Re: Rat repair.
 

It looks like you are doing everything right. yea the 40 plus years of wear and grim will take a lot out of you. I clean and sand blasted until I was tried of doing it. But that is all behind me now. I worked on the old girl all today and only had to wash my hands not scrub them. it was nice not working in all that grease for a change. Now I am enjoying putting it back together. Good luck and happy building.

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Thanks NONHOG, would you by chance be the body man Randy told me about?

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Thanks for stopping by! I have been debating on a larger air compressor and a sand blaster, or just hiring the shop down the street for the messy stuff.

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Well, it dumped rain all day Thursday and i messed up, my Dr appt is actually Friday and i'm up late again. LOL!

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Nope not me. I'm just a "hack" of all trades. Yet to find the one I excel at. :lol:

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Well its official i have a tear in my meniscus, I've had my knee lock up on my a number of times too so what i thought may be ripped or warn tendons was not the case, turns out the torn portion of the meniscus is moving put of place and getting lodged between the joint surface, she didn't seem too concerned about having surgery at this point but agreed i could use a better knee brace designed to take pressure off the inside of the knee so i will be checking that out on Tuesday. In the mean time i am up and active but just using caution and if it starts to get sore i ease up on it, pretty much life as usual now.

I spent today getting the rest of the step side bed taken apart and stored away. Used my SawZall to cut the rusted floor bolts so i could take the sides and header apart, still need to cut the bolts to separate the bed strips and bed supports.

Then dragged out my plasma cutter to the edge of the garage door and proceeded cutting the bed supports out of the original bed floor of the rust bucket, i wanted to save them just in case one may be needed later. Then I cut the mounting plates off my old K20 bumper to use them on the new /used rear bumper i just got, that was a pita because my plasma cutter is good up to 1/4" but the mount brackets were 3/8", got it but it wasn't pretty.. Anybody ever use a Plasma cutter in the rain? Hope i'm not tempting fate.

A trip to the scrap metal recycler is in my near future, probably have a couple hundred lbs of scrap laying around now.

Of course this is what i was working with again... Rain!

Re: Rat repair.
 

Well its official i have a tear in my meniscus, I've had my knee lock up on my a number of times too so what i thought may be ripped or warn tendons was not the case, turns out the torn portion of the meniscus is moving put of place and getting lodged between the joint surface

This is exactly what was happening to my left knee. Every time the torn piece gets in-between the joint and it locks up, your damaging the meniscus more. I was told it will not go away on it's own, it was either live with it or have surgery. I chose the surgery, because every time it happened my knee would swell up like a balloon and I would be out of commission for a few days. Mine was so torn up they removed 60% of it. It took a couple months to feel good, and about a yr for it to feel completely normal again. That was 15 yrs ago. I ski, bike ride, hike, I just don't run any more. If yours isn't torn to bad they can repair it, stitch it together or staple it, but cartilage heals sloooow. Now they can also take some of your cartilage, grow more from that and inject it into your knee and it forms a new meniscus.

Gary

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Man is that ever a familiar sight! We lived in Woodinville (east of Seattle / Lake Washington) for almost two years. It always amazed us how folks would forge ahead with their plans regardless of the weather. Went to several well attended car shows taking place in a steady drizzle. People even showed up in convertibles with the tops down. Crazy!

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Thanks Gary, they didn't say anything about stitching it back together or growing new tissue, just using the arthroscopic surgery to remove the piece that is now a flap. I have decided at this point not to pursue surgery and see how things go with a brace for now. No more follow up appts scheduled.

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Well i guess you kinda have a taste of how badly i would like to move away from the rain don't ya! I didn't grow up here but my career keeps me here for now, i think i need to work on finding a place i can build a shop. :)

My front yard was starting to look like a junk yard and no work this weekend so had to start the clean up process.

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Well, got all the scrap hauled away today, about 385ibs of it.

I have started making a cover for my fill tube but no pictures yet.

I made today a body supply run for fillers, primer ect.

Have been spending the last 5 days or so trying to settle differences on a misrepresented purchase i made on the forums for sale threads, i think concessions have been made finally, hope to put it behind and move forward.

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Finally had the time this morning to go through your thread. Too bad about the knee, I tore my right meniscus a few years ago. Sucked to say the least....
You have done some great work on your truck. 4 x 4 trucks have so many more moving parts than 2 wd. But they look so good too. It seems all the extra effort will pay off. Looking forward to following along.

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Hey Swamp Rat. Bummer about the knee. Hang in there. I just had a chunk of my back taken out so that shut me down for a bit as well. You have done a great job on the truck. Read thru most of your build today. Your work on the gas filler door is excellent. had I fabbed mine I would have done it the same way. Unfortunately, when mine was done they took a huge chunk out of the bed side. May have to use a patch panel and redo the whole mess. we'll see if the body guy has any suggestions,

Chris

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Hey cmabolt thanks for the comp's on my thread, i wish i had a shop so i could do the build the right way like you are, frame off is the way to go, but i need to keep this truck on the road as much as possible.

Whats wrong with your filler? is it a couture problem or is it oil canning? or just flexing too much? whatever it is i'm sure it can be fixed.

My knee is back to normal now, gets a little sore off and on, waiting for a custom knee brace designed to keep pressure off the inside of the joint, hope its worth it. I would have been posting more thru this weekend but i pulled a bone headed move and gave myself a case of food poisoning last Wednesday, I'm finally over it now.

Yesterday i took a little road trip up north and purchased another set of bedsides for the stepper 67 project. the price was real good and i figured that with one of the top rails being a little bent on the bed i bought then maybe i can use the best of the 4 to make the stepper when the time comes.

I have passed the state of denial and its time to take my intake off and replace the gaskets, don't know why but it seem every 3-5 years i have to do this, don't know why, maybe its the Worlds products heads? but I cant put it off any longer, got some gaskets yesterday, going to start on that today.

The filler cover is a work in progress. i'm planning on using some bed scraps to make flanges on the bottom as i discovered that the bottom of the scrap pieces follow the couture of the top of the bed nicely, it will take more time but if it works the way i think it should be nice.

I'm trying to locate a nice single unit RIV-NUT tool for 10-32 and some nuts to attach the cover to the bedside.

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too bad about the rain but it could be worse.... you could live here and have snow flakes in the air, as we do today here. I like the 67 project, I am a fan of taking a break sometimes from the main project as well. good work all round.

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Whats that saying? Variety is the spice of life.... :)

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Today's progress:

First things first, i had 4 packages to open from my seemingly endless parts buying, one of the boxes contained a stock power steering unit for the inline 250 with mount brackets pulley ect. I'm too old for armstrong steering. :)

Back to the 72 i got the engine bay just about ready to pull the intake. today, and here's a shot of the filler tube bed cover on progress.

I guess i should have done something about my antenna when i parked my truck, the 3 year old car cover roof couldn't take it, LOL! I have a new cover to put on sometime this summer.

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Had an inch of snow sunday morning here. today, t-shirt weather... variety, whatever... haha

lookin good!

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looking good. hope your knee will heal up soon. the nice weather is here

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So tell me about your PVC system. Looks like you are sucking from both valve covers. Where is air entry point? For a PVC sytem to work properly, there has to be air in as well as out.

The reason I ask is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. And I am looking for ideas to help solve a problem of of my own.

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]\

Interesting point and i don't have an answer, there was never a vent on one side so i just connected them both. Guess i figured if there was positive crank case pressure from combustion it would be sucked out regardless, but this engine has never had excessive blowby.

If there is an issue with this and I'm somehow defeating and blocking crank gasses from escaping thus creating a buildup of pressure somebody set me straight. i'm all ears.

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You've got to have an "air in" spot to go along with the PCV valve. Originally, it was a hose connected from the valve cover to the air cleaner spacer. Lacking that, you need a vented breather cap in the valve cover. Otherwise, the PCV valve is gonna get it's air from somewhere, even past the lip seals on the front and back of the crankshaft.

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Ok thanks for the info. I'll add a vent. :metal:

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Doesn't your PVC system already vent into the carb port?

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:sumo:Mine had both sides vented to the carb port via a T fitting. There is a pic posted back a bit.