Road Trip !

[vwnate1]

Unlike most , I actually drive and work my old '69 Chevy C/10 shortie stepper .

About 800 miles every 7 days when I'm not doing any traveling .

To - morrow is Father's Day and my Son has told me we're going off to Johnson Valley , Ca. (Landers) to look for properties to buy so to - day I'll go home and grease the whole font suspension then de grease the engine and chassis so the sand & dust from those back roads will have nothing to stick to.

Maybe (polly not enough time to - day) I'll remove the right inner fender and open up the heater , fix the heat flapper so the dang heat isn't always on ~ it's been nearly three years so no hurry I guess .

Darn DPO/DPM's .

 

[vwnate1]

Sat. 6/15/2013

O.K. ;

As it turned out I did work on the truck before heading out to the middle of nowhere , good thing too as here's what I found when I removed the front drums ~ this is the right front , look closely at the trailing (rear) shoe and you can see it's *very* thin in lining .

 

[vwnate1]

Closer Look

These were top quality riveted brake shoes but wore down to the rivets

 

[vwnate1]

Yet More ~

Right front showing leaky wheel cylinder .

 

[vwnate1]

Left Front

Had lining left but it was cracked clean through at the rivets ! .

This could have failed and gone metal to metal at any moment .

 

[vwnate1]

Later ~

I was pleased & surprised to find new brake shoes at my local NAPA Partshaus .

Made in China (?!) they charged me $6 core charge , I kept my old shoes and will have them relined locally , prolly go with riveted linings again as they're much better and last longer .

This pic. is the right front just before I greased the spindle and installed the hub & drum again .

it stops on a dime again but I'm not done with the brakes just yet .

 

[vwnate1]

Then ;

As long as I was already filthy I figured I might as well fix the dang heater as it was forecasted to be 100? F in The Lucerne Valley .

I went to remove the right inner fender and discovered this :

 

[vwnate1]

More Horror

The bottom edge of the radiator core support followed by the bits of broken off core support and inner fender leading edge :

 

[vwnate1]

It Gets Worse !

After I removed the hood and right hood hinge , I took the heater proper , off the firewall to discover this :

 

[vwnate1]

What Fell Out

I've owned this truck for nearly three years now and have been assiduously cleaning , vacuuming and blowing leaves , sand and flowers out of the cowl & heater plenums but this fell out when I removed the heater from the firewall :

 

[vwnate1]

The Good News !

The heater no longer blows hot air all the time and as soon as I find another heater control , I'll clean it up and transfer my good levers & fan switch into it so i have air control l fresh as well as temperature .

The truck of course , ran flawlessly , didn't miss a beat nor burn any oil I could tell .

It even did very well when I drove through several really bad spots of sugar sand , my Son as certain we'd get stuck but it soldiered on though .

We had a nice Father's Day all in all .

There was more misery I found when working on it Saturday but I didn't have the time to take any more pix .
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