Cleaned Up a Bit

March 30, 2009

   I decided to get back at the beast and finish up some of the loose ends I'd been tackling for a while. For starters, I finished patching up the exhaust, and got the ebrake work all sorted out. i was finished the frame, so I put the Gas tank back in and hooked everything up.

   I seem to recall the day i dropped the gas tank out, in late 2008. I had to cut it free more or less from it's moorings, because like most of this vehilce, they had rusted fast. I had to break off one of the strap brackets and weld it back together later, and after all the supports were out, and the lines disconnected, i jiggled it free from it's stead. it was about a 1/3 full (roughly 25L), and i was sitting/laying beneath it when it dropped out, in such an awkward way that it pinned me for a bit. long story short, it was an absolute bear to remove, and to re-install.

   After it burbled to life, i took it for a quick spin around the block and parked it back in the driveway (always nose down, otherwise the fuel drains back into the tank and it wont start).

 

   With it in the driveway, I figured it was a good time to drop the Class 3 hitch reciever off, in order to gain some much needed departure angle height. I already designed a bumper for the front, so i might as well do one for the rear, with an integrated hitch (should save a bit of weight by combining the purposes). Most of the bolts put up a huge fight, and i recall breaking a couple. no matter, it might not have passed safety if i left it on. not having the hitch definitely gives the truck a better look, with a slightly more aggressive departure.

 

  

I also popped in my repaired taillights. the chromed plastic housing had broken on one, so i repaired that, plus a broken mounting stud.

Miscellaneous Small Stuff

January 10, 2009

Usually in a project, you come to a point wher you have some small niggly little foybles mounding up, which hinder you from the juicy tasks. Those niggly things came in the form of some of my most despised mechanical tasks; brakes and exhaust. I think this has something to do with the fine dust, and general malicious nature of said tasks. exhaust parts inevitably get hot, thus rendering the pipes, and their accompanying clamps one unit. no bolt ever comes off in exhaust work, and brake-work isnt much better. a myriad of springs keep drum brakes in place, and they require a lot of force to remove them. Plus there's the mess of being underneath the vehicle, in winter.

it feels good to get this stuff out of the way though, so i plunged into the task, tackling the rear brakes first. the old drums were near useless, so i binned them, and bought some new drums (the old shoes were actually fairly new, so they stayed). before throwing the new drums on i cleaned and painted them with calipre paint in grabber orange for added stopping power (not really).

 

  

 

After the brakes were replaced, and new rear lines for the e-brake were installed, i moved on to attaching said e-brake cable back to the front half of the system. the guide clips were rusted off the frame, and the cable hookups had rusted, so i had to build new clips and hookups, as seen in the picture below.

 

 Since I was lacking a spare rim, I searched Kijiji for some replacements. Low and behold some guy in Toronto had a set of 4 for a really good price, so i picked them up. what i can do now is have a set of different tires on these rims, for winter.

 

I also had a lot of rear exhaust work to do. the seam behind the muffler had rusted out, so i cut it out so I could put a sleeve in. I also replaced about a foot of pipe closer to the back. On my way home from Canadian Tire however, my car was struck in an intersection (didnt write it off, but almost). That being said, it would be a while before I worked on the wagon and finished up those jobs, because I had other stuff to do now.

 

update (as of Feb 3, 2010): the muffler is actually fairly rough, so I'll replace that and the seam i put in, to make the beast a bit quieter.