Yesterday was the first time I got to put a wrench to the CUCV in a long time. Got the guys together, we pulled the truck back inside the garage, got the hood off, and got to work. I hope all of you are doing well in your own lives, projects, and families!
Using my handy dandy sticky note sketch I was able to easily swap the incorrect valve cover bolts for studs (Thank you again, cucvrus. I got something in the mail for you should be coming any day now. They told me Wednesday at the earliest). I tightened them down. That checks the boxes for the valve covers: cleaned, painted, correct studs, new gaskets.
Tom and I ran the wiring harness looms down the sides of the valve covers and started putting our heads together on the little scribbled tape notes I put on every connector. Apparently he thinks my "to" and "from" labels are backwards. They make sense to me, at least, and being in an in tact harness, there's only so many places they could reach anyway.
Jr got the new power steering pump on after about 20 minutes of sweet talking it and telling me he didn't need my help holding the one side of the bracket on the bolt. That was a big step in my eyes, just gotta reattach the lines and clamps and refill the fluid now.
Tom took the fuel lines to his shop today to make sure they're cleaned out.
I'm scratching my head about which alternator is which, they look mostly identical. I also need to get some battery cables (or get the materials to make my own). I'll probably get to that this weekend while everyone else is busy. Recommendations on source would be awesome, still trying to see if I can get a few cables professionally built or where to buy good wiring and connectors to do it myself. I'm thinking marine wire for their tin coating and corrosive resistance? I want to replace the lines between the batteries, between the batteries and bus bar, between the bus bar and starter, and maybe the wiring to the glow plugs between the 24V bus bar/resistor/GP relay.
Starter, intake, vacuum, and fuel lines still need to go on. I'm thinking it wouldn't be too far fetched to get the vacuum lines and starter on tonight. New temp sensor needs to go in and connector for it needs to be spliced to the harness. Gotta do all that before the intake goes back on anyway. We started pulling the old sensor out last night to replace it but it started flooding coolant out and we had no way to contain it quick, so we tightened it back up till we have something to catch all that coolant.
I'm just praying the starter relay just works like it did before when we turn the key, and that rewiring the glow plugs back correctly they'll start working as they should (not controlled by some button on the dash). Maybe even a wait light will come on the dash, that'd be nice. I do fear that the previous 12V hackjob changed something else I might be missing, but we removed about 90% of the wiring in the engine bay and replaced it (leaving things like the headlights), so I can't imagine I haven't found and removed all his mistakes by now. 24V starter 12V glow plugs at the turn of the key is all I'm really worried about. Not 100% sure where that relay even sits, under the dash?
There's a lot to do still. I know I keep saying that, but we put about 4 hours to it last night and we are meeting back there tonight to keep going at it. I'm a lot deeper into a motor than I've ever been or even seen before, but the boys are confident we're gonna get it running again. It's good to have good friends. And good friends that know old Chevies.
