[rkn463]

Next up was the weekend of November 3rd which happened to be the start of a week of vacation. The plan was to do some deer hunting in the mornings, work on building a new fence between myself and my neighbor; a refreshing little 2400 foot project across solid rock and down a steep hill (should be a hoot). Any time left over was to work on the truck.

So that plan did not work out very well. First of all it rained from the time I got there clear through the following Thursday morning. Seven inches total. OK, too muddy to work on the fence which should leave more time for hunting and working on the truck. Apparently the truck does not want to be finished, it fought me at every step. Saturday when I was cooped up in the house I went about doing the other half of the under hood wiring, this side is the lights, horn and alternator part. Again it needed to be assessed for damage and rewrapped but it also needed the alternator conversion to internal plus make the wires for the alternator reach to the passenger side of the engine. For what ever reason I did not take any pictures of that process. I did the conversion and extended the alternator wires longer than they will need to be and will not do the finish work until I reinstall the front clip to see where things land. The rest of that part of the harness is done but not installed. This took most of my free time Saturday and Sunday. After hunting Monday morning I headed in to Waco to pick up the auxiliary pump for the hydroboost, the re-builder was done with it. My Camaro was in need of state inspection, license renewal and replacing the transmission mount so after Waco I headed on in to Fort Worth and traded the truck for the Z28 and headed back South. I stopped off in Meridian and got the car inspected and licensed and headed back to get in an afternoon hunt.

Monday night I decided to finish up connecting the "motor" half of the wiring harness. All that was left was the starter connection. The previous week I didn't get it connected because I didn't have an 11/32 socket to get the old solenoid wire disconnected. I borrowed a 1/4" drive set from my brother and went to remove the wire. It did not want to come loose. I ended up dropping the exhaust pipe for better access and could see that the battery cable was fried, disconnected that but couldn't get the nut on the solenoid wire loose. In frustration I cut the wire and removed the solenoid from the starter. Now with good access I drenched it in PB Blaster and started twisting and broke the post off the solenoid. I decided to use the solenoid and battery cable from the 68 as they were both still relatively new (3 or 4 years). No big deal getting them loose other than I did it by flashlight. When I went to remove the old positive cable from the truck there was a heat shield covering where it was connected to the frame. I removed that and finally got the cable replaced, then put the solenoid back on and connected the wires. Great, what I expected to take 10 minutes just took three hours! I did not realize it at that time but this would set the tone for the rest of the whole week.

-Richard