Haven't posted since May 2016, so I thought I would post an update on this truck's progress. I apologize in advance for any typos.
About 7 months ago I finally painted my entire truck, myself. I used one gallon and one quart of John Deere Blitz Black paint. The paint itself is $20 per gallon, and it's just the shade of black I wanted. All in all, the entire Paint job cost me $300 and two whole days. I think it came out pretty good for my first full Paint job.
Also re- finished the wood bed. The planks my friend gave me from his 30 or 40 year old house looked great when I first installed them. But after about three months, that ancient lacquer started to flake off. I sanded all the old flakey stuff away revealing nice wood. I decided to try and stain it to darken it (my first time working with wood stains and varnishes) and the bipolar Florida weather ruined the stain job. It started pouring all over the wood and ruined the finish. Literally looked like that wood was dragged out of a lake. In a fit of rage, I took a wire wheel on a dewalt angle grinder, at night with no light to see what I was doing, and stripped away the surface stain. The next morning I was astonished at how nice the wood looked after the wire wheeling. I took a propane torch and seared away any remaining moisture off of the wood after a day of cooking in the sun. Then I gave it about 4 costs of "Helmsmans Spar Varnish" semi gloss, sanding between coats. Wood came out pretty darn good in the end despite the initial failures.
Some time later I was on the highway at night, in the rain, and the person in front of me for cut- off by someone else, causing them to slam on their brakes, and in order to avoid the car in front I flicked the steering wheel into the emergency lane, but my truck fishtailed too badly and I couldn't stop it from crashing into the concrete barrier and then spinning out into oncoming traffic. Luckily no one was injured, and no one else made contact with my truck. My steering and chassis was unaffected, so I drove it home without a problem. I ended up replacing the driver fender, managed to salvage the wheel well, straightened out the bumper and radiator support by pulling it with my other truck, and managed to repair the corner of my hood. Funny thing is, that while I was searching Craigslist for a fender, I came across a newly reupholstered bench seat that matched my interior perfectly, and for much cheaper than the price of buying a rust free bench seat frame (mine was FUBAR) and then reupholstering it. I couldn't pass up the deal so I came home with a seat instead of a fender. Ended up repainting the whole driver side half of the truck so that the freshly painted fender wouldn't stand out. For that part I had to do it in my driver and with a small electric compressor. Worked out pretty good.
Fast forward to about a month ago and I decided my engine is getting tired. Still chirped the tires, but oil pressure would drop to 7psi at idle in gear at stop lights after warming up. Never went beyond 40psi, and this is while using 25w- 60 AD aircraft oil. (Perfectly good oil for this engine that has such worn tolerances in this infernal Miami heat) however it wasn't right. On top of that, every SINGLE gasket and seal on this engine leaked oil. I couldn't look under the hood without getting oil on myself. Reminded me of the DC3's at my job haha. My friend let me borrow his 350 engine that ran fine in his camaro. Excellent oil pressure with 10w- 40, excellent vacuum, just an all around engine in better condition than mine. In the meantime, my engine has been torn down and we've made some discoveries. First, I had two different sets of head. Second the cylinders are already .040 bored over (dang it). Third, I found the gauges and scars on the crank bearings that could explain the low oil pressure. A few scratches on the crank itself but didn't look too bad. Still need to finish measuring everything before making a final decision on whether I'm going to save this engine and rebuild it, or just throw some rings and bearings on it and sell it and maybe buy my friend's engine that's currently in the truck.
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