Working Man's Burbon

[CG]

Geeze I dunno why it just hit me ... I had to drive down to Portland several days in a row this week. I should have contacted you to check out your Burb!!!

[HO455]

Originally Posted by CG

Geeze I dunno why it just hit me ... I had to drive down to Portland several days in a row this week. I should have contacted you to check out your Burb!!!

That would of been cool. Except this week would have not been the best. Not only am I doing this, but my better half had her hip replaced last week and I'm also doing all the cooking, cleaning, toting, and fetching too. This paper hanger needs an extra arm.

[richard2717]

Coming right along.............

Screws came in yesterday, thanks a bunch. They look great.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by richard2717

Coming right along.............

Screws came in yesterday, thanks a bunch. They look great.

You are welcome. I hit them with some cold galvanizing paint to keep them from rusting.

[Ol Blue K20]

Nice job, it's a much better part. No more gas on the paint.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20

Nice job, it's a much better part. No more gas on the paint.

Thank you. I'm hoping it will cut down on the fumes too. I haven't had a full tank of gas in forever. Right turns at speed would leak fuel at anything above 5/8 of a tank.

[richard2717]

I guess I have been asleep at the wheel on your floor postings. Had I realized your wood was in that bad a shape I could have made you a paper pattern of the entire floor and sent it to ya.

To answer your wood groove question the groove in the main floor section is just about an inch longer than the tongue in the edge board. Here are a few pics, let me know if you need any more or measurements on anything. I have two complete floors sitting here that are pretty complete.

As far as the metal strips they hold the original side panels from going to far in. they should be all the way around the floor perimeter anywhere the panels make contact. I have a whole bunch of extras if needed either for purchase or just for measurements. Probably less costly just to bend some up vs shipping cross country.

Richard

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[HO455]

Once again thank you Richard.

[HO455]

I did a couple of final prep items before the floor gets reinstalled. Rebent one of the fuel line lines from the tank. Inspection of the body mounts showed the lower side has deformed (photo #1). I will back up the mount with these perfectly sized little plates I had sitting around and that should fix the deformation. I also took sometime to pressurize the air system and look for leaks. I did find what appeared to be a defective push on fitting fortunately I had a spare used one and it solved the problem.
I drilled as many holes as I could off of the old wood. 26 out of 56 total. Then I clamped the underside supports down and lined them up with holes that I had located from the old wood and drilled them. Now I have 34 holes done!
In order to get the holes as accurate as possible I made some bushings that fit the holes in the old wood that kept the drill bit centered in the hole. For the body mount bolt washer I inserted the bolt with the washer on it and traced the washer. (Photo #2). I had drilled the same size hole in a piece of scrap wood to make a jig then clamped it over the traced washer. (Photo #3 I marked the depth of cut with a Sharpie on the outside of the hole saw. In addition I left the plug I had previously drilled in the scrap piece inside of the hole saw as a safety to make sure I didn't accidentally drill too deep. (Photo #4)
Photo #5 shows the finished washer hole with the offset for the body mount bolt.

[HO455]

Late last night my buddy Karl came by and this (Photo #1 ) became this (Photo #2)!
I spent this morning wrestling the 2 back underside supports into position. This became quite the battle until it dawned on me that I had replaced the body bushings and had tightened them down on 50 year old rotting wood. Once I had loosened the 6 mounts for the rear of the cab and jacked it up 1/4" everything easily slid into place.
I forgot to get photos of the router work to get the "Key" piece to fit up properly. I used a tongue and groove bit set to try and match the factory work. Thanks to Richard2717 for confirming how the factory did it as I didn't have much to go by. (Photo #3). It took me a little while to figure out what was supposed to be bolted to the indented rectangle on the bottom edge, but finally I realized that was the end of the front underside support. ( Which actually is the second row seat and seat belt plate and not a support piece.) No wonder I had to loosen the body bolts with that much crush in the wood.
The last photos are the "Key" piece.

[HO455]

I drilled out one of the old bolts to make a bushing to drill the rest of the perimeter holes. The idea is to keep the drill bit from damaging the new paint. In order to finish the holes I will need to get a extra long bit to do the bolts along the fender wells.
The last steps of making the "Key" piece were started. Using more of the corrugated plastic board I made a pattern. (Photos #1 & 2). Then it was a matter of transfering the pattern to piece I had previously started. And the last photo is the finished "Key.

[richard2717]

VC
I finally got those rear panel brackets shipped out today UPS. they should arrive Tuesday

Richard

[HO455]

Thank you sir! PM me with what I owe you. They are predicting rain here for the next 7 days so I won't be setting up the saw horses and making new side panels any time soon.

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by HO455

Thank you sir! PM me with what I owe you. They are predicting rain here for the next 7 days so I won't be setting up the saw horses and making new side panels any time soon.

Nothing needed. Enjoy them if they work out for ya, if not pass them on to someone who can.

Richard

[HO455]

Originally Posted by richard2717

Nothing needed. Enjoy them if they work out for ya, if not pass them on to someone who can.

Richard

Thank you very much. This place is great and you are one of the reasons why.

[HO455]

After some testing and such I decided the panels that the upper latches are bolted to need stiffeners. The 14 guage sheet metal allows fair amount of flex and that can't be good. So I cut some light angle iron pieces and tacked them down in addition to running the latch bolts through them. See photo. Now if the paint will ever dry I will get them installed back in the WMB.
Now that the rains have returned I noticed that the bottom of the door panels were wet. (Photo #2) So out into the rain I went and pulled them off and I discovered two things.
One is that the PO secured the fabric with duct tape and that blocked the drain holes behind the door panels. So I removed most of the old tape in hopes of getting the water to drain.
And two is the water appears to be coming in the half circle cutout under the wing window. (Photo #3) So I covered those holes from the inside with some weather sealing tape. Hopefully this will stop the fabric from getting wet in the future.
The other thing I discovered was that my window regulator screws were loose and falling out. That's one less rattle to annoy me tomorrow.

[HO455]

Got some time to work on the WMB today. I have been driving it without a choke since I put the Qjet on. Which hasn't been too bad, even when we've had some mornings below freezing. As the idle mixture is still rich I've been able roll out to work without much fuss. I ordered an electric choke conversion from Mikes Carburetor parts. I have used this style of choke before with good results.
Picture number one is what you get in the kit. The directions are good and it only took about 30 minutes to install. That being said I had no old choke to remove and the mounting surface and threads were previously cleaned. Also I had previously installed wiring for the electric choke on the old Edelbrock carburetor.
Most of my installation time was getting spent getting the existing wires and hoses situated. The set up consists of a choke stove with 12+ and 12- connections. The 12+ is for power from a switched source. The stove bolts down the same as the factory one would. (Photos 2 & 3). The actuator arm has to be inserted in to the choke linkage before the stove is bolted down. Then the tricky part is getting the push nut installed on the end of the actuator arm.
The 12- terminal is where the temperature sensor hooks up. The sensor has a copper lug that bolts to the intake manifold. The connection to the manifold is a ground so it has to be clean and shiny. After removing one of the intake bolts and filing the intake to get a good electrical connection I coated the surfaces with Coppersieze to keep it working in the long run. Then the sensor is simply bolted down and the wire run to the choke stove. (Photo 4)
The connections on the choke stove are male and female so if you don't change the connector on the sensor lead it would be hard to get it wired incorrectly.
Now the fun starts. In the morning I will have to set the high idle speed as well as how much the choke plate is pulled closed when things are cold. Although currently its only been down about 40 degrees in the mornings lately. I may have to go up on Mt. Hood to get some colder temperatures.
Loosening the screw above the plastic part of the choke allows you to turn the plastic center which in turn opens or closes the choke plate like the original did.

[HO455]

The electric choke I installed some 25k miles ago started to not work correctly. At I first assumed (The A word is usually a bad idea in my world. ) that the bimetalic coil spring had changed its shape some and needed to be adjusted. After several adjustments didn't fix the problem I went looking for some information on the interweb but there was little information on troubleshooting the components and what I little found was confusing.

So I did what any gearhead would do. I took it apart. That didn't reveal any physical defects which led me to suspect it must be something electrical. My trusty multimeter revealed I had 12.8 volts at the power terminal while the tuck was running. The other terminal showed 8.2 volts which only told me the heat sensor didn't have an open circuit so as long as it was still operating within specifications it was good.

The little bit of information from the interweb said
"Testing the ohms on a choke conversion thermostat. Only necessary if you suspect a problem.
Note: hitting the choke in a table will jar the spring inside to the correct position. It will also reset the Ptc and spring. All the superchokes should be round 10 ohms or less. 7-11 ohms When ohms aren’t inside the specs something is wrong inside and a quick smack may fix it. Bad ohms = 100k ohms -100 ohms etc. Must be tested on the big terminal and the brass on the bottom of the choke." So I took that to mean the ohms for the bimetalic coil should be between 11 to 7 ohms. Checking the ohms across the terminals I had 7.4 ohms so that made sense.

Checking the ohms on the temperature sensor wasn't very conclusive. With one meter lead grounded to the intake manifold and the other on the wire I measured 34.5 ohms. Which once again only proved it didn't have a open circuit. The part of the paragraph above that said 100k-100 ohms is bad makes me think that an ohm reading below 100 ohms is acceptable but, that again is an assumption based on the less than concise wording of the troubleshooting paragraph. The sensor attaches to the block with one of the intake manifold bolts which also grounds the sensor electrically. So I loosened and the retightened the bolt to see if the ohms reading changed, but it remained at 34.5 ohms so I needed to look elsewhere for the problem.

During a careful inspection of the bimetalic coil I noticed the power connector terminal was slightly loose on the rivet. I tried to see if there was loss of continuity with the ohmmeter and found that while wiggling the terminal it didn't loose continuity it ohms did fluctuate. To tighten the rivet I clamped a punch vertical in a vice and while holding the coil unit's rivet head (Photo #1) on the punch I used a center punch on the other end of the rivet. (Photo #2) After a couple of taps with a hammer the rivet was tight enough to keep the terminal firmly in place.

After reinstalling the coil unit I did a short test and the choke now seemed to work properly and this morning it worked as expected for the commute in to work. Hopefully that is the cure.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by richard2717

VC
I finally got those rear panel brackets shipped out today UPS. they should arrive Tuesday

Richard

Got the parts today! It looks as if I have a bit of a puzzle ahead of me figuring how all those pieces fit.

Thanks again Richard!

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by HO455

Got the parts today! It looks as if I have a bit of a puzzle ahead of me figuring how all those pieces fit.

Thanks again Richard!

I probably have some pictures and will post them later

[HO455]

Excellent!! Thanks again sir.

[richard2717]

here are the pics as promised.


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[HO455]

Originally Posted by richard2717

here are the pics as promised.


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Thanks Richard. They will make installation much easier.


I got to the bottom of the brake pedal issue. I popped the lid off the master cylinder and the front reservoir was very low. I immediately went to the worst case scenario and spent 45 minutes inspecting the brake lines and calipers. It ended up being the pads which were the last thing I looked at. The pads were worn down to about an 1/8" . I installed a new set of Bosch Quietcast pads and everything was back to normal.

The rotors looked nice and miced out between 126.2 and 126.7. The minimum is 127.5. I noticed the rotors are the original factory one with the groove in the center of the pad area. Which is important since I believe they only came that way on 71 & 72's. I still don't know for sure what 5 lug spindles are installed. But if the rotor's are grooved that would rule out 73 and later spindles. Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

I guess I had better take a look at the rear shoes as it has been about 14k miles since I looked at them and although they showed little wear on last inspection I have no idea what quality of shoes were installed.

[richard2717]

2 more


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[CG]

I love the fold flat back seats you did. I had always wondered when they folded flat with the seat bottoms folded up could you still put 4x8 sheets in there and close it up.

You definitely answered that question =)