My Blog

Camping in the rain.

Clutch fixed and suddenly we have a seemingly reliable machine, finally. Above we’re picking up a local batch of dumplings for lunch. Tasty! So now that the machine is running again, its time to rebuild our confidence in it.

Things causing trouble:

Fuel tank sender is now binary! Fix!
Rear differential seized up. Fix.
Carburetor is flooding all over! Fix.
It wont go anymore. Fix.
New differential is leaking oil like crazy. Fix.
Frame to bell housing grounding strap is falling apart. Fix.
Tie up the main power cable better under truck.
Fuel system looses prime. New fuel pump fixed this!
Headlight switch gets so hot it burned my finger. Look into this.
Roof leaks in the rain.
Passenger side wall leaks in the rain.
Passenger window box has dissolved. Need solution to this.
Put the window back together.

Expedition upgrades:

Get a five gallon bucket for washing things.
Find the bucket, I lost it.
Some sort of awning for rain.

Oldest daughter, Alex, wanted to learn how to drive a “crash box”. Here she is getting her driving lesson. She drove us all the way across the island and back to buy a couple crabs for lunch.

Pretty impressive.

”What? Allie got a driving lesson? Where’s my driving lesson?” So, not to be out done, youngest daughter gets her crash box driving lesson.

Julie’s next in line..

Then Julie and I ran the truck up the coast for an afternoon picnic. Everything seemed to work fine, except the headlight switch. The headlight switch gets hot enough to burn your fingers. Something amiss in there.

Headlight switch pulled out of the dash, hanging on its wires. I thought it was the fuse getting hot, but it was the connector to the fuse that was overheating.

The rivet that holds the fuse connector to the power switch had worked loose. This caused a high resistance and all the heat. I could possibly fix it, maybe..

I just bought a replacement. I needed to get this working so as to be able to drive at night because..

Side note: There was always this annoying buzzing, scraping sound coming out of the generator. I was told that this was “Just the way they were”. So I tried to ignore it. Ever since I swapped out this switch, the noise is gone!

Go figure!

We were heading out camping again! This time it was to Kayak point near Stanwood, WA. The weather was iffy and there was a good chance of rain. Also, a good chance of having to drive in the dark. Hence the new headlight switch.

The first night I figured it might rain and that it would probably come at us from the rear. So we used the rainfly from the old tent to cover that end. Looked pretty tacky. But, it was successful and there was no leaking.

Camping in the rain with no shelter but the truck was horrible. So we packed up and ran into town to the local Cabelas camping store. There we found this cool awning. This took rainy camping all the way from misery to enjoyable!

Two thumbs up!

A closer shot of the awning. We’d just got it assembled for the first time. The cooking gear hadn’t been loaded in or setup yet.

Of course, with this new awning, we got cocky and the next night, near morning, it really rained.

And we found that the truck does leak.

We got up before light because we were getting wetter and wetter inside the truck. Made a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon with coffee. Then jammed everything back in the truck and..

Headed home. Look, blue skies!

This was the first time taking the machine off island camping that it made it home under its own power!

WTG Franklin!

Saw a car that was so hungry, it was eating its own bumper!

There are three leaks. Two are from roof seams that I didn’t seal up last time. So I taped off the rest of the roof seams and went to town with the sealer. This is not so much of a repair as just a stabilization.

These two hit exactly over where I stashed my pants and right in the middle of our sleeping bags about two thirds of the way down.

Blek!

This one is a little bit scarier. Sadly this is behind all the window hardware and interior bits.

This leak fills up the area where Julie’s pillow sits. So I can’t just ignore it.

I almost put duct tape over it. Now I kinda’ wish I had.

The water runs out from under this forward window. Time to dig in..

As I begin to rip into this area I find the design is to let the water run down the sides of the window into this “window box”. From there, I assume, it drains out somewhere.

But the bottom of this box is completely missing. The outer side, or what remains of it, is that rusted strip hanging there.

The outer plate that I removed holds the cranking mechanism. All of the weather stripping came out as dust and fluff.

Above the windows were rats’ nests. The rear window’s nest was the bigger of the two.

The interesting bit was when I started to clean out these nests I found they were actually chewed up books!

The rear one was a Perry Mason novel.

I looked up Perry Mason novels.

The Perry Mason novels and short stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, published from 1933 to 1973.

The front one seems to be some old book on baseball.

Knowing nothing about sports, I looked up John McGraw

John Joseph McGraw, nicknamed "Little Napoleon" and "Mugsy", was a Major League Baseball player and manager of the New York Giants. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. While primarily a third baseman throughout his career, he also played shortstop and the outfield in the major leagues.

This stuff could have been hidden in here at the factory! I wonder if someone stole somebody else’s books and stashed them in here?

But the real deal now is. How in the world am I going to...
• Get the remains of the window box out to get at the holes in the wall?
• Fix the holes in the wall?
• Get/Build a new window box?
• Put all this back together?

Monday, October 8, 2018

next >

< previous