bgkast wrote:mazdeuce wrote: Post apocalyptic homage to Back to the Future?Yes!
It's really not that far off. I figure a couple swing sets and I can have both bumpers and the roll bar. I could put an ad on Marlincrawler and Pirate4x4 forums for broken (and I mean BROKEN) KC lights and.... maybe a machine gun mount in the back for a tail gunner?
We may be on to something fellas! 
Ok, back on a serious note. I figured I could start looking into the heater issue since I had some down time today (Enfield scheduled to sell on the 24th):
The heater doesn't work. That is if you select any setting besides "3" then nothing happens. If you select setting "3" (max) then all it does is emit a high pitched buzz and the fan doesn't turn on.
Hey, I can fix that!
The wiring diagram all seems pretty easy. You select a speed setting with the lever, then electricity goes through a resistor pack (more resistance = lower speed), through a relay, and on to the blower motor. I suspect the blower motor is bad. But why not check everything?
The only hard part to find was the relay, but guess what? That high pitched buzzing? yeah, led me right to it Out it all comes:
Definitely a good way to spend my lunch break 
I figure the easiest thing to test is going to be the blower motor. I have a few alligator leads and I plan to hook them directly up to the battery. On the motor housing it's marked that either side can be +, but it will change the direction of the fan. I don't care about direction, I'm just happy that no matter how I hook up this fan I won't be able to fry it.
The fan moves!
Moving on, the next easiest thing to test (especially as seeing as how I have all my leads out and I'm already at the battery) is going to be the relay.
I plan to test the relay by hooking up the coil wires to the battery via the alligator jumpers while using my multimeter to watch for continuity down the switched leg
if you don't know how a relay works, it's just a magnet switch. Small voltage charges an electro magnet that pulls a switch closed. Easy peasy.
I know the picture may make it LOOK like the relay is checking good, but it's not. This thing isn't making it's "Closed" connection, only it's "Open" connection. What you see here is me checking the switch "open" part of the relay to make sure the switch leg itself isn't fried apart. It isn't, but something's not allowing it to make contact when I energize the coil.
Unfortunately relay's cost more than the $5 I have in my wallet. So, apart it comes!
ooooooh. Never been here before. This is pretty cool.
You can see the big coil of copper, that's the magnet. The switch is on the right side of the screen, and kind of hangs down. It's in the "open" position now. I found a bit of FOD that was keeping it from making it's connection when electricity commanded it "closed". Just like the points in your car all I had to do was slide a piece of paper in there and push the crap out. Now it works like it should! (I was able to move the switchy thingy with my hand to verify before I put it back together)
I was going to stop there and reinstall everything, but dang if that resistor pack isn't UGLY! I decided I should check it too while it's out.
Dead as a door nail. 
So I've been calling it a resistor "pack" but what it looks like to me is one continuous resistor. Spanning its whole length makes a "lot" of resistance (so the lowest fan speed), when you select a higher speed it simply chooses a set location down the path thus reducing the amount of resistance! (kind of like tuning in your radio)
The problem here is the first leg is burnt out, so subsequently ALL the legs are burnt out. (first leg being the highest fan speed, all others build off this so all others don't work)
Oreilley's wants $24.00 and I have a $5 coupon buuuuuuut I think I can do it cheaper than that.
So out comes the broken leg, and out comes a solder iron.
And IN goes a jumper wire!
I figure what I've done is reduce the resistance on that leg so all other legs should run a little faster until I ultimately select the highest setting where it'll just run at top speed like it should.
But will it work?
(drum roll please)
Well would you look at that? Something I did WORKED!!!!
(more on this in a second, for now let me savor the moment)
So the "Fan Fix" isn't so much of a "fix" as it is a "bandaid".
The fan is blowing, yes. But it's blowing on a very slow speed (I assume #1 or #2 setting). This is good enough for me to throw it in the "pffft, that can wait" bin almost until February, but eventually I'm going to have to fork over the $24 and toss in a proper resistor pack
Now back to your regular scheduled program
That was some seriously good fixing. Well done.
RE: Bumpers
Naval Jelly will bring the chrome back.
My truck acquired a cheap new Chinese rear bumper after a minor bump. It started rusting through the chrome within six months. After making the rust go away with the aforementioned Naval Jelly, I coated it with my free can of Eastwood ElastiWrap. It's been on there about a year and I'm really happy with it. I did it with a single spray can, but I was cutting it really close. Two would have been better.
http://www.eastwood.com/paints/elastiwrap-coatings/aerosols.html
I don't have ant good "before" photos, but you get the idea.
http://www.picknpull.com/locations.aspx?View=Detail&ID=138
They have this beauty in inventory
They don't list a price for blower resistors, so they must be free.
In reply to Hungary Bill:
Awesome job on the troubleshooting! I'm enjoying this thread. Can you substitute a cheap resistor for the jumper to get things working more like they should?
I was on a flight from Dallas to Seattle Thursday night and saw a guy in the seat in front of me reading this thread on his laptop. This thread is cool enough for folks to pay for American Airlines wifi. I thought I'd catch up with the guy at baggage claim and say hi but he vanished.
bgkast wrote:
I'd have to have that hood, if I were local. Fits this build well!
bigdaddylee82 wrote: I was on a flight from Dallas to Seattle Thursday night and saw a guy in the seat in front of me reading this thread on his laptop. This thread is cool enough for folks to pay for American Airlines wifi. I thought I'd catch up with the guy at baggage claim and say hi but he vanished.
That's one of the coolest things I've ever read on the forum.
BGkast: Holy crap! How did I miss that? Looks like I have my lunch break appointment for tomorrow! I might even copy that hood idea until I can afford some real paint Skull and cross-wrenches?
Jay: I thought about it. I don't see why not. I have a huge collection of old crappy resistors, but the values I'm reading are 1ohm, 2ohms, and 3.5ohms. The leg I jumped was 1ohm and actually my crappy soldering job did a pretty good of maintaining that resistance (actually it metered out to 1.5 ohms. If I can't find a resistor pack cheap I'll probably see if one of my resistors will work.
Bigdaddy: (I could have called you "lee" but what fun would that be ). That is the most awesome thing I've heard all YEAR. Seriously thanks. That made my week! I wonder who it was?
So over the weekend I had a chance to go over a few basic items:
The engine pulls between 19 and 20 in hg at idle with very little needle movement on my vacuum gauge. Awesome! The engine also doesn't seem to be dripping or consuming any oil or coolant. I see no evidence of oil in the coolant or vice versa. I am happy If it weren't for that leaky power steering pump seal, this thing would be tight as a drum.
The fuel pump is pushing 5psi. This may not be so good. The Weber want's its input regulated to 3.5psi and that may explain some of the carburetor issues I've been having. More to follow on that one, I want to replace that nail first, then I'll move on to fuel pressure regulation.
The rockers still make a little noise, but it seems to vary in loudness from day to day. HOWEVER! I did come up with a bit of a solution to that one.
Apparently somewhere along the line the Toyota had its fenders replaced along with the cowl. The old fenders had some damage from deer and one real fun day with another Toyota in the snow. The cowl I have no idea why they changed it. Either way, the radio antenna didn't make the reinstall for some reason. Furthermore something seems to have happened to the antenna as it wont screw into its base anymore (and it's bent at a 45deg angle about half way up...)
Anyhoo, I ran the antenna line:
And that, it turns out, gives my stereo (with its stock 4" speakers) just enough reception to play some staticy music from a few of my favorite radio stations. The static is so bad that I have enough trouble trying to discern what song I'm listening to, or what the DJ is saying, and my ears are too taxed to be bothered with any noised the engine is making.
Ever since then my drive has been much less stressful
I did get the chance to take Hungary Kid on a ride to the park on Saturday That was a HOOT! I wish I had some pictures, but we were having so much fun I didn't want to stop to snap one. If the truck can make my 3-year-old happy then I must be on the right track
Good times
In reply to Woody:
Man, that bumper is SHARP! I may have to pick up a can of that plastiwrap, thanks for the tip.
Hungary Bill wrote: BGkast: Holy crap! How did I miss that? Looks like I have my lunch break appointment for tomorrow! I might even copy that hood idea until I can afford some real paint
How about this one?
Extra kid-cool points for the connection to Disney movies (Grandson loves Cars and Planes)
That is awesome! Why did I not think of that!?!
oh man, this thing's never going to get painted pretty again with all you guys giving me these great ideas, is it?
Nope. Great paint is the death of afun beater.
In reply to Dusterbd13:
but but... I promised her a better life this time around...
Define better?
Id say not abused and neglected. That's better than most. But too nice and it becomes a garage queen.
So funny thing about having a truck that runs well. You kind of run out of things to work on. Luckily for me it doesn't look like that's going to be the case any time soon.
I've been getting a nasty steering wheel wobble at about 45mph. It hangs around until about 60mph where it kind of goes away. It's also worth noting that I'm getting a lot of feedback from the back end too.
Starting at the front, I used my last $6 to take the passenger side front tire to the auto-hobby shop to have it balanced (Removing it first and rolling it into the hobby shop saved me the $4 bay fee )
I picked the passenger front because there had been dirt in the bead, and I pulled the tire half-way off to clean it out. I figured I must have inadvertently spun the tire on the rim and subsequently knocked it out of balance... I was a bit disapointed when the weight didn't move much:
Well, smell. So much for that idea. Needless to say the steering wheel was still doing the "shimmy shimmy shake" all the way down the on-ramp every morning.
Today I had a bit of time so I rigged up a bit of a rudimentary "bent rim test kit". Expect to see these in stores near you soon!
What I'm doing here is holding a screwdriver as tight as I can to a small aircraft chock. I then have an assistant spin the wheel in question while my screwdriver drags slightly on the aluminum wheel. The small scratch is then measured with a scale and we're looking for uniform depth to the rim dish from the scratch.
Hey, it may not be the most accurate thing in the world but it works The drivers side checked good down to the thousandth! The passenger side? weeeeelllllll
(Don't mind the squiggly line in the second picture. It's the result of me trying to measure by myself)
Anyhoo:
First picture .050"
Second picture .150"
So 1/10" inch difference across the wheel.
I have a spare in the bed, but it's flat. My only concern with this wheel is it has no less that 5 different wheel weights on it totaling about 8oz
For those who are curious:
First things first, I don't even know if this holds air. Seconds things second (but just as important as the first thing) is I suspect this rim is going to be bent based on the wheel weight situation.
But it isn't! (bent, that is). yaaaaaaaaaaaay
but the tread is a different pattern, and it's WAY lighter than the wheel I just pulled off 
Nothing like a truck tire to exaggerate the differences in manufacturing between tire companies.
Odd story about this tread pattern here. So with my first tax-return after my first deployment I spent about $400 of my $600 return on new tires. That bought me exactly two Wild Country Radial RVT's in 31x10.50-15.
I threw them on the back and moved the old back tires forward, and ditched the bald front ones. There those puppies stayed until I sold the truck. And when I did there was some serious meat still left on them.
When I got the truck back, they were completely bald and another Wild Country Radial RVT appeared on one of the 5 toyota rims that came with the truck. I honestly had no idea tires could breed! This opens up a whole lot of doors for me!
Anyhoo, I ran the same "bent rim check" on the back wheels since I'm getting a lot of feedback from the back axle, expecting to get a result but alas both rims are straight. It's worth noting that all four dampers on this truck are completely gone so an out of balance tire makes quite the vibration it seems. Honestly I'm glad they weren't bent, I would have been out of matching rims
I meant to put the bent wheel up under the truck where the spare tire lives (probably the same spare from the Toyota lot back in 1987), but the tool kit in the truck was missing one of just about everything. Ah well, another item on the junkyard list.
Good times
Ah! I almost forgot!
Evidence as to where the missing tread on the Radial RVT's may have gone?
The mud in the vents I've seen before. The dragging fingerprints on the ceiling tell me that I either:
a) have a violent spirit in the truck, and need the help of two brothers in a 1967 Impala.
or
b) missed out on some seriously good times in the Washington woods.
Dusterbd13 wrote: Define better? Id say not abused and neglected. That's better than most. But too nice and it becomes a garage queen.
Somewhere between:
and
I'm thinking a 50ft paint job is going to be in the cards but I plan to leave most of the dents. I'll probably have a little fun with vinyl while I'm at it.
Then I plan to use her. 
It'll all be wasted if I get to the point that I hesitate before locking in the hubs, or before throwing heavy jagged objects in the bed..
The last time I went wheeling I was the only stock height vehicle, and the only guy on 31's (and I didn't miss a thing). That's my friend Dustin in his old Xj behind me (He's on 33's). I'd never want to miss out on a day like that again for something as silly as a paint job.
Cline Ranch, Texas. If you get a chance, go!
Dusterbd13 wrote: Nope. Great paint is the death of afun beater.
Words of wisdom
Well sir, I'm glad she's back in your hands and running again. That's very cool. I've spent 2 hours reading this entire thread, time to go back to work.
In reply to Spinout007:
Work? Never heard of such a thing
The drive home last night was smoother than it's been to date! It turns out that the bent rim was the main cause of the truck vibration at speeds. The feedback from the tail end is so light I'm not even going to bother spending the $20 or so to have those wheels re-balanced.
When I first started driving this beast again I would find myself with both hands on the wheel and biting my lip the whole drive home. Last night I caught myself with my elbow on the door and my right arm over the seat. I still think all four dampers are completely shot (she gets a bit "bouncy"), and I think I may need to have the front end aligned, but she's definitely leaps and bounds ahead of where she was.
Almost there
If you can driveway rebuild an engine, you can do your own alignment.
Got a smartphone and a tape measure? You got all the tools you need to get close enough.
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