Smooth Starting

Anybody know what that little curly thing is?

It's a "Choke Thermostat Spring", and that one is broken.

When the weather turned cold, the slow-starting truck turned into a no-starting truck. At any temperature under 20, I had to spray starting fluid into the carb just to get the engine to fire up. As you might guess, in Northern Vermont, the temperature stays below 20 a whole lot during Winter. I've been through two bottles of starting fluid in a month and a half. 

A little investigative sleuthing found two problems: the choke linkage was incorrectly assembled, and the choke spring was broken. The linkage was a free fix. The spring - which was used on just about every vehicle for decades - was only a few dollars, but took a week to arrive at the parts store. No doubt that such a rare part had to be special ordered in from Outer Mongolia....

Now, the truck fires up with just three taps on the gas pedal and a twist of the key. No starting fluid needed, in any weather. (Except that -22 morning. That took a whole lot of cranking...)

I like the cheap fixes.....

Lock the Doors? You Must Be Kidding...

I never lock the doors on the truck. Not because we live in an idyllic neighborhood with no crime, but because the lock cylinders won't turn. I'm not even sure I have the correct key. So, the doors never get locked, and I will never be able to say that I got locked out of this truck. Great, right? It's great unless you find yourself wanting to go some place like work or a store where you don't want to carry all of your possessions inside with you. If your vehicle doesn't lock, you kind of have to carry everything with you or risk theft (the easy kind, where the thief doesn't even have to work at it by smashing a window).

I think I've come up with a good solution. I found a small gun safe on sale at Tractor Supply and bolted that thing under the seat (and through the floorboards of the truck). Cover it with a old rag, and you'd never know it was there.

Covered up.

Ready for code entry.

Now, I've got a fairly safe place to store a phone, some cash, or anything else I need to secure.

How Fast Are We Going?

 

So, the old truck is on the road. Legally. In fact, it's my daily driver - the Prizm is unregistered and uninspected (and has been so for months). The truck gets me around just fine, and is generally fun to drive. However, there are some challenges to driving a 42-year-old vehicle as one's daily transportation...

 

The instrument panel lighting does not work. The really important things work; the turn signal indicators and the alternator warning light. The little bulbs that are supposed to illuminate the speedometer? They're there, but they don't show up for work. I've had the cluster out on the bench and cleaned up the electrical circuits and fiddled with the bulbs, but they just don't want to glow much at all.

 

With the morning commute being performed in total darkness, and the evening commute happening in (you guessed it) near total darkness, it's hard to see the numbers on the speedometer when you have no dash lights. Now, one might suppose that a speedo isn't necessary when driving an old, old truck. There's not much chance of getting a speeding ticket when you have low gears and a wheezy six-cylinder. True that is, but the main concern I have is making sure I'm actually going fast enough. Some times, I'm trundling down the road at a comfortable clip, totally enjoying the trip, when I realize that there is a fairly long line of cars stacking up behind me. Oops...got caught driving ten mph below the speed limit again.(People don't particularly like that.) (Especially when they're in one of those fancy modern cars with heaters and electronic suspension and projector-beam headlights.)

 

So, in order to see the speedometer (and keep other drivers happy), I've come up with a temporary solution to get by until I can fix those little light bulbs: a $2 LED flashlight.

 

 

This little flashlight has a clip that hooks onto the tachometer mount, and a goose-neck that allows the light to be bent and aimed to just the proper spot. It works great, and might just help me keep revved up to the speed limit!