Anyways, I have not made any progress on the truck lately. The kid has been occupying my time, and the garage seems to be collecting crap each day, making it not-so-motivating to work in. That on top of my endless side jobs for everyone else.
Today I decided to take a break from side work and focus on cleaning the garage out. Spent the whole day doing that so now I can walk around in it, and I'm not as embarrassed to have the door open.
Once everything was clean, it just didn't feel right, and motivation was there, so I HAD to dirty it up a bit and find something productive to do.
I have many many projects laying around, but since the rat has been neglected, I opted to do something with it.
On another thread (can't remember exactly which one now) we were talking about vintage heaters, and someone posted a link to an article restoring an old heater, and it really got the juices flowing!
I wasn't really planning on using mine, and in that thought process, I filled those holes on the firewall. But now that it's winter........again, I feel the cold, and decided to bring the original heater back to life for the truck.
I want the interior of the truck to be nice and maybe shiny, so the heater needs to fit the bill.
The heater has a 6 volt motor who's wires were completely gone and the motor didn't work very well. So I had disassembled the heater some time back to look I to it. For fear that a replacement motor would be very tough to come by, I tossed the thing asside to collect dust......until today.
Pulled it out and looked at the motor again. Took some measurements and searched the web for a suitable replacement. That process took a whole 3 minutes, so now an exact fit, 2 speed, 12 volt motor is on its way.
Since the credit card was out, I figured I better pice a powder coat color for the heater, so off to Eastwood I went.
Now that a motor and powder is ordered, I wanted to get ready to get it all back together.
Broke out the stripper (yes, I keep strippers on hand in the garage, just in case) and dumped all the parts in it to soak.
Began pulling each one out, flushing, then wire wheeling to get the remainder of the paint/rust off to clean metal.
I was quite surprised, and frankly, dissappointed at how much rust (including pitting) was found under the paint. Figured that with the heater being inside the cab all these years, there wouldn't be any. Guess I was wrong.
With that said, all the parts are set asside all cleaned ready for powdercoating.
I've never attempted a 'restore' on anything, with the idea in mind that it will look nice, so this is kinda exciting to me. I'm looking forward to getting it all back together all pollished up.
Hopefully it'll provide good heat in this little cab