Farewell Patches

After many years, I've now parted ways with Patches, the '62 Chevy.

It's helped me through several moves, I've learned a lot working on her, but it's time for someone else to work on it. It's going to a good home (a dad with a 13 year old son). They'll take good care of her.

More Patches

Patches Update: Keeping a charge up Edition

Patches makes a friend who is even rustier

Ever since I bought Patches, it's had a slow drain on the battery. The wiring is such a rat's nest, I can't even begin to troubleshoot it, so instead I just resort to trickle charging and jumping Patches on a not irregular basis.

I've had an EZ Wiring Harness for a while, and that's the permanent fix, but that'll take a while (and takes Patches out of commission in the interim).

For the meantime, I've gotten a temporary fix in place:

A terminal post disconnect switch. Note the trickle charging in progress as well.

Also, with the help of New Orleans Classic Motorworks, Patches no longer leaks oil! Yay! The oil pressure sense tube wasn't screwed in correctly at the back of the engine (behind the distributor). It's a bitch to get to and it also sprayed oil all over the back of the engine and was a total mess. After re-running the line (and a new oil leak at the gauge, which was quickly fixed), no more leak.

Project Truck Update: A little better edition

Removed a few pieces:

Looked at some ugly, ugly rust:

Cut some of the rust out around the driver's feet, welded in patch panels:

Made the inside look a little better:

And also the outside:

Getting better little by little:

Patches Update: Took my Chevy to the Levee Edition

The tailgate is now installed.  The truck is looking awesome.

Took Patches to Lakeshore Drive and took some photos.  

Painted the area behind the tailgate first.

4th of July Weekend Project

Here's what the front of the truck originally looked like:

And here's what it looks like now:

Much better.

Here's how it got that way....

The bumper was a little crooked and was installed upside-down.  I replaced it with a straighter bumper painted white.  Doing that required some cutting, grinding, and welding on the front of the frame.

Next, Patches got new shoes!  5 matching rims and tires!  What a novel concept.  I was getting some pretty nasty tread separation, so it was a good time.

The main project over the long weekend was cleaning, repainting the grille and replacing the (VERY corroded) radiator mount.  .  

Stripped out a bunch of old components, painted the connecting bits, then started reassembly.

Bit by bit it came together.  There are about a billion bolts holding the front together.  Almost all are the famous 1/2" GM Body Bolt.

Some minor electrical work, and Patches was rolling again.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the little tree and fuzzy dice hanging like testicles from the rearview mirror:

The next project is going to be replacing the tailgate.  Prep work is already underway:

Old Chevy Ad

Original Ad from 1963:

Note that Patches is actually a 1962, but has the front grille from a 1963 truck.  Patches cost about $2,000 brand new and weighed in at 3,190-lbs.  Source.

Project Truck Update: Patches Home Again

So the garage that's been Patches' home for a while has become structurally unsound.  We've brought it home over the summer while I have a break from grad school to fix it up and do some work.  

In order to get it running, I first had to connect up the gas tank.  I did it just like I described in the previous post.  

The second piece of hose is to prevent the tubing from rattling against the tank.

Since Patches no longer has a roof over its head, it now has a nice new coat:

One of the other essential items for any pickup truck is a tool chest in the box.  Patches really needs it because there's very little storage space in the cab.  I found a plywood one that I cleaned up and painted red to match:

A never ending war with an old truck is the battle against the rust monster.  I've cut out a big chunk and cut a patch panel to roughly fit and riveted it in place.  I may come back and weld it in later.

I'm not entirely happy with the patch job, but rivets are easy to undo.  Also, I've put in some duck tape to smooth out the edges.

Patches took forever to crank when I finally got to running it.  I had to use the old trick of pouring a capful of fresh gasoline down the open throat of the carburetor.  The gasoline (despite using Stabil) had volatilized away.  After doing a good amount of work on it this past weekend, it felt really great to take it for a leisurely spin down Lakeshore Drive.

Some of the priorities moving forward are going to be finish repairing the cab floor, replacing the rims (which are dented and leak slowly) and tires (the rear wheels are so old and dry-rotted, the tread is starting to separate), and eventually replace the wiring with the harness I purchased a while back.  

Project Truck Update: Lots of Neglect Edition

After neglecting poor Patches for ages, I've finally pushed & pulled her out of the garage and dusted her off. I've been really snowed under in Grad school (got a 4.0 this semester), but I've got a window to work on the truck over the summer to do some work, so I'll try to make the best of it.

I've brushed her off and found an old plywood toolchest to reside in the bed.

Candice spent much of today pouring almost an entire bottle of Armor All onto the bench seat:



The next challenge will be reconnecting the fuel tank.  While trying to do that today, the bell and spigot joint (which has given me trouble in the past) finally came apart.  The replacement fuel sender has a female threaded connection made of brass that's soldered onto a steel sender unit.  While trying to screw the male threaded connection on, the solder snapped and the end came off.  Here's what it looked like before.  Here's what it looks like for now:

Note the piece of brass sitting on the top of the hose clamps.

The solution I've come up with is to take a tubing cutter, slice the bell-end of the bell-and-spigot joint, take a piece of gasoline-rated hose and hose clamp it on with double clamps.  This should work reliably, because (unlike more modern cars, which use a fuel pump in the tank that pushes fuel to the engine), Patches has a mechanical fuel pump connected off the engine that sucks fuel from the tank.  If the connection starts to leak with Patches, air will enter the fuel line, the line will lose siphon  and the engine will eventually stop.  The implementation of the fix will have to wait until next weekend, though.

Project Truck Update: a Patch for Patches

The weather was great this weekend and no festivals, so I went over and got a little done on Patches.

There have been a few holes in the floor of the cab from the get go.

I'd like to have these taken care of before I'm leaning on them replacing the wiring harness. After removing the gas tank, I first tried grinding the holes out and then welding in metal.

That didn't work out too well. I just burned straight through the sheet metal. I then cut out a square patch of rotten metal, cut a replacement from the thickest sheet metal I had on hand (which was STILL thinner than what they used building Patches) and welded it up strong enough for Paul Prudhomme to jump on.

Project Truck Update: Preparing for a facelift edition

It's been a long time since I've done a project truck update.

I got back to the truck last weekend. I had neglected to disconnect the ground, so the battery was very weak from a slow leak somewhere. Also, the gasoline had evaporated out the carburetor, so I had to crank the truck enough so the mechanical fuel pump could refill the carburetor reservoir. Patches always rises from the dead eventually, though, like a true zombie.

There's some minor front end damage to the passenger side on Patches, so preping some spare parts for installation is one of my next tasks. The weather has been perfect for painting. Nice and dry.

Cracked front body panel

Here's a collection of various spare parts I've picked up, mostly for free:


I've got a spare radiator mount cleaned up and primed:

This body panel attaches to the radiator mount:

(The grille and headlights connect to it)

I ran out of time before I got to the battery tray, which is yet another item that bolts to the radiator mount:

That's the next project.

Patches at the wedding

Patches at the wedding
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Fantastic weather. Drove off in the truck. Married to the love of my life, Candice.

Take care, y'all.

Project Truck Update: Getting all dolled up Edition

When we last left off, Patches still had a blown exhaust gasket. Well, we're finally past Saints in the Superbowl, Mardi Gras, bad weather, and all, so today it was back to work.

It took a little while to get everything pulled together. The first trip of NAPA left me with the wrong sized gasket. When it's possible to get the wrong size gasket, you will and then you'll find NAPA is closed. That was me a couple of weeks ago. Today, though, I had the right gasket.

Got the whole exhaust attached. Not too many photos of the process. It was a lot of grunting and torquing and yelling and grease and grime and sweat. In other words, fun!

I had some help from Steven and we got everything back in place and replaced all the exhaust U-Bolts.

Patches is now even relatively quiet!

Also gave Patches a nice new coat of paint on the hood.

Patches will (weather permitting) make an appearance at the wedding (now less than 3 weeks away). We have to have her looking her best. Candice has been getting ideas on how to dress Patches up...

Project Truck Update: Back to Work Edition

It's been a while since I've done an update on the truck. Weather and injuries have gotten in the way. I actually used the truck as my primary means of transportation for a while while my ankle was injured (the only vehicle either of us owned that wasn't a stick shift).

Dogs love pickup trucks

A few weeks ago, drove the truck home. The truck felt a little weird. I wasn't sure what it was. When I get back to the garage, I check out the truck and lo and behold, it tried to kill me again. The turn signal harness wrapped around the steering column, Half of the exhaust was held on by only 1 bolt, and one of the main engine mount bolts was sitting neatly on top of the frame rail.

Turn signal wiring harness wrapped around steering column

Missing bolt and hanging exhaust

I've now learned that those bolts need to be torqued after a little while because the heat and cold expansion/contraction loosens them. Oops. Cut the (inoperable) wiring away that day and put the truck up. Waited on the weather for a couple of weekends.

Big beastie

Went back, got the torque wrench out, set it to the highest setting (80 ft-lbs) and torqued the shit out of a replacement bolt. The shiny bolt on the right in the middle of all the rust in this photo is the new one.

While Patches was parked on the street, the primered hood started showing some rust. We were always intending to get back to cleaning up the hood, but primer isn't a great oxygen barrier and the hood started to rust underneath the paint. To prevent things from getting worse, we stripped it down, repainted the primer and topcoated it.

Me cleaning up after sanding

New paint

The white will be the undercoat for the final red topcoat. The white helps the red stand out nice and bright.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

In case you were wondering about Patches...

Project Truck Update: Ticking Timebomb Edition

I've been using the truck to move things and smelled gasoline, but I assumed it was part of the usual aroma. I was showing the truck off to a certain brain-eater when he noticed a trickle of gasoline coming out from the gas tank.

Been busy, so haven't gotten a chance to fix it until today. All I had to do was play around with things and tighten them down, fortunately. I guess I didn't do a good enough job when I changed out the gas gauge. I made sure to keep a fire extinguisher handy when I was working, though. Very important. Now the fire extinguisher lives in the glove box (along with that bracket, the registration, a bottle of WD-40, random tools, and other various and sundry nebulous odds and ends).

The new house is in a 2-hour resident zone, so I had to get a permit. Now the truck has permission to lower property values in the Garden District!

Installed a second seatbelt. Anyone want to go for a ride while sitting on 20 gallons of 93 octane?

One of the older draftsmen told me that on these old trucks, there was a cruel trick you could play on your passengers: the dash is made out of bare steel and the seat only has a lap belt. Slam on the brakes and the passenger will fly forward and nail their head on the dash. Many noses were broken that way, allegedly.