Got the final bill today from Homer for "Round 1". Almost seven hundred dollars. OUCH! I wasn't expecting that, but then I did know I was gonna be spending money to get this truck into driveable condition.

I managed to do a bit of light sanding and priming today. Just a few areas that were bare metal beiginning to rust. I still have a few nore to do. It's really still a bit cold here to be doing the priming outside, which is the only place I have to do it.

But, I figured what the heck. It will hopefully stop the rust from spreading, it does make the truck look a bit better, and it's all gonna hafta be redone anyway before I can paint the whole truck.

I bought a water temperature sending unit, but couldn't install it cause I don't have a big enough socket. But, when I located the unit, I realized the wire wasn't attached. I hooked it up and ran the truck for a while. The gauge moved a bit as the truck warmed up, but never really made it to where Homer expected it to. I'll replace the sending unit when I buy the socket and try again. If that doesn't work I'll go ahead and buy a gauge.

I don't wanna drive the truck very far without knowing the water temp.

This truck has quite a few wires under the hood that aren't connected to anything. So, I'm hoping that the heater fan wire is just disconnected. I'll take a look under the dash when I get time.

I also got inside the bed box with a wire wheel on an electric drill to try to knock down some of the rust. After about ten minutes I realized that that method ain't gonna work. I got out my little palm sander and some regular old 60 grit paper and tried that for several minutes. Way too slow. I hafta come up with something much faster.

I might try a wire knot disc as someone else mentioned somewhere in the forums. There's got to be an easier way. I probably won't get to play with her again until this weekend.

Once I make some kind of significant changes, I'll take some more pics and add them to my site.

Oh, and although I'm against under the dash gauges for the end product, if I can get a cluster for around $40 I'll probably do it as a temporary solution.

hogrocket. Sounds like a cool deal! Good luck with the project.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Davey