Haven't had the opportunity to do much lately, have been busy with my daughter starting Pre-K classes at school (how do they grow up so fast?), and some other stuff going on.
Finally got to work on the truck today, pulled in a pretty good score this weekend! A friend of mine gave me some a jack, all I had to do was go get it, so I fueled up the truck and drove the 100 miles or so to his house to pick it up. Ended up bringing a ton more stuff home that he gave me just because he was tired of looking at it.
Gray brand air jack and jack stands
Small aluminum toolbox (stuffed with a bunch of misc stuff, none of which I will probably use)
While I was on my way back from his house, I stopped at a gas station to get something to drink and noticed another square that had stopped for fuel. So, I pulled the truck over by them and introduced myself. Really nice folks, a man and his son are rebuilding. I told them about the forum and noticed that he had an old radio in the back. After some conversation about me searching for one, he offered it to me for $10! I gave him $15 and went merrily on my way. Checked it out today and it works perfectly!
So after checking it out, I got the bug to see if I could install it into the truck, so I started pulling the dash. It has an aftermarket CD player in it, so I knew that they had probably cut the dash, but I had to see for myself. After pulling it all apart, it is in fact cut, so the stock radio will have to wait for another day.
Put all of that back together and noticed that the quadrant had broken, so I'll also have to fix that. Ugh.
I had bought some 4x6 speakers to replace the factory door speakers, even though I don't have covers yet (anyone got a line on these?). So I figured since I was working on it, I might as well tackle that too. Wasn't too bad, but man there was some major confusion going on. When I was working on the driver's side door speaker, I pulled the speaker off and was able to find the wires. Here comes the confusion. Light blue and Dark blue wires. Which is (+) and which one is (-)? After scratching my head for a while, I remembered that I had a stock radio (duh) and referenced it for the wiring diagram.
Ok, now we have a connector with light blue/dark blue wires.... but they are right rear? Scratched my head again, and then remembered that I had downloaded pdfs of the wiring diagrams
I figured out that the left front speaker is tan/grey and that there is a small 3-4" connector that goes from the speaker to the actual speaker wiring harness. Soldered some new wires to the 4" connector (the original wires from this connector actually went to the cone), and installed the speakers. Repeated the process for the passenger side, and now have sound in three speakers. The right rear isn't working at all. I'll have to troubleshoot that one another day.
Driver side before
Driver side after
Passenger side before
Passenger side after
Had some help from my buddy Bentley...
Parked his butt right in front of my fan.
Yeah, it was HOT today. While I had the dash partially disassembled, I took a look at the ducting. Previously I had noted that the vent with the most volume was the center vent, both vents in the driver's side dash (bottom left and top right) were pretty weak. Found that the bottom left had come apart and had shifted to the right (no screw holding it in place at all), so I connected it back the way that it was supposed to go. I didn't have a meter to measure the flow, but it seemed to increase the bottom left vent a bit. Top right is still not where it should be when the fan is on high. Planning on tackling the A/C this week, these 100+ days are getting almost unbearable.
Started looking at A/C components under the hood and found a broken wire under the hood that had come loose from a barrel connector (dark blue going to brake booster), so I fixed that and then added some split loom to protect all the wires with it.
Not a bad weekend, but still lots of things to do!