Headlight Buckets Installed

Parts arrived for the headlight bucket and I completed the remaining part of that job. The clevis pins were a couple-hundredths longer than the OEM part, but they work fine. I needed one pin, but had to order a bag of 25 for about six dollars including tax. When it arrived by UPS the tiny bag was packed in a box big enough to hold hundreds of pins! Cost of shipping?...$8.90! To cap it off, the day after I finished repairing the bucket, I was looking in a box of small junk and found one of the stock pins!

The adjustment screw was a little bit more of a problem. I couldn’t find an aftermarket source for the nylon nuts  or brackets for the adjustment for the adjustment screws, so I ordered a pair of screws and nuts, then made a bracket to attach a modern screw assembly to the shell. The best fitting modern screw and nut was for a Jeep, but it required a different shaped bracket cutout to secure the nut. No big deal to make the bracket, but because the Jeep nut was shaped differently than the original, the
nut centerline was off by three hundredths, so I had to file the slots in the light retainer ring about that much deeper to allow the screw to turn freely enough to adjust the bulb position. I also had to shorten the screw about a half-inch to fit inside the shallower bucket, but that was simple enough. If not pretty, at least it works!

The new welding helmet showed up a few days later, so was able to finish one of my wife’s projects and I'm ready to weld on the car again. Naturally, the day after it arrived, it went on sale for seven dollars less! My timing sucks when it comes to buying things.

 I had ordered a rebuild kit for the 4-bbl Edelbrock carb on my ’73 D100. The crappy alcohol-tainted gas sure gummed up the insides, so it took a lot of scrubbing and blowing to get it clean, but the old truck sure runs great now! It only had about four thousand miles since I installed it new about ten years ago, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.


After I took it for a test drive, I decided to track down the funny noise I always heard before the engine warmed up. It sounded like something rattling in the suspension, but it turned out to be the thermal fan clutch wobbling on the shaft. Glad I found that before it came apart and destroyed the radiator.

Now maybe I can get back to the car again.