78 gmc heavy half stepside project

[INSIDIOUS '86]

Thanks sharkbait! Haha.

So far this week I've got quite a bit done. Man where to start...

Basically this week was electrical week. Started off with no working gauges and a bunch of mystery wires found out two blue ones in the engine compartment were for oil press and water temp. I ground them out and found them to be in perfect order. The volt gauge was working...kinda it was flickering at 8 volts. A quick look at the back revealed the clips that clamp to the gauge pins were rusty and corroded. So I took the whole cluster out and sanded every contact in the printed circuit. Threw it back in the dash and bam triple gauges work. But fuel gauge was still at 3:00 position. I changed to other fuel gauges and traced all the wording and still nothing. After the 499th time pulling the cluster I saw the pin 19 slot had some wear and traced the board to..the fuel gauge. Turns out prev owner had pin 18 and 19 switched. Once done bam went to e. so now the whole cluster was fixed

The next thing was the blower motor had no power. None of my fuzes were blown so I traced the wiring. Everything was dead past the junction box... Used a multi meter and found that the fuse was indeed bad. Pulled that and saw the soldering inside the caps melted and lost contact. Once replaced that got her blowing hard haha. Based on past experiences I made sure to keep my head out of the cab and let all the pine needles blow out in the floor and not stab my eyes.

So I got tired of wiring and looking at my horrendous dash so I got the ashtray and glove box door and found the screws for them. Everything looked dingy so I got some of my 3m perfect it III dark and a foam pad and variable speed buffer and the dash underneath and bolted all together. Took another suspicious wire and plugged it in to the cigarette lighter and hey that works now to. And the inside is starting to come together now to.


Next I decided to try the dreaded wipers...well they kinda clicked. Figured the ground strap being MIA was a culprit. So got my handy alligator clips and grounded it. Tried again and still nothing even after cleaning the contacts on everything....NOPE. Figured that was broke and moved on to the tail lights. For some reason the detachable harnes was cut out by a block of cheese or teething toddler. So an hour of soldering and some burnt fingers later the tombstones on back worked. Stilled ticked off about my scalding hot wiper motor I decided to take it apart and see what was going on. Glad I did. Sand paper and oil and she was back on track and turning like an old locomotive

At this point I was tired of the dash looking all cracked and making the inside of the truck look beat. Grabbed my $10 can of bed liner again( have a case of this now) and some spot putty and gave it an attitude change.


Not bad for 30 min of time on the dash. Decided that since I'm poor again till payday that I go ahead and get some seat belts in...some 69 superbee seat belts and 69 Camaro belts haha. Threw the seat and dash in and that's we're I'm at now. Plus the done light still works great when actually plugged in

Got a package in the mail from eBay too, the best timing light made in the world


Tomorrow I'm looking at another 12 bolt axle to throw in and get her moving!
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