Aren't previous owners great?

[Lightspeed]

The headlight brackets on our trucks are supposed to have two screws and a spring to hold them in. Mine had one screw a piece of wire and a good chunk of some kind of tar. This is hillbilly engineering at its best. After dealing with that i hit myself in the mouth with the headlight because the plug tends to stick after half a decade of neglect. My mouth is currently swollen and the headlight is still with us(even after throwing it and letting out cuss words that would make a sailor blush)

[skokie]

I know your pain. I am not sure what the po on my truck was trying to achieve but let me put it this way. It looks like a chipmunk on crack went after my wiring under the dash. There is at least 1 roll of black tape on there from me.

[Bill72BB]

Did your truck come from Kalifornia ?

[skokie]

Originally Posted by Bill72BB

Did your truck come from Kalifornia ?

Built in the fremont plant.

[67ChevyC10Stepside]

my underdash wiring was a rats nest too......i yanked all that shiste out and started from scratch.

[skokie]

Originally Posted by 67ChevyC10Stepside

my underdash wiring was a rats nest too......i yanked all that shiste out and started from scratch.

Yep I need to do that to.

[68 Stepside]

Hell, the only part of my wiring that was any good is the rear light harness, which is still in the truck. When I went to pull my bulkhead connector from the back of the dash, a few wires broke, that had been hot and gotten brittle. There were wires going all over that served no function at all....such a mess. I replaced it with a harness from a former board member, and lo and behold, most of my dash functions are there again.

My underhood harness on the otherhand....that's still a mess. Wire nuts and splices all over..... Not to mention the 1/4" of bondo that went over the top of a lot of my rust free body panels.

Some people just have no sense....

[Longhorn Man]

We won't even talk about the Dope Smokin Old Man who owned my SWB GMC before me...we won't talk about the way hw wired things up...like the toggle dangling from the dash for the headlights, or the screw drivewr on the dash to start it with (crawl under and arc it) or the wires removed from the aftermarket amp guage that were twisted together, left bare and tucked neatly UNDER THE CARPET!!! I won't mention the little tiny guage speaker wire powering the coil. (you know, the clear wire on the back of your boom box from 1985 with the detachable speakers). Or how about when swapping a TH400 to a TH350....instead of moving the cross member, he just took a plate of steel and made an extention from the X-member to the tranny mount. How about the screws that were holding up the headliner...THROUGH THE ROOF OF THE CAB! I would bleed every time I washed and waxed that SOB. How about being too drunk to remember how to put the drum brake self adjuster parts back in...so he just leaves them out...on all 4 drums! I could keep on going....but we won't talk about it.


Some ppl shouldn't be able to buy tools.

[hotrodtroy]

The P.O on mine used a different rod from the frame to the rearend. I guess it was too long cause it's been cut, laid side by side and rewelded. Damn hill billys.

[Longhorn Man]

Originally Posted by hotrodtroy

The P.O on mine used a different rod from the frame to the rearend. I guess it was too long cause it's been cut, laid side by side and rewelded. Damn hill billys.

Yeah, mine was broke in 1/2.
How the hell do you do that???

[1969 GMC]

Back in the day, when these trucks were used on farms and such, I think the farmers thought very highly of themselves as shadetree electricians

my wiring is bad like previously mentioned, but when I tried to figure out a lot of the stuff under the dash, it looks like the p/o just bought a giant spool of el cheapo 18 ga wire (red insulation) and did all the fixin with that. Then, he also cut off about 4' long sections of wire, folded them up, and masking taped them to the wires running off the dash (one of these is marked "extra"). So trying to route the wires is like trying to solve one of those jigsaw puzzles that is one solid color There was also about 12' of the wire wrapped around the bottom of the transfer case shifter. I guess they couldn't have enough of the stuff?
oh, and to date I have found about 4 toggle switches on the bottom lip if the dash and under the dash, all of which are wired with that dam red wire, but none of which do anything at all.

p/o also took the stock radio and speaker out of the truck and apparently tossed the radio for a hi quality AM/FM/8 track player that was so large, it prevented the stock speaker from going back under the dash. Oh, and it also wasn't the same size as the stock radio hole, so it flopped around like a bluegill on a dock. Then he put the speaker in the passenger side cab corner, about where the bottom of the rear window is (where the cab is only 1 layer of steel thick). to mount it, he used 3 drywall screws punched thru the back wall of the cab and the wire was tucked under the floormat.

Oh, and then there was the piece of 8x8 scrap lumber and the table leg with about 4 rusty nails protruding from it that he "hid" under the hood.

also i think a grease gun was never used ever on any of the undercarriage.
and i could go on and on...but i will stop now...

[67ChevyC10Stepside]

my 67 had a rats nest under it and a toggle for the reverse lights and a cheap ass push button switch hanging in the air to start it with but i junked that cab...then i got my 72 cab.....it has leads from the fuse panel going to nowhere at all like 359720965792034750 wires powering one old POS radio that didnt even work......an old like 40 watt amp with 593750932750 more wires powering the old POS sterio even more and then a load of miscelaneous spliced together wires....apparently there is never too much wiring length....every wire on the front end has like 4 feet attached to the ends which makes them like 4 foot too long to go where they are supposed to. well up until tonight when i ripped all that sh!t out LOL...my dad has a truck with computer controlled tranny.....so the dumbass that owned it ripped the computer off.....and you wanna know the best part......put toggles on the dash to control the shifting LOL. you hop in it and turn on the toggles for the gears you want it to go in...BOOYA!

[Budweis]

mine had 6 toggle switches under dash with wires that went in harness that have no idea what they do and where they go. i flipped them one at a time and none seemed to do anything. i got the harness out getting ready to redo it all.

[Blue Beard]

Had one truck that had the fuel gauge connected to the brake light wire.....always had a full tank, but kept running out...go figure

[toddtheodd]

My 1970 chevelle;
Hammered a hole into the left side of the column to be able to use a screwdriver to start it.
"Cut" off the lines for the a/c.
No wires to any of the temp sensors or pressure sensors are even there.
3 inline fuel filters to "try" to catch all of the rust coming from the gas tank.
When he replaced the camshaft, instead of removing the air conditioner condensor, he just hammered a whole right through the middle. Also replaced the radiator with a 2 core one (I swear the thing is only 1 inch thick).
Rearend was held up with air shocks to prevent tires from rubbing.
Master cylinder had a pen cap (a bic pen cap!) stuck in the weep hole. (So that is how you fix that!?!?! I must try that next time my water pump starts leaking out of the weep hole!!!!!)
There were soda can tabs and pennies in the fuse box.
Doors would not open from the inside.

Older Blazer I used to have;
No back brakes. At all. They had changed out the rear axle and never got around to putting calipers or anything on. The brake lines had the hoses clamped over screws.
No turn signals.
When you hit the brakes the park lights would come on.
Automatic transmission was shifted with a bar through a hole in the floor bailing wired to the transmission.

Todd

[Robert1970C20rstbukt]

I'm lucky, the only thing rigged up is a pushbutton for the starter. The ignition switch won't crank the engine so my Granddad wired that up. It's got a hot wire coming from the coil, to the switch, then down to the starter. All you do is turn the key to on and push that button. I'm gonna replace the ig. switch so it won't be there for long. Other than that all the factory wiring in the cab has never been modified.

[PanelDeland]

Makes you wish the PO had kept the truck.At least until he burned himself up or crashed and killed himeself,thus lowering the shallow end of the gene pool and giving the rest of us more beach.
I got lucky.I am the third owner of my truck and the original owner only had it serviced by the dealership.The PO only knew how to wire stereos but was a bit tool challenged so he just mounted a bracket to the original seat bolt to mount the stereo thus saving the dash in it's stock configuration.I truly beleive he just did not know how to remove the radio delete plate.

[vtblazer]

So glad to hear all that (not really) but I keep saying the biggest hurdle's are the previuos owners. Now I know I wasn't full of it. :p (ok, on that subject anyway)
I just try to remember that they are 'trucks' and were used (and abused) as trucks.

My best one was the spray in insulating/expanding foam thay had used to keep the body panels together! Just bondo'd right over it and painted!

[pritch]

My P/O wasn't satisfied with one speaker hole in each door, I guess he wanted that big sound that can only come from two speakers in each door.
I will admit that back in the day, my car key was the only key I owned and I was always losing it. So one day I stuck it in the ignition and broke it off and presto-I was key free. I just had to have a screwdriver to start my car. I miss those days.

[botboy]

The PO of my truck was a real genius, I bought the truck out of an impound lot local to me but purchased over ebay...found some recently used drug paraphenalia in the glovebox when I cleaned it up and went over it after purchase....

[XXL]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Mine had one screw a piece of wire and a good chunk of some kind of tar.

I see that tar stuff I used worked out really well

[Orange70chevy]

The guy that had mine painted over the fuse box so you don't know what fuse goes to what. Also when I turn on my right blinker my high beam indicator flashes and when the high beams are on you guessed it the right blinker lights up my gas and temp guage never worked.

[Truckhead]

What's with the crappy wiring jobs in trucks from California? I bought my 70' from Ca and while the body is 98% rust free, everything else was worn out or missing and the wiring was a disaster.

[OhioDan]

The PO of my truck must have owned stock in 3-M weatherstrip adheasive. He'd patched a pinhole leak in the radiator with it. Glued on the passenger side window crank
handle. Glued the carpet to the floor. (Pulled most of the rust out with that one when I removed the old carpet.) Pulled the engine apart to check out the knocking, and found the head gaskets glued on with(you guessed it) more adheasive. Plugged all the smaller cooling holes in the 400 block someone had put in.(hmm, wonder why it ran hot and spun a bearing?) Painted the inside of the bed with some kind of non-skid paint. Thick enough to cover and fill all the holes. Won't even tell about the wiring nightmare. I could keep going, but if it could be screwed up, it was. But one good thing about it, "I HAD ME A TRUCK".

[jay6891]

Orange70chevy, check your grounds to the instrument panel, sound like you have a bad one.