Time to Take a Rest

When I recently finished with my long list of upgrades I was surprised at how extensive the list was. Well, there never was a list--maybe that was why it took me so long to get started. I just know that when the bed of the truck came off, lots and lots of things were addressed.

Exhaust - Hooker exhaust manifolds, 2 1/2" pipe all the way to the rear of the new 18" long Magnaflow mufflers. H-pipe added to system as well. All welded (lotsa work!).

U-joints - Rear driveline only so far. I let Drivelines Northwest do it for me this time. I didn't feel like doing the "squeeze play" with my bench vice, nor will I pound them in/out with a hammer like I did when I was young.

Fuel tanks - Both were replaced, along with new sending units and switching valve and assorted hose connections. Plastic fuel tank shields were shitcanned. Both tanks were painted with Herculiner bed liner paint. Durable stuff! This was the main scope of the project. This is the reason I took the bed off to begin with.

Motor mounts - They looked original when I removed them. While they were each still in one piece, the rubber was riddled with fatigue and cracks.

Electric window relay upgrade - A lot of laborious wire-routing, but almost no parts cost. There is noticeable improvement, but not all that dramatic. I'm glad I did it though. The windows work a lot smoother and feel more responsive.

Window track felts - Both sides came out in little pieces from age. OEM for sure. The new ones fit nicely. Likely contributed to the windows working smoother.

Fuel line to carb - It was a long, rubber hose, and snaking it up behind the alternator didn't look safe. Now it uses a formed, steel line like it oughta. The line has lots of chances for abrasion because of its routing, so a soft fuel line is not advisable running up from the fuel pump.

Fan clutch - I started hearing a chirping noise. My ears told me what it was, but no--wrong diagnosis. The new fan clutch does look nicer though.

Alternator bearings and brushes. (see previous note about chirping.) How many people even know you can change them? $27 worth of parts is sure cheaper than a whole alternator when you don't need one.

Water pump - Okay, I admit--I can't troubleshoot worth a shit. The chirping or squeaking noise was not fixed by the fan clutch or the alternator. Not much left to pick from. Just as well... I remember seeing an occasional drip under the water pump at times in the past, and I never did like the workmanship the previous owner did on everything, so replacing it was inevitable anyway. It also gave me the chance to play with spacers, washers, and pulley alignment when I reassembled everything. Like I said--the squeal was still there when I finished. Vacuum leak maybe?

Timing tape - I put timing tape on my harmonic balancer only to find that I put it on wrong. I had 2 choices and got it wrong. I pulled it back off in disgust (with myself). Looks like I'll be timing it "by ear" when I need to.

Spark plug wires (and plugs) - The wires that were on the truck were waaaay long and of unknown brand, the plugs were too cold, and it had a running problem. I later diagnosed the running problem to a piece of crap in the carburetor. Apparently, when I went out for a test drive and hammered the gas the secondaries opened and sucked some fuel tank foreign debris that made it past all the new fuel system stuff. Opening the carb and blowing out all the orifices took care of it, and was an easy fix--mainly because the carb is only a year old and no gaskets were permanently stuck yet.

Distributor mods - I swapped out the mechanical advance springs to a different combination, and added a stop/limiter to the vacuum advance to ensure it only gives me 12 degrees max. 

Throttle cable - I kept playing with springs, but the real bottom line was, the cable would hardly move when I removed it. While I kept it for an emergency, a new ATP one was installed in its place. The ATP quality seems better than a Pioneer brand cable I bought for my previous truck. That one had weak plastic in the clip mounts. One broke easily during assembly that time. All good this time. What a difference! The throttle feels soft and precise like it should now.

In addition to all these things, there were lots of little things that I addressed on the old truck, such as bracketry, wiring zip ties, etc. Anything that caught my eye needing a repair, adjustment, or replacement was fair game. That's probably why it took me so many days to get it all done. For example, there must have been a big sale on flat washers because the previous owner/mechanic put them on practically every bolt under the hood. Lock washers? Nope. He only liked flat washers. It was good to replace so many of them with smaller diameter (washers that actually fit the holes and fasteners) flat washers or lock washers.

For the sake of marital harmony I opted to split my time between outdoor home labor (garden, wood chips, lawn mowing, etc) tasks, and working on the truck. I must say, looking back, I got a lot of stuff done. Why? Mainly, it was the sun. Being a nudist I'm solar-powered, so our summer weather has been very conducive to me working--as long as I was bare. It got hot many days, but I was dressed for it and soldiered onward. Some of the tasks were covered (if you'll excuse the pun) in my nudism blog.

Good times.

Epilogue:

You know what the chirping noise was? It hit me one day when I was reading about it online. DUH! There was no air inlet for vacuum the PCV valve was using. It was basically pulling what air it could from around the PCV valve near as I can tell. No wonder it was complaining loudly! After pulling the rubber "OIL" filler plug out of the right side valve cover, I put an Edelbrock filler/breather from O'Reilly's in it. It made such a difference after doing it that I had to tweak my tuning slightly. I felt like apologizing to the poor truck afterwards.

Electric Windows Need Strong Juice

I think my forty year-old truck is at a sort of midlife crisis point. I'm not sure if it's more mileage-related or time-related, but it seems everything rubber is nearing catastrophic failure. Everything I've found so far. Exhaust hangers, motor mounts, hoses, and now door/window soft goods.

I've been working lately on installing an upgrade to the electric windows. It involves adding relays that allow a solid, full battery voltage to be delivered to the window motors directly through heavy wires. The factory setup used good-sized wiring between the window motor and switch, but the 12v delivery wire is only 16-gauge. Woefully undersized. The driver's side of these trucks usually don't work too bad, but the passenger side is almost always slow, dragging--almost painfully slow at times.

I could have done the whole thing from scratch by buying a couple spools of wire, 4 relays, and 2 inline fuses, and then following online schematics, but nah--I bought the kit from LMC Truck. Why reinvent the wheel? Besides, I don't always have residual brain power to toss around on any given day. The wiring isn't much of a problem--the real challenge with this install revolves around fishing wires through hard-to-get-to places. I would recommend anyone that does this upgrade not be keyed up or uncomfortable in any way on whatever day you might decide to do it. It's an exercise in patience. 

I pondered this little project a long time before finally coming up with a battle plan. Likely due to door hinge placement, the factory chose to offset the holes between where the rubber conduit for the door wiring is attached to the door jamb, and the place on the inner kick panel where the wiring comes through. Whatever the reason, it makes the whole upgrade a little challenging.

I chose to drill 5/16" holes for the hot and ground wires to do the pass-through in the kick panel areas, directly in-line with the rubber boot. It was still a bit of a wire-fishing job, but wasn't too bad. I ended up cutting a length of baling mechanic's wire, fashioned a small loop at one end (to aid in getting through the rubber boot), and added a length of shrink tubing over the winding. You don't really want it too long or you won't be able to twist it very well to help it through the boot:

I found it worked best (for me) to start at the kick panel end of the wire run and go backwards through the boot towards the door. When the loop came through into the door well, I bared about 1" off each wire, stuck it through the loop (and wound it tightly), and push/pulled (guided gently) back through the holes. After pulling both the wires back through the new holes I put rubber grommets in. 

When it comes time to run wires from side to side through the dashboard, there's only one way to really do it right, and that is to take the dash cover off. Sure, you can hang wires and tuck them up from the bottom, but I found it much better to take things apart and attach my new wires to the existing run of factory wiring. When you get to this point things can look pretty scary inside:

After running wires across the cab, I needed a place to run them through the firewall. I opted to drill out one of the dimpled holes I found down near the fuse block. They're easily seen from the engine side if you know where to look, but you can't drill from that side. I popped the insulation plug (seen at the bottom) out and drilled from the inside:

I added a wire bundle clamp (or whatever you call them) to the backside of the parking brake unit to run wires through. They needed somewhere to route safely so they didn't get mashed in the brake mechanism. I don't want them near anything that might get them severed accidentally. Here's what things looked like at this point:

After running wires through the firewall I had to decide where I was going to park the relays themselves before I cut the fuse pigtails apart. The kit came with fuse pigtails partially complete, but I didn't care for the way it was done. They had the fuse connector already mounted on the end of the main power wire (yes, the long one), and expect the users to 'click' them together when they run the wires. In other words, they want you to use the power wire as is, without cutting it. That didn't set well with me, so I clipped the end off and installed it onto the fuse pigtail (seen below) so I could cut the 'loop' anywhere I decided I needed it to be cut.

The two included fuses are made to be ganged together, and did so nicely. To mount them I drilled a couple slots in the fuse block plastic to run a zip tie through, and used a one of those zip ties with the built-in mounting hole. (Note: Any areas with heat-shrink tubing are areas I have soldered and made permanent.) I mounted the fuses near the left front corner so I could use the power junction block I installed for my oogah horn. After connections were all soldered I crammed all the new wires into the existing wire sheathing. It didn't come out too bad.

Epilogue:

The windows work great. Was it an amazing difference? Not really, but it was noticeable. It's really hard to gauge it accurately because both window motors were already there and their condition is unknown. I also replaced both window felts all the way around at the same time, so drag was probably changed. Overall, the windows feel more "instant" if nothing else. There is no lag when you hit the buttons. Also, it doesn't pay to cut corners with switches. The brand new driver's side switch fails to roll the passenger side window up. Down works fine, but not up. I swapped the worn-out OEM one back in for now. At least it works. I'll stick to ACDelco or something similar next time instead of getting them from LMC Truck.