Well, we're slap bang in the middle of a heatwave here, guys, and I have gone and stuffed my knee up. Not sure how, but suspect it was due to an overly enthusiastic session on my new water rower. You would reckon an old fart like me should know better. I am definitely no athlete, but now, caked in Deep Heat, at least I smell like one. So, what this means is, I have been a bit slower on doing stuff on the old girl lately.
Still totally overawed by the new tub. Can't speak highly enough about the quality. Best decision I have made so far (and there haven't been many)
The good news is I am on annual leave now for about four weeks, so hoping to hit the truck a bit harder, although this knee is killing me, making it very problematic to do anything but sit on the lounge and watch DVD's.
The other thing I have done is not so much do work on the truck but put in place the sale of the wheels and tyres. This was an aspect of the purchase that I was pretty miffed about. The seller told me the tyres (Beautiful BF Goodrich Radial TA's - my all time favourite tyre) were brand new when I asked about buying his project on Ebay. He neglected to tell me they were brand new 12 years ago.
The other thing he forgot to tell me was the Cragars were unilug wheels. Might have been legal once upon a time, but now they are a big no-no. So, essentially, that reasonable buy I bought from this guy now looks like another dud decision I made (one of many I might add, in a short span of time)
So, no point in keeping them. I am selling them off to someone who might want to use them for an off road project etc.
It's a real pity, because this is my favourite wheel/tyre combo and basically they are useless to me.
I was considering just replacing the rear wheels with a Ford wheel stud pattern, but I cannot find the same style Cragars anywhere, and the new style is crap compared to these, even though they might be shinier.
The only option I think I have is to sell the lot and start afresh with a new set of wheels and tyres and go from there, hoping it won't take 12 more years to get on the road.
And what sort of wheel was I thinking of?
The only wheel that comes close to the style that I like are those American Racing wheels.
The good news is Bob Jane sell them at a reasonable price compared to a lot of other wheels. Probably because they are a 15 and most guys are going for anything above 19 these days I guess. https://www.bobjane.com.au/a/15x10-5-114-3-wheels/american-racing/american-racing-vn615-torq-thrust-ii-chrome-15x10-5-114-3-n44/30587?variant_id=30587
A set of Ford stud 15's Torq Thrust II's are a few hundred bucks each for the big wheels, and similar for the fronts.
Just deciding whether it is better to go the polished look or go the chrome look. Just reading somewhere it is easy to polish out scratches on the polished wheel. As with chrome, once you scratch them, you can't polish that out.
Here's an exciting picture of me getting the tape measure out and carefully measuring the distance between the lip on the firewall and the centre of that hole. That plate you see there goes on the inside, but it was easier to temporarily bolt it on the outside and measure it. This plate is a reinforcement plate. 10mm thick and going nowhere! To this I mount the brake booster and master cylinder. I'm opting for the 8" booster to compliment my disk/ disk brake combo. Still haven't decided on the booster yet, but not many choices these days. It's either Procomp or Procomp or another brand that has been rebadged to confuse people.
Nice shot of the firewall in all of its Holy Glory. Bit of a job to weld all those holes up, and I am not sure of the best way to go about it. If I had an offsider, I could have got them to hold some copper pipe against the hole and maybe that would have helped making neater welds. But I didn't have anyone, so I just well ballistic.
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