My '95 RCLB C1500

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Got the tailgate sanded, cleaned and primed. A few minor scratches to glaze now, but nothing major. This tailgate was in near-mint condition because it came off the '88 delivery truck in 89 and was kept in storage until I needed it.

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I also reinstalled it, but I've had some issues with one of the latch rods not fully retracting. I have five spares, so not a big deal. I'll swap the rod and maybe shim the handle if required.

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Also dug this old grille filler out of the woods; I've had it so long I forgot it was there. Luckily found it while looking for a ball the dogs had lost. The hardware was all rusted, so I swapped it out for some stainless I had in the basement. A little bit of polishing and the piece was nice and shiny again.

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And here it is installed. I'm a sucker for chrome, so I love it.
One more part out of storage, and onto the truck.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Took the truck to the cottage over the weekend to see how she'd do on the longer trip. Everything went well, nothing fell off, great success.

But when I got home, the truck wouldn't start without cranking for a good 15 seconds. So I figured fuel pump relay, got in and tested it, relay tested fine. I jumped the pins to make the fuel pump run and the truck would start easily.

Long story short, the relay is fine, it's the socket in the under hood fuse panel that's loose. I tweaked the pins on the relay so it grabs a little better, but I'll have to research a more long-term solution.

 

[Canadian Rust Bucket]

Still shopping around for a good price on the paint; I don't want to blow my budget on a crazy expensive paint job, but I still want it to be good.

Replaced the speed sensor in the tail of the transmission to fix my wonky speedometer.

Swapped in a new pair of leaf springs since my old refurbished ones have sagged too much to be re-arched. This fixed my sagging frame issue where the passenger rail was quite a bit lower than the driver's rail at the rear. I took the truck to a spring shop, and was quoted $1500 to do the swap. Told the guy to pound sand, I'd do it myself for $700 (the cost of the spring packs.)

Also picked up a set of LED lights for under my hood. The original mercury-switched light is long gone, so I have to fab up a replacement. I'm thinking I'll use a normally closed pin switch I scavenged to trigger the lights to turn off when the hood is closed.