A Little Progress

Bright and early yesterday morning I braved the cold Northwest wind to visit Fulton's Metal Supply in Denton. I bought a 4X8 sheet of 18 gauge and when I went to drive the truck into the loading area, I found the battery dead. The manager was a good guy as he sent a yard worker to get their jumper cables and use his forklift to jump start my truck. The high priced Die Hard was only couple of years old, but it was shot. The truck has only been driven a few hundred miles in that time, but I guess our hot summers kill them whether they are used or not.

Yesterday afternoon the weather was beautiful and after finishing a shelf project in the pantry, I played with my new MIG welder. It's been nearly twenty years since I did much welding, and it's taking some practice to recapture what little skill I had. Thank goodness for YouTube and all their videos to help me brush up.

It was nice again today and I avoided my wife's honey-do list for most of the day so I could get started cutting out rusted floor pans. The little Dremel circular saw worked really slick and it will definitely will get lots of use before this project is done. It does eat up blades pretty fast so I need to order more before the trunk floor and tail panel arrive. I talked to John at Big M today and made arrangements to pull and ship the parts, and that will be the next big job I tackle. I could weld in the front floor pans, but I'd rather wait for the rear pans to arrive so I can get a better feel for the extent of the job.

The dip-strip operation looks good in all the areas you can see, but after cutting out a piece of the floor at the front chassis mount, I found trash and rust where apparently the pressure washer couldn't reach. Thankfully the metal in that area is still solid and the surface rust is easy to treat.



No word from the guy selling the rear-dump Poly exhaust manifold. I'm beginning to suspect he's not interested in selling to me.