Restoring Rusty

[Blue GMC]

Holy Crap! What a ride and great work on this one! Sorry to see you letting him go seal someone else’s driveway. Good luck with the sale you might get a fast bite on the forum if you post him for sale and have the deal ready to go when the bench seat is done.

[Blue GMC]

Double

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Blue GMC

Double

Trouble

[Gregski]

so staying busy while waiting on parts and materials, so gave the bed a shop vac treatment followed by a bath in preparation for a second coat of much needed Herculiner tomorrow

What? he lifted the front to ensure all the water drains out of the bed properly, I mean who does that

[Gregski]

what started me down this path was half a can left of the stuff, so I said hmm should use it up... so I went out and bought three more cans LOL

can't wait to get this stuff on my knees (yes through a pair of jeans) and above the elbows, and on my forehead if I'm lucky

[Gregski]

I can't bedline 55 !

Easy there Sammy, this thing has a huge acceptable temp window from 32° F all the way up to 95° F

[Gregski]

alright, so let's cut through all the blue tape and get down to biness

[Gregski]

there is only one critical step that will determine your success or failure when applying this product and that is simply that you have to MIX the bejesus out of it

here I am showing you that after you open the can that's been sitting on the Pep Boys shelf for 2.5 years the top half will be liquid the the bottom will be a brownie, so you must scoop out all the ground coffee bean like substance out of each can, this is what gives us the lumpy bumps when we apply it (don't ask me what I think of bed liners in a spray can, ha ha)

[Gregski]

We called up Big Bertha from the bullpen to help us mix it properly, she's 1/2" long tailed one horn animal, cause this ain't no job for your cordless, it's a sure way to send it to the graveyard

[Gregski]

here I'm just showing exactly precisely what three 32 OZ cans looks like in one 10 quart plastic bucket (yes this will be on the Quiz)

to be honest we just barely made it, we finished on fumes (I tried to add the contents of my old 4th can but I could not get the lid opened until after the fact and all that was in there was 1/2 a can of brownie mix with no liquid at all)

[Gregski]

I love these progress pics, and I hope you do too, cause their the reason why my right hand is black now, I had to take the rubber glove off 57 times to take all these pics whilst painting, ha ha

[Gregski]

I found that the roller sucks and I applied it all with a cheapo 3" brush in a circular motion, you're not so much painting as you are gooping it on there and spreading it around, a one eyed def monkey could do it!

[Gregski]

Seriously? I never painted these black when I took the tailgate off to paint it? I better not let SCOTI see these

[Gregski]

Five minutes later...

[LT7A]

Originally Posted by Gregski

hey bud I get it, and I've been there done that have the T shirt, however get intimate with that expensive circuit board, the mechanical speedo and inacuate tach, spill a bit of hot oil on you from the cracked oil pressure tube, and then we'll talk, ha ha

My comment was a statement of preference, but not of criticism. In my early car days I thought to get rid of as much factory appearing stuff as I could. Made me feel like I was making a statement with my modifications. So a better explanation of coming full circle is to say that I have come to appreciate factory components and don't mind taking the time to keep them intact where possible; nobody is more surprised by that change in perspective than I am. Being that you listed detail, I will follow suit:

The gauges work on my current trucks and I have a spare circuit board.
I don't mind mechanical speedometers and all I've ever had to do is pull the cable and grease it if it got noisy...once.
None of my squarebodies have the tach package and I won't be dropping the coin to buy an original. I don't mind day-two mods where in my opinion the factory fell short, and will externally mount aftermarket tachs. I know this may be seemingly in contradiction with my stated premise, but my squares all take their cues from "back in the day".
And finally, I can wait for the oil to cool down ; )

[LT7A]

I don't want to think about a world where you don't own Rusty and I don't know where he is. Maybe if every member who has benefited from this thread would contribute 25 cents per thread page, we could just pay you to keep him.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by LT7A

I don't want to think about a world where you don't own Rusty and I don't know where he is. Maybe if every member who has benefited from this thread would contribute 25 cents per thread page, we could just pay you to keep him.

Ah that is the sweetest thing ever, should I share my FansOnly link with you all?

Honestly owning three trucks (Rusty, Dusty, and Busty) I am spread too thin, and I really am looking forward to the Dusty build, so maybe think of this as a Trilogy (Rusty being first, Busty the prequal, and Dusty the sequal)

another issue is physical space, although I have a three car garage its a 2 on one side of the house and 1 on the other (I know right cry me a river) but that does not create a 3 car wide driveway, it's a narrower 2 car one that Ys

[Gregski]

now back to the gauges, I removed the pink wire for us to focus just on the black one aka ground, notice how the big gauges just have one black wire going to them but the little guys have two, the second wire seems to loop back to the same gauge

so that is to provide ground to the little light bulb that is in each gauge to light up when you pull on the headlight switch, what I don't get is why AutoMeter didn't just include an internal bus bar that runs on the inside of the gauge from the main ground blade connector to the light like they did on the big gauges? I think that would eliminate some wire and make it look that much cleaner and neater

maybe someone can chime in and learn us something?

[Gregski]

alright we have our pink (key on 12 volts power) wires and our black ground wires, let's do one more for completeness, this will be the wire for the gauge lights, so that when we turn on the headlights the dim switch will control the lights inside each of the gauges

now AutoMeter recommends a white wire for these connections but us being GMers we will use gray, I believe that's what the squares used for the dash lighting, (correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what dangles under the dash of my '74) and I want to make this idiot proof so that when we remove the gauge cluster we can easily put it back and connect pink to pink, black to black, and gray to gray ... kapish?

Notice the sharpie dots on the back of each gauge that's to help with the color coding as well, I got tired of squinting looking for the silly labels such as I which clearly stands for Power as in key on ignition, lol

[Gregski]

ok let's see all three harnesseseses (harnesie ?) connected at the same time?

[Gregski]

ok, alright, but can we tidy those up a bit

[hatzie]

You can get plugs for the gauges.
Delphi made a three terminal Packard 56 plug that was spaced for those small gauge terminals. I can remember holding a used one in my hands that I liberated from a car headed to the crusher. I used it on a project a long time ago. I can't for the life of me find a part number for it.
If you're only using two terminals Delphi made a turnsignal flasher plug that would fit. Dorman makes a pigtail with that plug and some PVC jacketed wire. It's #84734. Again it's not easy to turn up an actual Delphi part number for it.

The speedo and tach plug was fairly easy to find.
2965977 Delphi Packard 56 eight position for female terminals.

It'd be darn nice of Autometer to sell plugs for those of us that care about stuff like that. Probably not much of a market for it tho.

[Gregski]

so this was the first test, I noticed I swapped my left and right turn signals... easy fix

[Gregski]

here we can see the Tach is taching

[Gregski]

notice how the Temp is pegged out, I suspect the oil one may be off as well, we haven't replaced the Intellitronix sending units with the AutoMeter ones yet, that will be next

but man what an improvement, definitely add another $12.50 to the value of the truck!