I’m happy to announce that, as of when I left the garage at 11pm last night, I once again have DASH LIGHTS in my truck!!  

What did I do to fix it? Well… the truth is, not much. I stared at the dash for a few minutes, then hit all the fuses on the panel with my tester again (for about the 5th time). At that point, I still had no juice on the dash panel fuse. I wiggled and jiggled all the wires under the dash, but still did not have anything.

Then I popped open my hood and stared some more. I traced some wires back to my solenoid and two of them had “in-line” fuses. I popped one open, and it looked fine. I put it back. I popped the 2nd one open, and it was a little white. So I replaced it with another 20amp fuse.

Then I went back to the fuse panel and had… nothing! On ANY of the fuses. Crap! What did I do? Oops… my tester wasn’t grounded very well. I re-ground the tester and tried again… and had power on all fuses! INCLUDING the elusive dash panel fuse. Moved on to the light switch… got it there, too! Moved on down the line to the “cigar lighter” light and dash panel plug… still had it!

SO… I plug in my dash, and as suspected, I have dash lights! Problem solved! I then plugged in the flasher for the blinkers and, wait… no blinkers?! On that one, I’m not sure what the heck happened, but it scared me for a minute. I went back through the process of testing everything, then unplugged and replugged all the connections, and they started working. Whew… good enough for me!

So there you have it… end of a long saga (at least for now). It only took me about 4 hours over 3 nights to get this fixed. lol! Here’s hoping the next time I drive my truck my dash lights don’t go out again, or I might just go “David Banner”, turn green, and rip out every wire in the thing.

If there is one thing in my life that seems to be my nemesis, it’s electicity. That’s right. Those simple little Amps and Volts aren’t so simple when I’m trying to make them work. Since the day in 1st grade (or was it 3rd?) when I innocently inserted my scissors into the light socket in Elementary school (it should have been covered, by the way!), electricity has been my “frienemy” (friend and enemy). It’s not that I can’t get it work, so much as it’s one of those things that just never seems to be as easy as it should be.

No those pesky little buggers are getting the best of me again.

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Well, I think by now pretty much everyone knows about my recent purchase. I’ve written here several times recently about buying an older truck that can serve as my “daily driver”, if needed, while I fix it up. Believe it or not, I did it!

This has actually been in the works for about a month. My friend Troy (shoutout!) called my attention to a web site that featured classic cars and trucks. Via that site, I located a 1967 Ford F100 “Camper Special” in Camas, WA, which is just outside of Portland, Oregon. It took a few days to work out the purchase, find a transport company, etc., but I finally got it all squared away. There were a few bumps along the way… the transport company almost lost the keys, then the truck was unloaded in sub-0° temps in Chicago and wouldn’t start back up after the truck driver killed it. He also had to drive here through a snow-storm in and south of Indy to get it here. I was able to jump it to get it home, but once I got it here it died on me.

All that aside I have it now, it’s running, and it’s in pretty good shape! This truck is almost exactly like the truck in which I learned to drive when I was a kid. Same color (needs some work), same truck package, everything! Pretty amazing I found this. For the most part, the body is clean. It has some rust spots, most of which are surface rust. The only spot that concerns me is around what is called the “drip rails”, which was a common rusting point on these trucks.

Anyhow, I found a mechanic here in town who is going to work on it with me. After having it sit for a week or two, we finally got a warm enough day to work. We put in a new battery and cables, new spark plugs, and a fresh tank of gas. She fired right up! The truck has a V8 352 FE with dual straight-line exhausts and glass-packs, so it really growls. The mechanic thinks the cam was upgraded to a 390 when the engine was rebuilt about 7-8 years ago, but I’m not sure how he can tell without measuring the stroke. We took it out for a spin and it had some go! It’s a 3-speed “Cruise-O-Matic” automatic transmission, so I won’t have to mess with any clutch.

Last Friday, I drove it around town for the first time running some errands. It took some time to get used to the lack of power steering and power brakes, but it wasn’t too bad once I got the feel for it again. It’s been YEARS since I drove a truck like this, and it was pretty fun! I can’t wait to get a power brake booster in it and get the rusty spots taken care of. There are lots of restoration parts made for these trucks, so once I get the major stuff out of the way, there shouldn’t be too many parts I can’t find.

This will be fun to overhaul, and maybe some day I can teach my son to drive in it, and maybe pass it along to him eventually. You can’t put a price on that!