Back to Work

Well after a small hiatus for the holidays, I got back down to Turlock to work on Mator. Oh, first things first, for Christmas, Barb got me a set of stock mirrors for Mator. I did put one on and even brought my camera to take a picture, but unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture.

Anyways, after installing one of the mirrors I decided it was time to button up the front end. One of the kingpins had a bolt that was giving me problems originally so I never finished the install. So after some hammering and grinding, it's in place and finished. I still need my pitman arm from my brother, but after that, the front end will be ready for the alignment shop.

I also looked at the way Mator sits, as it is right now, the rear end is a little bit lower then the front end, and that's not going to fly. I've been looking into ways to lower the front end more, because as I say, "the lower, the better", but without getting into a lot of money and changing out what's been started, I'll probably have to raise the rear end to get the rake I want. However, I do believe I'll wait till the truck is closer to being done since not all of the weight is on the suspension so I raise the rear end as little as possible to get her to sit right. The attached photo is a photoshoped picture of what she should sit like with the rear end raised approx. 1.5 inches.

Now for the bad news. I had painted the motor, but at the time it was sitting on the ground so I didn't get a chance to paint the oil pan. So now that the motor is sitting in the truck I decided to pull the oil pan so I can paint it. Well when I drained the oil, the first thing to come out, was water, and as we all know, water is a bad thing to be in the motor. So Frank and I talked about it and thought it is probably just in need of new head gaskets. Hopefully since that is a fairly easy fix. I talked to my brother though and he thinks it is best to pull the motor and the heads and take a good look at the motor, just to be safe.

One step forward, two steps back.