[Dr Jkel]

Saturday December 3, 2011

Got up kinda early hoping the majority of issues ( hopefully all of the issues ) had been determined and thinking that we should be able to pretty much tie up the mechanical part today except for waiting on parts that are on order.

Checked over the entire motor one more time to make sure all was good. Took off the air cleaner since it had been crushed,trying to see if I could straighten it out a little. First thing I noticed was the filter was very dry. This filter is supposed to have oil in it...So I straightened out what I could and Matt had the air filter oil so we cleaned it and re-oiled and reinstalled the filter.

Finished running the brake lines and got all of them installed and hooked up.....Then we started to bleed the brakes.........So we removed the wheels/tires from the truck. Something looked funny on the rear end but I really couldn't tell what it was it just didn't look right....Then it hit me.....the drivers side caliper was installed higher than the passenger side caliper was. After further inspection of the rear end it was determined that I had 2 right side caliper mounting brackets instead of one left and one right........Don't know what to really do about this at this point....will have to see what the options are.

Fixed the rear electrical connections with waterproof connectors, fixed the tail lights so that they are level across the back of the truck instead of one up and obe down, fixed the wiring in the tail light connectors that fell out.

Started mounting the electrical harness, brake lines and fuel lines to the frame. They had all been zip tied together and braided stainless steel lines tend to rub holes into electrical and brake lines. Also found some more wires that had been run though holes in the frame without rubber grommets so we installed rubber grommets where needed.

Starting to think that alot of this was done on purpose..........

While Matt was doing things like that I decided to see if I could line up the front grille/bumper since it was not level on the truck. I took off the chrome headlight rings and saw RUST around 2 of the mouting holes on the rings, of course the screws that held it in place were rusted. These screws were not stainless or more importantly not the chrome screws I bought..........

As stated before the drivers side door would not shut properly...surely it just needed alignment. SO Matt suggested that we get the door mounted first and then fit everything back to the door eventually ending up with the grille and bumper...seemed reasonable to me. So off comes the front fender, and cowl piece.

While taking off the cowl piece I immediately noticed that the bolts were extremely hard to get out...must have been cross threaded......NOPE....As I remembered from years ago certain bolts have fine threads and certain ones have coarse threads.......Yes sports fans you guessed it, the wrong bolts were put into the wrong places...So now I have to go back and see if we can re-thread ( tap ) these holes, especially since they are blind nuts welded into places. Finally get the cowl and front fender off and start trying to adjust the door.

I am really confused why the door doesn't line up. I was particularly anal about the gaps when this started and before one drop of paint was put on the truck I actually checked all the gaps on the cab area......Here is where my inexperience and ignorance showed.

First the door bolts were not tight and allowed the door to move. The door seemed to bind not matter what we did. I even lined the door up with the placement holes what were put into the hinges. ( These are drilled holes into the hinges so that they could easily prient the door when it was re-installed, this was done long ago)........So Matt gets inside the truck as I close the door to see where it is binding.

It becomes quite obvious as to what happened. We removed the door rubber, re-set the door by the drilled holes and started to tighten the bolts. Immediately we notice that the bolts won't get tight.....hmmmmm so we take them out one at a time...Yep you guessed it...wrong bolts used so now the door blind nuts will have to be re-tapped since the wrong ones were used. Also the striker bolts were wrong and will have to be re-tapped.

We tightened up the door bolts as best we could and aligned the door. Closes perfectly, back gap is dead on all is fixed...NOPE... we reinstall the door rubber, shut the door and it will not close.

So to make a long story short, evidentially when the new rocker panels were installed the flange that holds the door rubber was not straight thus causing the door to bind when closed. It is quite apparent that when the body work was done, gaps aligned that all of the fitment was not done with the door rubber installed. Now it is a problem because the door won't shut. We started beating the door rubber flange back into place in small intervals, re-install the rubber and checking the fit.

We did not get it finished today but will get it right at a a later point........ We did check the passenger side door for fitment issues and besides the missing mounting bolts these passenger side seems to have similar issues. The problem with the passenger side is that the flange is too much inward which will cause massive amounts of air to enter the truck at speed. So we have to beat the drivers side in and passenger side out to align the doors properly to ensure we have no outside air coming in.

We ( I ) decided to quit for the day, frustration was building especially after I checked the bed and saw that no mounting pads were used to install it, staright metal on metal. I had recently bought new bed mounting pads because Mark said he would need 2 sets to make the bed align correctly.....So the set I bought originally and this new set are nowhere to be found........They are only 8.95 a set but the pattern is becoming quite clear that parts I bought are not on my truck to include the transmission.

I also noticed on my invoices that I was charged for 4 pints of brake fluid.......After we ran completely new Stainless steel lines and I filled the Master cylinder I realized something must have been wrong since it took a little less that one pint to fill the master cylinder and not 4, I might have believed 2 for bleeding purposes but not 4....more of him overcharging me and using parts I paid for on someone elses vehicle. Come to think of it how did he really bleed the brakes with so many leaks........

Time to quit for the day.