Well, with the seats installed, we took an opportunity to drive the truck around the block a few times. I actually grabbed a fan belt off of the salvage yard truck for one to match up. We threw it on for the time being. It still worked, I can't imagine how long it had been since it was actually in service. I found that the truck drove very nicely. The transmission and two speed both worked well. I had the chance to give Kevin some tips on how to drive this rig. I was thrilled, it seemed like old shoes. Now was the time to start tearing into some of the more in depth issues.
The right lower door hinge area had some significant rust from mouse urine. In all honesty, it is hard to know if the rust holes allowed the mice access, or did they get in somewhere else. Bottom line it needed to be repaired. The entire cowl vent was packed with nest. After we were able to clean most of it out, I sand blasted the interior of the cowl vent and pillar area. I ended up ordering all three pieces of replacement panels and we figured to do cab corners also. The floor area under the foot area had water that sat under the rubber floor mat. The floors under the truck looked great, but there was some moderate putting on the surface under the mat. Sand blasting and a Milwaukee grinder with a knot brush revealed a half a dozen or so pin holes. These were minor enough to weld the thin spots and grind smooth. As far as I was concerned, it was still up to Kevin if we proceed with a repaint or not. The holes that let mice in had to be corrected, so I just worked along on things that had to be done.
My daughter ordered a dash repair panel for Kevin for Christmas, so I proceeded to install it. Also at this time, Kevin removed the gas tank and found that it had a hole in it from previous damage. The floor under the left rear cab mount was badly cracked. The cracks extended into the left inner cab corner. While looking it over, it seemed that there was only one spot weld that attached the floor brace to the rear wall of the cab. This weld had broken decades before and forced the floor to carry all of the load. Being a grain truck, I surmise that it spent some time in farm fields and that heavy work was more than the floor could handle. Ad the floor gave way, the cab mounting bolt started to protrude higher into the floor as the cab sank. This bolt eventually wore a hole in the tank. A previous owner brazed up the hole, but it must have still had a slow leak as the entire area was covered with some type of epoxy. It was not enough, so we either were going to need a new tank or repair this one.
Somewhere about this stage, it was kind of assumed that we were going to have do at least some repaint. The OE color was Crystal Blue. Sometime it had been repainted a cedar green color. So at this point, I no longer worried about the old paint and went ahead with repairs as needed. The right fender came off to access the pillar, and we took the opportunity to straighten some dents and address rust near the pinch weld by the bottom bolt location. Again the mice had caused issues. Did I happen to mention that I HATE MICE!
