bulbs.

LockDoc

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Soldering intricate electronics is fun. :D I've modified three DRACs like the one on the left. I need to do the VSSB on the right. I grabbed four more from the junkyard in case I screw up. :D

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I doubt it, on federal land we are required by BLM (bureau of land management) to paint our units in similar colors to their surroundings. That one had likely come from an area heavy in juniper trees, thus the OD green paint. When it got reassigned to the location we just pulled it from it was in a building so no need to repaint.

Yea no kidding, should have run another 30 years easy:lol:. I’m sure it’s been overhauled several times. I would rebuild it but we can’t get cams or cranks new for them anymore. We’ve had a couple reconditioned cranks fail in the past so we just gave up on them. There a much more efficient packages we can put it out now that still have good OEM service parts.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

In 1985 I special ordered my wife a new S10 Blazer with the 2.8. It was loaded, including oversize tires.

I never test drove one, I just ordered it because I liked the way they looked. Big mistake. I grew to hate that thing. That thing was so gutless, even the old adage "drive it like you stole it" didn't work.

We have had several 4.3's in company trucks, and they perform well. We have never had a failure from one.

We've not had an engine run 65 years yet.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I took down Christmas lights.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I had an '86 S10 Blazer 4x4 with the carbureted 2.8. Lifted it 11" with 35s. It was super slow. Swapped in a 3.1 fuel injected from a Firebird, much better. I have an S10 pickup now with the 4.3. It's fun, like a go cart.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

over 90% of the vehicles i've owned were GM, but the 2.8 made me hate and dis-like s-10's pretty much forever.
my wife also had a '85 blaze wit the 2.8 and bigger tires- what a headache mobile. hot running, manifold cracking, leaking feedback carb piece of sucktastic-ness.
after 6 mos of fighting with it, our last trip with it...
Attachment 2071660

and the very next day washed up and sitting on our lawn with a for sale sign on it.....
Attachment 2071661

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

wife has been bugging me for 6 mos about how her dresser drawer handle keeps popping off.
so i decided to bend it open a bit to stop it from pulling off.....didn't go to well...
Attachment 2071662

didn't have any spare dresser handles kicking around, but i did have an extra 6" lawn spike....
Attachment 2071663

will do until i can get some new handles. wife is happy it works, but complains it don't match...told her i could always break the other handles...
Attachment 2071664

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

Looks good to me. Nice job.

My friend had a later Sonoma 4cyl/5spd 2wd he lent me for a week or so. He did some little things to spark it up and I loved driving it. I took it on a 400 mile drive one day, up and over mountains and all around. I fell in love with it. It was like driving a sports car to me. Switchbacks were awesome!

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I took the weekend to clean up my shop a bit, over the past few months it has "collected" a bunch of my father in law's stuff so it needed sorting and placement.

Also got another pile of scrap metal together for my local scrapper to pick up this week. Yeah, more stuff out of my way.

Last, sorted and organized my ammo dump. At today's prices and availability I might have more in that than my 401K.

Re: What did you do today not on your truck...
 

I took my kids and delivered some extra fire wood to some people who are in need on Friday, was a good lesson for my little ones to learn on helping others. They weren’t to enthused at first but a trip to the gas station for some snacks persuaded them rather well:lol: