Fixing things, adding things. Things things things.

Due to some family stuff and having a fair bit of overtime at work I've been a bit lazy and haven't updated the build log in a while.  Progress on the truck continues, however.

A fairly quick and cheap task I wanted to get out of the way was fixing the janky crap of a positive battery terminal that the truck had on it.  There was also a wire that had been spliced together by hand and didn't even have tape over it, so I figured I'd tidy up some of that.  The old terminal was really soft and the way the previous owner had wired some other stuff to it was pretty gnarly.

Plenty of corrosion damage, you can tell it didn't have much life left

That nasty splice

I replaced the terminal with a nice new brass one.  Cleaned up the end of the positive wire and re-terminated the ends of the 2 additional wires with some properly sized terminals.  Cut the ends off and soldered that nasty wire and heatshrinked it.  I then wrapped the whole thing in some nice new wire conduit (not pictured).

So that was a simple enough task.  Whole thing took less than an hour.  The next thing that had been bothering me was a piece of metal interior trim that goes below the rear window.  It was rusty and I had removed it and had it lying in my garage for around a year.  I finally sanded and cleaned it, then sprayed it with Rustoleum rust converter primer.

After priming it I shot it with 4 coats of Krylon Oxford Blue.  It doesn't match perfectly but it looks pretty good.

Realised I didn't have a picture of it in the truck, so I just ran out and took one.

One day while browsing Craigslist I happened to see a trailer hitch receiver for a early model Frontier.  I sent the owner a message asking about it. He said it would work on the hardbody as well.  I did some googling and found this was the case.  I decided since I'd have to pull the bumper off anyway that it was time to get rid of that jacked up rear bumper.  I ordered a early model Frontier chrome bumper and brackets off eBay.  The bumper arrived after a few days, but I was going offroading with some friends so I decided to wait until after that to install it.

After I got back I yanked the rear bumper.  Upon doing this I realized there was some minor frame damage on the passenger side.  The bumper bracket on that side looked like it had been stretched.  It was warped and the bolts were so badly damaged that I had to just use a breaker bar and break the heads off, then tap them out with a hammer.  That bend in the frame was preventing the hitch receiver from lining up properly.  I took a couple pieces of flat steel I had and used my ball joint press to straighten most of it out, then tweaked on it by clamping an adjustable wrench on it and bending it around with that.  It turned out to be pretty easy.

There's what it looked like before. The receiver uses that bottom hole, so that had to be fixed.

With that fixed, I installed the rear bumper.  It did require some modification to get 3 bolts in.  The bumper said it only needed 2, so only 2 of the holes lined up.  The 3rd hole (the receiver hitch recommends using 3) lined up about 70% of the way, so I just used a dremel to open the hole up some more on the frame.

The new bumper looks significantly better.

If you watched the video above, you'll have heard me talking about water getting in the motor.  I took a little bit in through the intake (luckily no damage done).  The cause of this was mostly this huge rust hole.

I'm pretty sure I had mentioned fixing this before but just had been putting it off.  It was finally time to do something about it, so I went and bought some sheet aluminum.  I cleaned the rust hole up some and then sprayed it with rust converter primer.  Waited a day then sprayed a 2nd coat.  Waited another day and then sprayed the area with silver hi temp paint.

I know this isn't the best fix, but it's good enough for now.  If it keeps getting worse I'll tear the snout of the truck off and do a proper rebuild.  Anyway, after painting it I used some paper and made a template of the hole, then used that to cut some of the sheet aluminum to shape. I put a nice thick bead of liquid nails around the opening, then drilled and riveted it in place.  The liquid nails should do a good job of sealing it.  I used liquid nails under the bottom to try to fill in areas I thought moisture might accumulate.

First piece of aluminum riveted in place

both piece in place. It looks pretty good IMO.

After getting the aluminum in place I let the liquid nails dry for a day, then primed it and sprayed the area again with the silver high temp paint.  The next day I put all the stuff that goes in that area back in. 

Once it gets dirty it'll hardly be noticeable :)

I don't remember if I've mentioned it here, but ever since I purchased the truck I've been looking for one of those light bars that goes in the bed.  Well, I finally found one.  It was actually made for a Toyota so I figured it would require some work, but thought I'd check it out.  It barely fit in there.  We literally had to shove it in place.  Once it was in there, it wasn't coming back out.  Oh well.  Paid the guy and drove home.

Original janky bumper is still lying in the bed today, lol.

As you can tell, it was night so I didn't get to work on it any on day 1.  I'm sure you can tell the paint job is pretty crap.  Also, it's pink.  I would have preferred to be able to paint it outside the truck, but whatever.  I can deal.  I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but it's leaning forward because the Toyota's wheel wells are shorter.  I leveled it out s that I could bolt it up on the wheel wells and then measured the gap.  It was so tight fitting in there it would just sit like that, with the front bars just hovering in space even without the bolts in the rear.

I was planning on buying some steel tube to use as a 2" spacer.  A buddy suggested just using pieces of pipe cut to length.  That seemed easier so I went with his suggestion.  Drilled some holes and put the pipe in, then bolted it down.

I've currently got about 30% of the rail sanded and primed.  I'll post pictures of it fully painted in the next update.  I've got a ton of parts ready to do some major engine work.  I'm not sure when I'll get around to doing that part, but hopefully it'll be pretty soon.

Winches and hose

Once again it's been a bit of time since an update.  A good bit of things have been completed, I just kept putting off updating the worklog.  To start with, I got rid of the busted grille and installed a new one.  It's aftermarket, but looks great!

You can see here how the old one was damaged.

Split just to the left of the headlight

The whole piece to the right of the headlight is gone and it's cracked underneath

This was simple enough, just pull the old one and pop the new one in.  Took maybe 10 minutes.  It didn't come with a new badge so I had to use the old one.

After replacing the grille I didn't do a lot with it for a few weeks.  Then I decided to finally get after installing that winch bumper.  You can see one of the brackets installed (on the driver's side) on the picture above.  The tow hook was stuck on the other side.  I tried cutting the bolt with a dremel but it was just taking too long.  A local body shop cut the bolt for me for free :)  After having the bolt cut off I got both brackets installed.

However, it seems that this bumper was made for a different front end than what my truck has.  The side pieces wouldn't fit and didn't even remotely line up.  I called up Louis (my buddy that helped with some other parts of this project last year) to ask his advice.  Being an engineer and familiar with a welder I figured he was the right guy to ask.  He was :)

I showed him what I had to work with and he looked it over for a while, then we took to the grinder.

For the side pieces, we had to cut the bumper mount off and remove a fair bit of material to get them to fit around the bumper properly.  Then the brackets themselves had to be split and bent a bit to get the proper angle.  We filled the split in with weld and grinded it smooth.  By the end of the day I was pretty dang good with a grinder and cut off wheel.

We had to weld a tab on the bottom of the side pieces to allow them to be supported enough.  As you can see the factory holes didn't line up (other than the first one) due to the bend and the adjustment we had to make in the mounting angle.

Some of the paint was damaged and there was a fair bit of freshly ground metal exposed so we primed and painted them.  The paint took 5-7 hours to dry according to the can, so we waited a few days until we were both free then got back to work.

Louis handled all the welding

We got it all test fitted and then made some custom mounts to attach it to the bumper support, since we had cut the ones that it came with off.  I bought some flat iron which we bent with a torch and sledge, then welded some supports on them, painted and installed.

You can see the bumper support just to the left of the lower driver's side flasher

I haven't bought a winch yet, but will do that later.  I also plan to mount a couple of extra off road lights to it to hopefully improve visibility when offroading at night (such as on camping trips).

I had noticed an odd noise coming from the passenger side wheel, so while working on some of this I pulled the wheel to check out the brakes.  One of the pads was defective and had broken apart.  This resulted in part of the pad cutting into the rotor and hub :(

The damage wasn't terrible but I wasn't pleased.  I got a free set of pads from Advance Auto, tightened all the bolts on the rotor, and it's been fine since.

I drove the truck for a few months on and off while doing things on my car or just for fun. It's a good little truck.  I began doing a projector retrofit on my car and due to a series of unfortunate circumstances it still sits in the garage in pieces waiting on some parts to arrive.  Last Thursday I was driving the truck to lunch and noticed it start running oddly and the steering being stiff.  I checked after I got to the restaurant and there was fluid everywhere in the engine bay.  I called my mom (she was off) and let her know I was having truck problems, so she met me there. I had her crank the engine and try turning the wheels, which resulted in a large spray of power steering fluid out of the high pressure line.

It doesn't show up well in the picture, but everything that has a pinkish/reddish tinge to it has PS fluid sprayed on it

Awesome.  There was an Auto Zone right accross the street, so I got some spare power steering fluid, hose clamps, and Gorilla tape.  I taped the hose up and secured it best I could with the clamps.  This didn't do much to stop the leak, but it kept it from spraying all over the wiring.  I cleaned up the wiring and everything I could as best as I could and limped it home.  While at the Auto Zone I ordered a new hose, which had to come from about an hour away and didn't arrive until after 730pm.  I went ahead and took the bolts out of the line and allowed the fluid to drain into a catch pan while waiting for this.

This is the line that burst, you can see moisture on the left side of it.

Replacing this hose turned out to be a rather inconvenient task.  Not exactly difficult, but quite bothersome.  While waiting on the hose to arrive, I went ahead and pulled the cruise control actuator deal out (I don't use cruise anyway and when I replaced my blinker stalk I lost the switches for it anyway).

This is something I'd been meaning to do for a while.  It was nice having that thing out of the way.

The hose finally arrived, but by the time I got back in town it was dark and I was tired.  Friday I drove my dad's truck to work since he is out of town.

Shiny new $62 hose :/

To replace this hose you have to disconnect both ends, remove 3 mounting brackets from the frame, and pull the radiator :(  I didn't really want to drain all my coolant out and whatnot, but rather than try to find a way to avoid pulling the radiator I just went ahead and did it.  I drained the coolant using the drain valve and caught the rest with a catch pan when I removed the lower hose.  I went ahead and replaced the lower radiator hose while doing this since it was a good time.

You can see the two power steering hard lines between the condenser and the fan

I thought about replacing the radiator, but it was surprisingly still in good shape.  The vents weren't clogged and it didn't have much damage.  I installed the new hose, reinstalled the radiator, filled them both with fluids, and then tested.  Surprisingly, no leaks!  I was pretty stoked about this, normally any time I fiddle with fluid lines I have to chase problems with leaks afterwards.  All of this sounds a lot easier than it was, getting those brackets off and all that jazz eventually took me all weekend, plus I was slowed by some family problems that came up.  I got the truck running Sunday evening around 7pm.  It was immediately thrown to the fire when I went to work Monday and had about 100 miles to drive.  Old girl made it just fine and is still leak free.  Steering works better than it ever has, so I suspect it may have been low on fluid for a while.

So that's how it sits now.  I still haven't been able to install my map lights or new lighted visors, but that will come eventually.  My primary concern right now is going to be getting my car driveable again...

Wire you so janky (see what I did there)

More progress on the truck!  Things have been going pretty smoothly lately.  The weather has been nicer and the days are getting longer, so more time for work :)

One of the things that had been bothering me was the way the defrost vents were sticking up.  2 of them would stick up on one end because the replacement dash cap I got was slightly warped.

Notice how the left and middle vents are raised along their right sides

This wasn't really something that effected function so I had lived with it, but with the truck nearing completion I wanted it cleaned up.  I popped the 2 vents out and used a hammer and a screwdriver to bend the metal under the vinyl of the dash around until I got it bent in a manner that allowed both of the vents to seat nicely.

Middle vent fixed

And the left...

Success!

Shortly after doing this the speedometer cable I ordered arrived.  I pulled the cluster out of the dash and got to work.

There were also a couple bulbs on the idiot lights that were out.  I went ahead and found replacements for these.   The lights aren't really important but I just like to have things working.

Here's the back of the cluster just so you can see this awesome 80s tech.

That greasy thing on the left side is where the speedometer cable connects to.  There was a little odd looking bit of plastic sticking out of this that I suspected was the end of the cable that had broken off.

I was right.

The cable wasn't too hard to get out surprisingly.  3 screws and a few clips, disconnect from the transmission and just yanked it out.

It was nasty and covered in grease

Got the new one out of the box.  Here's what the end is supposed to look like.

It was a lot more difficult to install this thing than it was to remove, but still it only took about 20 minutes.  There was a bunch of grease and other buildup around where it screws into the firewall, so I cleaned all that junk off.

Notice that open area under the brake booster vaccum line, that's where the cable mounts

Here's the new one installed, nice and clean

Tested it out and it works great!  It's a couple mph behind the GPS speedometer I was using, but close enough.  I'd rather it say I was going faster than I am than the other way around.

In another couple days I got the new plugs for the headlights to replace the janky wiring that I talked about a few posts ago.  I cut the little things off the ends of the wires on the passenger side, stripped away a few inches of wire that had been spliced into, and soldered the new plug in, then heatshrunk it and wrapped it in conduit.

Before:

After:

Tested it and it works great :)  Definitely looks a lot better than those stupid wires and I won't have to worry about them falling off/corroding/shorting/etc.

The other side was ok, but the plug did have some corrosion on it and the wires on that side had been spliced as well, so I cut that stuff out and replaced it as well.  That plug pack came with 2 anyway so why not.

The boot around the headlight on the driver's side is missing.  I tried to find one at advance and a couple other local places but they didn't have any.  I got on infamous nissan and my usual parts guy (david29) had some so I ordered one from him.  It'll be in in a few days.

Here's a picture with the old plug and one of those butt connectors that was used to splice some random piece of junk wire in.

I've still got some wiring cleanup I'd like to do in the engine bay, some niceties for the interior, that kindof thing but I'm really pleased with where the truck is right now :)  It's come a long way in just a little over a year!