It’s been quiet for the past two weeks. Last weekend we were celebrating a birthday and dealing with a yard sale so all truck things were on hold. This weekend I was down in Southern Maryland busting a trio of brake drums free on the FiL’s 1966 Chrysler to make it mobile again.
Two weeks ago I jacked it up onto a set of Harbor Freight dollies and used my tow strap to pull it out of the garage and on to the driveway, the first time it’s seen daylight since 1980. The dollies were pretty useless on his ancient pitted asphalt so it was a necessity to get it rolling on its own wheels again. In the middle of that operation, my old floor jack decided 4,300 lbs of luxury convertible was just too much to lift, as we ran out to the local Harbor Freight for a replacement. I’ve been eyeballing a new floor jack for months but was holding off on buying one. As it turned out they were having a 40% off sale on the more expensive 3 ton model so I walked out with a beautiful new jack. And after chopping the front drum apart with a $15 angle grinder, we got the drum moving and the car rolling.
I wound up with something in my left eye from the brake drum and got terrible sleep Saturday evening (if I can’t get it out with an eye flush this evening I’m going to visit an ophthalmologist tomorrow) but woke up at 7 to meet a guy in Columbia who wanted to buy my two worst Scout fenders. I was happy to get $100 for them, which was half what I was asking, but I’m happy to have them out of the office and out of my way. And the four remaining fenders will work just fine if I need them to.
In the meantime it’s been raining pretty much nonstop this week, and I was in New York on Wednesday and Thursday. That being said, I had a little time after work on Thursday evening to mess with a new set of lock cylinders for the Travelall; they lock into the barrels just fine, but release when the key is turned to the 8 o’clock position. I don’t have them in the door so I can’t tell if the mechanical linkage to the door mechanism will keep them in place or not, but something tells me this isn’t correct. Which is strange, because they are an almost exact match to the original cylinders.
The Travelall heater box is ready to install.. Sunday I put the motor, heating element and wiring back in the box, drilled new holes for the back plate, and fastened that in place with new stainless screws. Then I used some of the adhesive-backed foam padding from the Scout heater box to fashion a new lip around the top edge to seal up that section. It may need some more work, or thicker foam depending on how the whole thing ages, but we’ll see.