Brought the truck out of town for work the last two weeks for a little shake down... and because I'm bored to tears in the hotel after work and thought I'd do some small projects in the parking lot.
Other than the vibrations I'm chasing at 45-55 and 65-70 mph, the truck is pretty darn comfortable and seems reliable.
I have an oil leak that's wetting down the starter pretty good... and since this is a GM crate 350 I suspect that the passenger side dip stick hole is open and the cause of the leak. Ya think I'd be able to see the hole to verify and make a plan to plug it. Nope. More effort needed.
Last week I decided on a quick little project one night - replacing the bushings on the door strikers. Well a 10 minute project turned into a 12 hour overnight ordeal. There should be a warning label letting every fool like me know that the nut holding the striker bolt is loose and will fall into the B-pillar and you'll need to remove trim and the access hole is too small for human hands and you'll end up replacing all the trim so you can drive the truck to work in the morning in the pouring rain holding the door closed and then you can beg a magnet off of a co worker and pull all the trim again and fish the nut out and replace the striker....
Yeah.
This week my little project was to replace the one-piece speedo cable (which was working perfectly...) to the two-part so I could run through the cruise transducer. 160 miles of interstate each way would be so much nicer with cruise, and everything seems as if it's in place and hooked up. Wires, vacuum lines, etc. I assumed the guy that dropped in the crate motor just bypassed the transducer because it takes a little effort to figure out which cables are needed. I found the cables and install should be easy-peasy. 15 mins and I had the new cables from the transfer case to the transducer and from the transducer in to the speedo. After 5 feet of test drive... BOING! Cable snapped at the transfer case. Apparently the transducer is seized or almost seized up. The speedo DID move for the 3 seconds before I pretzled the lower cable. Anyone know if these Speed Master transducers can be freed up? I'm finding it tough to source a reman'd unit.
This afternoon I'll put the old cable back for the drive home.
Good grief. Old trucks.
