Grizz's Redneck Express 1966 Chevy Short Fleetside RESTO-GO!

[Braunschweiger]

You deserve the Beer, it looks great, nice look, I have to do that with the C10 too.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

You deserve the Beer, it looks great, nice look, I have to do that with the C10 too.

Thank you Harald.

I am really pleased with the result.

Puts money in my pocket.

I love free cash.









Bit of a story on this one.

Bonnie the rescue dog loves water.

On Sunday it was really hot and Sally put out a washing up bowl filled with water for her. Twice.
Played it dry both times.

https://youtu.be/hLiilwSEKd8

So I said a Little Tikes kids sandpit/splash pool would be ideal.

Tonight after work I stopped in the village to get bread and then headed home.

Saw a skip. Full. And on top was the lid.

U-Turn and knock on the door, ask if I can have it, body was there too.

Loaded.



Unpack

Mucky



Price Check

Thank You



Pressure Cleaner

Plus Rag and Amonia cleaner.

Result



Off to Sally

Greeted with a WTF ? (Where That Found)

Water + Dog added.



Toys brought into pool by Bonnie.



I think you can call that a result.

Half an hour and she has not got out of it. Still playing.

[Braunschweiger]

A good deed and a very happy Dog.

[Palf70Step]

Very Nice. I feel like joining Bonnie

[realvc]

What a great result for Bonnie. That is one fine dog.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

A good deed and a very happy Dog.

Animals always come first in my world.

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

Very Nice. I feel like joining Bonnie

Thanks.

She would love it]

Originally Posted by realvc

What a great result for Bonnie. That is one fine dog.

Yes, great result.

And a cute, but headstrong dog.

[Grizz1963]

Bought some relays for the headlights.

Seems I bought the wrong ones.

Need the other type.

Bugggerr.



Nick suggested….. They need to be double 'make or break' and not 'changeover' like a lot of 5 post relays,

But I still managed to get it wrong.

Seems the MX5 has some or other positive earth or whatever, I don’t understand.

So the LED headlights need some cleverness.


Grrrrrrr.

[Grizz1963]

Taken the day off tomorrow to spend some time on myself.

Yesterday a major cluster**** of a redundancy was announced, it will be swift and brutal it seems, wrapped up by end July, and nobody knows yet.

It will be a surprise it seems.

Nobody knows.

So I raised the car once again on axle stands.

And strung an old bedsheet in place as a dummy sun screen roof.





Spoke to a sailmaker today who is also prepared to look at the S10 bed cover.

Maybe get two birds with one stone.

Tomorrow, depending on how it unfolds, I want to go through all fasteners and ensure they are tight and right.

[Grizz1963]

I think there is a lot more progress here, even if not visible.

Problem now for Craig is that there is only he and his wife to try get the roof panels up.



Maybe I should try figure a way to go up next weekend, amd step away from the Rezin Rockit again.

Will give it a think.

[Grizz1963]

Walking past a skip, my eyes are drawn in there.

Walking the dog yesterday, the farm house had a new skip outside…….

Unused, like new….. phone holder, that will work for the Rezin Rockit and my mobile phone when I need a Satnav.



Free really is good.

[Grizz1963]

Carrying on with small jobs that are within my abilities had me check and mark off all underbody fasteners yesterday, my usual Red marking nail varnish seems to have disappeared, so,I opted for white, which does look rather rubbish on the black paint everywhere.

Still, another important job ticked off the list.



My good friend Kevin popped around for a progress check,,chat and coffee in the afternoon, so I used him to give opinion and comments too.

Also finalised the gearshift extension position and lock nut @nickwheeler had made and bolted the covering plate down for hopefully the last time.



Last late afternoon job was to final fix the modified fresh air intake inside the wheel arch, up high, facing back and out of harms way.



Shop shut early and then a drive and walk to go see how much hedgerow plums I could find for a batch of planned plum jam

Yield is down this year, the fruit is a lot smaller and certainly a lot less than previously.

So I may have to go search further afield.

[Grizz1963]

Filed under Random rambling.

The extreme heat is driving the farmers to harvest fast.

And the new guy, despite being it seems quite unfriendly, is driving his whole business with an extreme financial eye.

Long days and working to late, after dark that is around 10.00pm

He has also changed his tractors from John Deere to Fendt this year.,





Took Bonnie for a walk in the cut fields.

She absolutely loved it.

Must have been so much overload for her olfactory senses.



Back home, George, the cat I don’t have, has now trained me to feed him,wet,food,twice a,day.

It is cheaper than chicken or ham.

He is a pleasant chap to have around.





.

[Grizz1963]

Dry summer.

Hot days, relative to monsoon weather, has made the yield of wild fruit less than usual as @kevins and I both realised.

So this year my fruit collection was in three different places.

Near the vets was good for about 1.5kg and one of Sally, Bonnie and my walks has a few trees, of which only three had any accessible, usable fruit, it gave about 2.5kg as well, so I had 4kg by Saturday afternoon, stashed in the fridge.

Perfect dog walking paths.

Finding the fruiting trees becomes a game too.





Sunday I went looking about 7 miles from home on the isle of grain down the road my electrician lodger goes to,work, I recalled there was fruit when he came here last year……



Booooom as @pauly says.

Jackpot.



Of course I had to share with this girl, I thought she was a boy……..



Friendly.

https://youtu.be/qZoM5jUZAsE

About 6 varieties of plums all told in my collection that made up 12kg raw with stones.



Back home I cleaned them all, and weighed up the lot.

8kg from the trees in the lane, of course minus what the horses had.

So a total of 12kg in fruit.

I went to the village and bought 10kg of sugar as I use less than the traditional 1 to 1 mix of fruit, sugar and a cup of water per kilogram.

Split the lot into 2 and 4 kilo and cooked them in two pots, with the stones in.





MISTAKE.

But I got the stones out when halfway through.

Will do the second 6kg tonight after work.

And will remove all the stones before cooking, another spectacularly shiite job, but has to be done.

By 8.00pm I had bottled and cleaned up the kitchen.

RESULT.






Part two tonight then.

[Braunschweiger]

Good yield, my wife is also making jam.

[Grizz1963]

On the MX5 loom, just found these two items.

Anyone know what these two items actually do?

Wired into the loom on the drivers side.



And no, they are not labelled.

Thank you.





They're the fuel tank and carbon cannister solenoids.
Your new fuel tank doesn't have the necessary plumbing for them.

They're connected because I don't know if the ECU notices if they're not there, and so we don't keep looking at random unused electrical connectors. They are removed from the bulky components they are associated with.

Nick

[Grizz1963]

10.00am is redundancy Teams meeting.

I prefer to be employed of course, but was reminded of the story below.



Change is constant, and how we deal with it is often what makes the difference.



A small story most of you may have heard before, you can change the situation, persons and storyline to suit.


There were two boys, twins if you want, they were both put into separate rooms for a week, fed and looked after in isolation.

In the corner of the rooms were a pile of lemons.

After a week, they opened the rooms and found the boys in very differing states of emotion.

Boy one was crying, depressed and unhappy because the lemons were terrible and he was bored.

Boy two was happy, flourishing and asked for more lemons.

In the corner of the room was a pile of crates, filled with bottles of lemonade.


Make of it what you want.


Life is good.

[Grizz1963]

Hottest day of the year.



Spare wheel repainted same as the others.



At least something got done.

[Grizz1963]

Spare refitted and I must say, I like the look of the new paint.

Looks like I cared with the finishing.

[Grizz1963]

So on Tuesday a lot of nothing happened in the extreme heat.

John the lodger had gone from 8 hours of driving instruction time to one hour during Monday afternoon, so,he rescheduled the one hour that was left in his diary to,Friday and took the day off.

I worked from home as hospitals were on high alert and on Monday I was in one and realised the heat was not a good thing at all.

Being well ahead of my targets and quotas meant mainly administrative tasks that could be done sitting under a tree, drinking Pina Colada’s (by the bucket)

Heat under the carport hovered around 39’C

The dark green roof may have something to do with it of course.



So John and I went and started on the side lights, under the carport by 09.00 ( I had been up before 06.00 and run through a load of admin before 8.30 )

It took us nearly 4 hours to find a fault in the drivers side, including disassembly and checking of the rear lights that @nickwheeler had previously sorted.



Mate Martin called around 12.30 to see how I was enjoying the heat as his company had shut for the day, speaking with John, they narrowed it down to a duff earth as the side light was acting as indicator and various tests showed passenger side was fine.



One shortcut earth and it was all good.

So wiring was soldered in place and I bonded both the side lights into the fenders for the final/first time.



Once these were done, it was time for a cold celebratory beer for John, water had been flowing all day.

Using 4 different sets of instructions and Google, replacing one blown 15 amp fuse (possibly just a wire touching and shorting at some point) we proceeded to decipher and get the relays I had bought previously to work.

At some point the one side tested like this……..

https://youtu.be/UnYritotCCA

A few hours of work found both headlights, the halo’s and side lights all working.

A lot of forward and reverse went on through the day, neither of us are electricians, and Martin’s advice helped John understand the intricacies more clearly.



While he was on the lights, I did various little jobs of tidying up and getting things together.

One was to drag the bits for the pretend”Race car doors” out of hibernation……..

Laying it all out and trying to recall what the original plans were for their assembly.

In the end after some mocking up around 18.30 and swearing a bit, I put them aside.



In stead, I started to wrap all the exposed wiring and looms, right down to 2 wire,sections, in self amalgamating tape.

Doing it all in black and removing and untangling parts then anchoring them in the engine bay has transformed the space as well.

I am really really pleased with the result as it came out better than expected.

I guess making the extra effort does pay off.



In the mean time, John whom I had dismissed after a long day, as it was now 8.00pm and he had been down there all day, except for going to pee once, insisted on figuring out how we could have the ring halo lights run separately on an ignition live.

We still need to find one in the power distribution box or somewhere, it is out there.

But then they will act as DRL’s which looks pretty cool.

Lastly……….


For everyone’s pleasure.

Angle of the camera makes it look like they are not both working, trust me….. ZOOMERS, they all work fine and are actually the same.

VIDEO OF FULL LIGHT TEST.

https://youtu.be/gSJhOtB89L4


Next jobs include the rear fog light, which iirc is an LED and may also require a relay if wired into the loom, alternately just a live off a switch in the cab for testing time.

Hooter needs to be fitted and made to work, I was looking for something interesting and obnoxious to fit but have pretty much failed to find anything, same as an MX5 service manual to have on standby.

Then the elephant in the room…….

Fuel pump wire to be reinstated in the loom and maybe………. Crank over and start.


Thanks for checking in.

[Grizz1963]

[quote author="@westbay" source="/post/2741305/thread" timestamp="1658394188"]What no CROWN dust cap ?

not my capitals ...[/quote]






Still need to figure centre caps.


Supersized CROWNs would be great.

[Grizz1963]

As I stopped at home on Wednesday evening from work, @nickwheeler pulled up and parked as well.

Hot and sticky outside……

Indoors, cold drink, chat, catch up.

Nick had come bearing gifts that had been burning a hole in his pocket for a while, but with,certain situations out of his control, it was the first chance to get over.

Remember the clutch actuator he took away a few weeks ago?



Replacement made with offset lever, and paint….😉

Also some custom nuts for the brake light switch and a spacer for the handbrake on the rear axle.

Christmasses all in one…..



Looking forward to fitting these parts of the puzzle.

Thanks a lot Nick.

[Palf70Step]

He did good on that!

[Braunschweiger]

Best man and skillful hands

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

He did good on that!

I am massively thankful he did those parts.

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

Best man and skillful hands

Yes, clever enough.

Pity he has very low stress tolerance and has walked away from the build for now…..

If he comes back, that will be fine.

In the mean time I am back to building on my own.

That is fine too.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

Best man and skillful hands

Morning mate.

Speaking of hands……

Many hands make light(er) work.

And some clever leverage.





No car building this weekend…….

Took Friday off and was over 200 miles from home by 09.00

More later of the processes in pictures and words.

https://youtu.be/NCkz3-KbnKE


And of course it is England……


https://youtu.be/cb_5Q26Vbug