@essextee This line from The Drive article got me

"Renaming the first corner of the Nordschleife is even better though. Now, whenever you cross the start/finish line at track, Sabine Schmitz will be ahead, and every lap will start with her sending you on your way."

Bought a truck! It’s a bit rough around the edges but it will be a fun relatively cheap project. 1984 Toyota pickup. Dx? 5 speed. 4x4. Sunroof. 115k miles and a rebuilt engine 2k miles ago. Going to work great as a second vehicle. First things to fix are a turn signal, driver side window is off it’s track and there is no passenger seat belt.

An 03 wrx wagon fits pretty nicely in a shipping container.

This is basically my garage now so I wanted to make sure I can pull it in and at least access the engine bay and walk around it relatively easily. I knew it would fit just because cars do come over in containers and not all roll on roll off. Luckily I’m fairly skinny and can open the door enough to get out so no weird rolling the window down and climbing out.

I've had the truck for several months now and I finally took it on some rough roads. It was an absolute blast other than the part where my seat is kind of terrible and I rubbed a small wound on my back hitting one of the metal seat bars bouncing around. I didn't even leave 2WD somehow. I briefly thought about getting out to lock the hubs just to tool around in 4Lo but it started raining and I wanted to get the hell out of there since my windshield is terrible and leaks.

I think the top fixes right now are still the passenger window. A new windshield that is properly sealed which is a massive pain in the ass. If I'm going to pull the windshield I'm going to want to sand and repaint around the edges. And lastly, of course, the driver seat. I don't know if I can find somewhere to try and re foam and re cover it.

Also found a fantastic patch of changing leaves.

So begins my first deep dive in to fixing the truck to my liking. I've done a couple needed rough fixes in the first month but I went ahead and started getting parts that I want to do for my own sanity. Brakes all around because I don't trust other people and need to know the brakes have no issues. It's an old truck with rear drums so I don't expect it to brake as well as the WRX but there is some sketchiness to it.

I didn't even get that far though. Today I changed the oil, filter, and oil pressure sender. The sender was reading quite low and kind of just sending the same level no matter what. All super easy, the oil just drips over the axle when you remove the filter to make things annoyingly messy. The dipstick was reading fine but I only pulled out about 3.5 quarts while putting in close to the full 4.9 quarts that it takes. The leftover oil actually fit perfectly in that gatorade bottle (old and rinsed out before I used it for oil)

I didn't feel like tackling the brakes quite yet so I decided to go for the clutch master cylinder that was leaking. Easy enough it seems. And so far, not too bad. Easy to take out and put the new one in. I didn't have help so bleeding it is slightly hellish. I'm using the "2x4 as a second person" trick.

A storm started to roll in so I got rained out and am bailing until tomorrow. I need to finish bleeding the clutch (almost there!) and probably adjust the bite point. Then I'll probably work on the rear brakes since it seems a little less intensive back there. Replace the rear shocks when that's all going on which I'm hoping goes smoothly. It's only two bolts (famous last words). Then it's on to the front pads and rotors. That seems like a process but straightforward.

Also found out that I am missing a lug nut and the wheel stud is rusted to hell with no more threads. Might be contributing to my shake and shimmy around 45-50mph. Luckily(?) the wheels studs need to be hit out to replace rotors so I can go grab a new one before I do those.

In case you were wondering, yes, my interior is super dirty. For some reason there is glitter in there. Yes, the seat is a mess. It's on my list to somehow find new foam and reupholster that. There is also a leak from the windshield dripping on the floor so I also plan to pull the seats and carpet to por15 the cab floor and recarpet afterward.

Bonus: Noticed my power steering reservoir, that has some part of the system leaking fluid everywhere, says Toyoda instead of Toyota.
And half my pictures are sideways. Too lazy to fix that. Turn your heads. Go Bills!

That's a waste of money when there a plenty of people out there doing it for free already.

What a treat! The driver window one the truck was initially stuck up. It’s been hotter than hell lately so I ended up taking it out and found a broken tooth on the gear. Luckily the motor was still good so a week later, new regulator, and we are back to not putting a tarp over the window! Also a new regulator sans motor was about $20 vs $80.
So far I’m in just over $100 in parts on the truck and need to go through the brake system then one of these days seals on the axles. After that it’s just cosmetics. I’m pretty happy with how cheap parts have been so far
Broken vs new regulator.

Thank you so much to my secret senna! I haven’t put together legos in forever and can’t wait to dig and get back to something that got me interested in tinkering and working on cars in the first place! The “secret” over Senna was a nice touch as well.
The book is also extremely cool, though I don’t know if I can bring myself to cut it up to build the cars. I may have to scan pages and print those out to keep this relic alive
Ski the east stickers will go great with the other one that I have somewhere, maybe on a nalgene. I can’t remember.

The other day I was having some slight issues with getting wheel studs out of the truck to replace rotors: as noted here
The studs were mostly trash and it was suggested to hit them directly instead of using the punch. That worked for a few but the rest would not budge and kept rounding off the tops. Queue some thinking and PB Blasting. Soaking got one more out but the rest still wouldn't budge. A friend suggested heating them up but that will expand the metal and might work? BUT! If we got the other way and freeze them, well that might work. I didn't want to bag entire rotors and shove them in the freezer. More thinking. I do have canned air! and when you turn that upside down it freezes!
Let's give it a shot! A quick blast, a couple swift hammer blows, and it's out with ease! Don't know the next time I will need to use it but for sure keeping this trick on the back burner for any future scenarios.

I was trying to make a gif of the quick video I took but I'm garbage at compressing those to fit upload standards.

Done for the day as I have plans later but tomorrow is going to be a nice full day of cleaning out old grease, regreasing, installing new bearings and gaskets, then putting it all back together! Except for the brakes and calipers, still waiting on the second caliper to arrive in the mail after it never shipped the first go around.

@highlander Anything can fly with enough thrust. Not necessarily well or far, but it will fly.

@jminer went out and pumped the gas, auto-choke procedure, and fired right up. Need to test the on road tomorrow.

Maybe this is why things have been severely down in power and the auto choke hasn't been working. It's connected in these photos, the brown thing with white dots on it (Previously used to know where to connect things I guess). Driver side of a 22r carb. I've been trying to figure out what it is exactly but there are a lot of acronyms with no key. AAP? One of the hoses is a little cracked so I'll fix that tomorrow.

@napoli Headytopper is so damn good. Been a while since I had one.
I'll be having some bud's because they are cold. Got some Melvin 2x4, RoHa nights out stout, and shades imperial lager for later. Stupid Utah liquor stores and selling not cold beer

@ttyymmnn Oh! In my haste to leave the office I read that completely wrong. Still awesome

@ttyymmnn The planets sounds cool, is that at a planetarium where they project the photos? I always like going to those.
I am so ready for the weekend but have tons do to getting ready for winter to hit more. I need to build some proper ramps to get my Subaru, that I haven't driven in 3 weeks, out of the storage container. Switch to winter wheels there and clean the interior.
Turns out the heater on the truck is garbage which was fun this morning in 15 degrees. hopefully it's something stupid and not a faulty heater core or anything semi expensive.

@hammerheadfistpunch Luckily these people weren't all that loud with it. We were a group of 6 so not much louder than that amount of people sitting around a fire drinking after a long day of biking

@hammerheadfistpunch I saw some people in Moab last weekend that had an outdoor portable projector and screen near our campsite. I think they were watching talladega nights

@nermal I love having two screens, Rampage live stream will definitely be up and production will be down slightly

@essextee Oh, and not exactly a vehicle but if I see someone with a chicken helmet go by me on a motorcycle I will automatically assume it's @Alfalfa

@essextee I am just so bad at names but who is building the tube frame locost sort of car with a custom body? It's not on the road per se but that would be very recognizable
Edit: @davesaddiction beat me to it, it's @sony1492