So after not really doing anything to my Trekker except pulling things apart and collecting parts for quite a while now, I figured i had better get back on the stick. Today is supposed to be our last nice day without rain for a while. As you know after previous front end journeys I decided to return my Trekker back to stock. One problem was that I had traded away my headlights, bezels and sockets. U-pull-it provided the sockets and rings (Shiny); put together from several different sets that were damaged or missing pieces. Craig's list provided the bezels from a 79 4x4, although a 2x4 would have worked just fine. The headlights conveniently came from a 1981 2WD truck I bought over the summer. The guy had purchased brand new halogen bulbs for the truck, even though the truck didn't need them. Score me. SO this is how the truck looked for most of the last 6+ months since I pulled the 82-83 grill and headlight set up off and removed the beautiful Smittybilt bumper.
Better:
still better:
Best and stock again:
a little wipey wipey and wala:
I decided to reuse the original non chrome pieces for now since I have a way to go. Chrome after paint maybe.
Next was the freaking gas tank issue that has made my life hellish. After 2 rebuilds, 3 mechanics, I finally got it right myself. You know what they say about doing it yourself. The tank has been out for close to a year maybe? It was now bone dry of any fumes, so I could vacuum out the small amount of debris in the tank.
Special parts:
Turns out that the tank was fine and I did not have to get it boiled and sealed, but it was in need of a cleaning and a new filter. Old one new one. Red shoe black shoe.
So the special parts went back in first.
Then the gas fill tube, which by the way dried out and was a total freakin pain to reinstall. It looks cute here, but I had to beat it several time in the process of getting the tank mounted back up.
The tank was not fun to install either. Winnebago used standard bolts to hold on the tank adapter plates while of course the rest was metric. Winnebago could have made the adapter plate holes 1 size bigger and I would not have had to grumble under my truck for the extended time period I did.
So I then put the battery back into the truck to see if it would still start. Speaking of battery I forgot that I did do this summer. Battery tray was rusting a bit, so i cleaned and Navel jellied it, followed by a sealing primer. Pretty good considering this is where most of the seen rust is. (Fingers crossed)
to this:
Any way i got the truck started, runs great, so I decided I would try to see if the tachometer was still not working...looking down I noticed it wasn't, so I pulled the console out, took it apart and swaped the tachometer from another cluster I got at U-pull-it a few weeks ago. Wala works just perfect now. I think the original gauge could be repaired too. I might run it over to Radio shack one day for giggles. All for now.
