Grizz's Redneck Express 1966 Chevy Short Fleetside RESTO-GO!

[Grizz1963]

Taken the day off tomorrow to spend some time on myself.

Yesterday a major cluster**** of a redundancy was announced, it will be swift and brutal it seems, wrapped up by end July, and nobody knows yet.

It will be a surprise it seems.

Nobody knows.

So I raised the car once again on axle stands.

And strung an old bedsheet in place as a dummy sun screen roof.





Spoke to a sailmaker today who is also prepared to look at the S10 bed cover.

Maybe get two birds with one stone.

Tomorrow, depending on how it unfolds, I want to go through all fasteners and ensure they are tight and right.

[Grizz1963]

I think there is a lot more progress here, even if not visible.

Problem now for Craig is that there is only he and his wife to try get the roof panels up.



Maybe I should try figure a way to go up next weekend, amd step away from the Rezin Rockit again.

Will give it a think.

[Grizz1963]

Walking past a skip, my eyes are drawn in there.

Walking the dog yesterday, the farm house had a new skip outside…….

Unused, like new….. phone holder, that will work for the Rezin Rockit and my mobile phone when I need a Satnav.



Free really is good.

[Grizz1963]

Carrying on with small jobs that are within my abilities had me check and mark off all underbody fasteners yesterday, my usual Red marking nail varnish seems to have disappeared, so,I opted for white, which does look rather rubbish on the black paint everywhere.

Still, another important job ticked off the list.



My good friend Kevin popped around for a progress check,,chat and coffee in the afternoon, so I used him to give opinion and comments too.

Also finalised the gearshift extension position and lock nut @nickwheeler had made and bolted the covering plate down for hopefully the last time.



Last late afternoon job was to final fix the modified fresh air intake inside the wheel arch, up high, facing back and out of harms way.



Shop shut early and then a drive and walk to go see how much hedgerow plums I could find for a batch of planned plum jam

Yield is down this year, the fruit is a lot smaller and certainly a lot less than previously.

So I may have to go search further afield.

[Grizz1963]

Filed under Random rambling.

The extreme heat is driving the farmers to harvest fast.

And the new guy, despite being it seems quite unfriendly, is driving his whole business with an extreme financial eye.

Long days and working to late, after dark that is around 10.00pm

He has also changed his tractors from John Deere to Fendt this year.,





Took Bonnie for a walk in the cut fields.

She absolutely loved it.

Must have been so much overload for her olfactory senses.



Back home, George, the cat I don’t have, has now trained me to feed him,wet,food,twice a,day.

It is cheaper than chicken or ham.

He is a pleasant chap to have around.





.

[Grizz1963]

Dry summer.

Hot days, relative to monsoon weather, has made the yield of wild fruit less than usual as @kevins and I both realised.

So this year my fruit collection was in three different places.

Near the vets was good for about 1.5kg and one of Sally, Bonnie and my walks has a few trees, of which only three had any accessible, usable fruit, it gave about 2.5kg as well, so I had 4kg by Saturday afternoon, stashed in the fridge.

Perfect dog walking paths.

Finding the fruiting trees becomes a game too.





Sunday I went looking about 7 miles from home on the isle of grain down the road my electrician lodger goes to,work, I recalled there was fruit when he came here last year……



Booooom as @pauly says.

Jackpot.



Of course I had to share with this girl, I thought she was a boy……..



Friendly.

https://youtu.be/qZoM5jUZAsE

About 6 varieties of plums all told in my collection that made up 12kg raw with stones.



Back home I cleaned them all, and weighed up the lot.

8kg from the trees in the lane, of course minus what the horses had.

So a total of 12kg in fruit.

I went to the village and bought 10kg of sugar as I use less than the traditional 1 to 1 mix of fruit, sugar and a cup of water per kilogram.

Split the lot into 2 and 4 kilo and cooked them in two pots, with the stones in.





MISTAKE.

But I got the stones out when halfway through.

Will do the second 6kg tonight after work.

And will remove all the stones before cooking, another spectacularly shiite job, but has to be done.

By 8.00pm I had bottled and cleaned up the kitchen.

RESULT.






Part two tonight then.

[Braunschweiger]

Good yield, my wife is also making jam.

[Grizz1963]

On the MX5 loom, just found these two items.

Anyone know what these two items actually do?

Wired into the loom on the drivers side.



And no, they are not labelled.

Thank you.





They're the fuel tank and carbon cannister solenoids.
Your new fuel tank doesn't have the necessary plumbing for them.

They're connected because I don't know if the ECU notices if they're not there, and so we don't keep looking at random unused electrical connectors. They are removed from the bulky components they are associated with.

Nick

[Grizz1963]

10.00am is redundancy Teams meeting.

I prefer to be employed of course, but was reminded of the story below.



Change is constant, and how we deal with it is often what makes the difference.



A small story most of you may have heard before, you can change the situation, persons and storyline to suit.


There were two boys, twins if you want, they were both put into separate rooms for a week, fed and looked after in isolation.

In the corner of the rooms were a pile of lemons.

After a week, they opened the rooms and found the boys in very differing states of emotion.

Boy one was crying, depressed and unhappy because the lemons were terrible and he was bored.

Boy two was happy, flourishing and asked for more lemons.

In the corner of the room was a pile of crates, filled with bottles of lemonade.


Make of it what you want.


Life is good.

[Grizz1963]

Hottest day of the year.



Spare wheel repainted same as the others.



At least something got done.

[Grizz1963]

Spare refitted and I must say, I like the look of the new paint.

Looks like I cared with the finishing.

[Grizz1963]

So on Tuesday a lot of nothing happened in the extreme heat.

John the lodger had gone from 8 hours of driving instruction time to one hour during Monday afternoon, so,he rescheduled the one hour that was left in his diary to,Friday and took the day off.

I worked from home as hospitals were on high alert and on Monday I was in one and realised the heat was not a good thing at all.

Being well ahead of my targets and quotas meant mainly administrative tasks that could be done sitting under a tree, drinking Pina Colada’s (by the bucket)

Heat under the carport hovered around 39’C

The dark green roof may have something to do with it of course.



So John and I went and started on the side lights, under the carport by 09.00 ( I had been up before 06.00 and run through a load of admin before 8.30 )

It took us nearly 4 hours to find a fault in the drivers side, including disassembly and checking of the rear lights that @nickwheeler had previously sorted.



Mate Martin called around 12.30 to see how I was enjoying the heat as his company had shut for the day, speaking with John, they narrowed it down to a duff earth as the side light was acting as indicator and various tests showed passenger side was fine.



One shortcut earth and it was all good.

So wiring was soldered in place and I bonded both the side lights into the fenders for the final/first time.



Once these were done, it was time for a cold celebratory beer for John, water had been flowing all day.

Using 4 different sets of instructions and Google, replacing one blown 15 amp fuse (possibly just a wire touching and shorting at some point) we proceeded to decipher and get the relays I had bought previously to work.

At some point the one side tested like this……..

https://youtu.be/UnYritotCCA

A few hours of work found both headlights, the halo’s and side lights all working.

A lot of forward and reverse went on through the day, neither of us are electricians, and Martin’s advice helped John understand the intricacies more clearly.



While he was on the lights, I did various little jobs of tidying up and getting things together.

One was to drag the bits for the pretend”Race car doors” out of hibernation……..

Laying it all out and trying to recall what the original plans were for their assembly.

In the end after some mocking up around 18.30 and swearing a bit, I put them aside.



In stead, I started to wrap all the exposed wiring and looms, right down to 2 wire,sections, in self amalgamating tape.

Doing it all in black and removing and untangling parts then anchoring them in the engine bay has transformed the space as well.

I am really really pleased with the result as it came out better than expected.

I guess making the extra effort does pay off.



In the mean time, John whom I had dismissed after a long day, as it was now 8.00pm and he had been down there all day, except for going to pee once, insisted on figuring out how we could have the ring halo lights run separately on an ignition live.

We still need to find one in the power distribution box or somewhere, it is out there.

But then they will act as DRL’s which looks pretty cool.

Lastly……….


For everyone’s pleasure.

Angle of the camera makes it look like they are not both working, trust me….. ZOOMERS, they all work fine and are actually the same.

VIDEO OF FULL LIGHT TEST.

https://youtu.be/gSJhOtB89L4


Next jobs include the rear fog light, which iirc is an LED and may also require a relay if wired into the loom, alternately just a live off a switch in the cab for testing time.

Hooter needs to be fitted and made to work, I was looking for something interesting and obnoxious to fit but have pretty much failed to find anything, same as an MX5 service manual to have on standby.

Then the elephant in the room…….

Fuel pump wire to be reinstated in the loom and maybe………. Crank over and start.


Thanks for checking in.

[Grizz1963]

[quote author="@westbay" source="/post/2741305/thread" timestamp="1658394188"]What no CROWN dust cap ?

not my capitals ...[/quote]






Still need to figure centre caps.


Supersized CROWNs would be great.

[Palf70Step]

He did good on that!

[Braunschweiger]

Best man and skillful hands

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

He did good on that!

I am massively thankful he did those parts.

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

Best man and skillful hands

Yes, clever enough.

Pity he has very low stress tolerance and has walked away from the build for now…..

If he comes back, that will be fine.

In the mean time I am back to building on my own.

That is fine too.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Braunschweiger

Best man and skillful hands

Morning mate.

Speaking of hands……

Many hands make light(er) work.

And some clever leverage.





No car building this weekend…….

Took Friday off and was over 200 miles from home by 09.00

More later of the processes in pictures and words.

https://youtu.be/NCkz3-KbnKE


And of course it is England……


https://youtu.be/cb_5Q26Vbug

[Braunschweiger]

The country that knows 100 descriptions of rain
An engine crane is a powerful tool

[Grizz1963]

Being the restless sleeper I am, I heard the rain coming down all night, in varying degrees of intensity.

Sunday morning by 6.00am Fil and I were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee/tea while Craig was up at the shop, already cutting, sawing, banging……

So we went to join him, but it was wet, and all we could do was move stuff about, clean up and prepare for felting the roof later.

By 10.00 we had had breakfast, in an effort to give the rain a chance to move on, and by 11.30 Fil and Nicky left for Cambridge as it had become obvious the rain was not going to stop.

Craig, Kyle and I went back and they started to strip off some of the old felt that had not come off with the disassembly….. hard work, hampered by the rain not allowing the blowtorch to heat the tar sufficiently.

I removed nails and inspected the rooftop in the mean time, waiting for the rain to go……





Eventually after a coffee and goodbyes at 12.30 we called it a day, and no felting had been done.

I headed home and Sally had promised to cook sweet n sour pork on noodles

Road conditions dried out an hour from Craigs and by the time I got home, it was sunny and 29’C

Bonnie was happy to see me too.






LAST VIDEO.

VIEW FROM THE TOP.


https://youtu.be/AVo31ICWZVg



And a final word from Fil.


Time To Sleep is directly proportional to the volume of Jack Daniels Cinnamon consumed - an experiment that was repeated to prove it wasn't just a co-incidence the first time!

It really was a great weekend and a wonderful sense of achievement when we got that last panel in.

I remember clearly when taking those roof panels down how glad I was that I wasn't going to be one of the poor sods who had to put them back up again

With Craig's thoughtful planning and having the original team who understood how the whole thing needed to be stitched back together the job was actually a lot easier than I'd feared.

As ever Craig & Lorraine's hospitality was second to none and Kyle is always a pleasure to work with. Rian, well, I don't have to say that it's always great to catch up with you and I love those little things like us living a couple of hours away from each other but meeting up four hours away for you to deliver my latest new tool! You managed to bring two different snacks which I haven't had since my childhood was also one of those quirks of fate that add an intangible and unmeasurable grin factor to what was a great couple of days.

The enjoyment to effort ratio was heavily skewed in favour of enjoyment for me.

The felting would really have been the icing on the cake, but it was not to be. We got the important work done that Craig simply could not have done without a couple of extra people and that's what counts.

The only negative was that the exact same journey cost me nearly exactly £30 more in fuel than it had 9 months ago - but there's nothing we could do about that.

I didn't partake of the Jack Daniels but don't mind admitting that I found myself nodding off on the sofa yesterday afternoon. Exercise and fresh air is great for that. Slept until about 7 this morning which is a good couple of hours later than normal for me.

We must do it again soon



Weekend over.


.

.

[Grizz1963]

Purchased on the way to work……



Heavy duty horn push and 5 foot of airline hose.

Fitting later.

[Grizz1963]

After leaving Craig to deal with the temporary roofing felt job once rain subsided, he managed to get it done inbetween day job nd rain.


And as a temporary fix, I think it looks great.






It also allowed him to move toys and stuff about, including the space where the workshop/stables panels were since November.





A load of motorbikes nd scooters suddenly found themselves indoors in the dry as well.

Imam pleased for his toys sake, as open storage is not ideal.

My S10 had lived indoors all its previous 20 years and 38k miles and since coming here is outdoors, so I am eager to get the Rezin Rockit done to vacate space for both to be under cover.

Or sell the S10 if the right buyer comes along.

[Grizz1963]

So the 2022 🇺🇸 Road trip is on.

The full report will be here, please follow the link as I am not going to copy and paste the whole trip bit by bit.

THREAD; https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread...p-grizz-report




Here we go again.

Covid-19 screwed up a few years……

So the 2022 trip will be three weeks and a whole lot longer than any previous trips.

My weapon this year, thanks to Dennis again is this Chevy Silverado.



FIRSTLY THE RULES: To all those who objected to my last report and the censorship, please UNSUBSCRIBE NOW

SERIOUSLY, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

So the link to the censored 2019 trip is here

https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread...z-craig-dennis

The 2018 road trip with Three men and a Rental car as Part1 followed by Part 2 where Craig and I took a Chevy 5.7 liter truck to go picking in Iowa, Illinois and various other places for another great week was unforgettable.

We have managed to Bully Dennis into joining us again.

http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/...2018-humdinger

This trip had followed a few that I had done before in the USA

Thread links below.

So, what do you do after an absolutely awesome American road trip in 2017 where I managed to break a Dodge Hemi Challenger before the owners 60th surprise birthday party?

http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/...d-small-update

Which had followed the first trip to meet Dennis and a first trip using his Dodge in 2016

http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/...2016-best-trip

Which had of course come about as a result of my first road trip to America when mate Martin and I had flown into Texas and got to get in at Gas Monkey garage and a load of other amazing peoples garages.

http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/...chevy-roadtrip


This year promises to be filled with old skool rods, cars, bikes, food, guns, beards, tattoos, visiting a dying friend, some new interesting people and places not visited before including, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Nebraska and the bonus ball would be a visit to, or a meet up with a South African bike builder friend in Rhode Island, which would add a lot of miles to the trip.


It should be a good one this year and ideally I should launch a blog where everyone has access and I get to moderate it along with my sidekick craigrk who is sadly stuck in a Seychelles resort with his family


I hope to make it as far as Rhode Island to spend some crazy time with this mate, another South African expatriate.

Some race car action, museums, lifestyle reports, side by sides and offroad fun and of course FOOD.


My 2022 Rhode Island target is this builders shop.












Looking forward to a great trip and meeting more interesting people associated with cars, trucks and general goodness.


Being able to share it on here..


“Buckle up and shut up sunshine” a famous person once said.

[Grizz1963]

Checked in on the flight.


Now we just need the rest of the process to go reasonably smoothly, get my butt in a seat and get to St Louis and see more of the 🇺🇸

Then relax.

[Grizz1963]

Another small job was to refit the hood/bonnet last night.

I am really impressed with the fit of everything as it came together.



John and I had a few good chuckles while assembling it.

Nice tight fit.





And the two of us actually gloating and wondering what else we could do.

Celebrate sounded like a good idea.




And a short video of the first time I tried the clutch and brakes out.


VIDEO:

https://youtu.be/JrLxGl6EZAs


A short road test is also planned for today over on the farm road.


More later, hopefully.


Thanks for checking in.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by sparkplug

For those who want to follow the road trip, a reminder that it's all happening here

:popcorn

So I made it.

Knackered as the flight was long and I got stuck in a centre seat.

Made it to Chicago O’Hare airport for a 3hour lay over.

That was enough time for wings and a Dr Pepper.



Got to St Louis by 2.25 and by 2.50 Dennis and a cooler full of beer collected me.

Always great getting out on the motorway.





Passed on going yo Ethyl’s and seeing Kelly so sttaight home.


The 1966 C10 Dennis had built onto a 2015 Nascar racing truck is even better in real life.

Incredible attention to detail.


More later.