Road TRIP! Headed west after a 69 GMC

[Chrome8]

We recovered from the trip and last night we both stayed late after work, I changed oil and filter on 4 eyes and Chad tried to find the power steering leak on his wife's car. We got the old girl up in the air and did some inspecting. Solid metal everywhere you look! I'm more pleased all the time. The PO had shoved the tailpipe back on the muffler and had it under the axle because of a broken hanger. We loosened up some clamps and twisted things around and ended up ditching the tailpipe. At least it's drivable this way.

The truck didn't run nearly as well as it did when we test drove it in Wyoming so today I adjusted the mixture on the carb with the guidance of our old timer service writer Arlan. He's semi retired and very experienced with carburetors, I'm a fuel injection guy, I started with a scanner and a diagnostic flow chart. Somehow the SBC developed a dead mis, I suspect a wire but we'll look at it tomorrow.

We were chatting while working on the truck and I remembered that I had seen some company stake pocket bed boards up in the rafters of our warehouse last fall, the last time I was out there. Our parts manager has been with us 30 years and is a terrible pack rat. He saves stuff that shouldn't be saved. Well this time I was damn happy about it! I climbed like a monkey over stacks of aluminum wheels and shelving to up to the boards. Cool find, they were made shortly after Dad bought the place in 76. I know this because the next year he hired our Service Manager and he remembered them very vividly from his first year working for us. We had to install them!

My next project is to get the finish looking better. Does anyone have experience with faded single stage paint like this? I would really like to make it shine. My old time body man told me today that he thought the color was all gone from this paint so we rubbed a small section of the hood out with compound and it came back a little but not like I was hoping. Any help with paint restoration will be appreciated.