Weekly Roundup, 9.15

After calling around last week and leaving messages at several local glass installers, I finally got two on the phone. The first guy balked when I told him what year the truck was but said they’d be able to handle it if I drove it to their shop. He then quoted me a price of $500 to have someone come out and do it in the driveway. The second shop was much easier to work with, and after I sent a couple of pictures to the office manager, she got back to me and said they’d be able to do both the windshield and the rear quarter glass for less than the first quote. So I made an appointment and ordered some rubber from IHPA. I have a brand new gasket waiting, and I can’t wait for Tuesday.

I cleaned up the truck in preparation for having the glass put in, and looked over the front seat again. For some reason I’ve been thinking the bar frame mounts directly onto the seat bases, completely forgetting there are two track mounts that go between. After slapping myself in the forehead, I fished the set of tracks I bought from Ray out of my parts bin and looked them over, and everything became much clearer. I did some rust repair and cleanup on both, and ground off a bent and warped bolt on the driver’s side track. After sorting out the hardware issue, I welded a new bolt on to the track and cleaned it up. I taped off the tracks and hit them with etch primer before they got two coats of IH red. I’ll let them sit and cure for a couple of days, then install new hardware and a spring on each side. I sprayed the bar frame with semigloss black and let that sit to cure as well. When it’s all ready, I have new hardware and a spring on each side to mount it to the frame, and then I have to source a cable to reach across under the seat to release both of the slide catches.

And on the subject of seat bases, I got a bunch of metal delivered on Thursday for the rear seat locker. I can’t wait to dig into that project.

We went out over lunchtime on Friday to pick up the Scout, and I can’t believe how quiet she is again. The mechanic replaced the valve, manifold and gasket, and now she sounds like I remember. One other thing he fixed was the front wheel bearing. When he put it on the lift he watched the tire droop and investigated; apparently when he pulled it apart the inner bearing was just destroyed. So he replaced the parts and repacked everything and it should be good to go. This is disturbing, as I just had this fixed before I went to Nats two years ago, so clearly the work wasn’t done properly. Lesson learned. In either case, I drove home with a huge smile on my face.

While waiting for the mechanic to call, I scuffed, primed and painted the new battery tray and got it ready for installation. Saturday evening I pulled the remains of the old one off and cleaned up the inner fender as well as I could before brushing on Rust Converter, followed by a coat of black Rust Encapsulator. When that was dry I dropped the tray in place and bolted it down. Now I’ve got to find a 9.5″ threaded rod in the proper width to use for the inside hold down point, and I can cut out and fabricate my own hold down bar to cap it off.