More F100 fixing and I'M ON THE RADIO FRIDAY!

I will be on the radio this Friday morning, August 8th!!! Please tune in to 97.7 fm, Mix 97, the Bob Miller morning show. I will be on with Digital Editor Irwin Goldberg, from the Poughkeepsie Journal, to promote the Poughkeepsie Journal Classic Car Blog, which I write. We will have two spots, at 7:35 and 7:50 am. I'm excited, this should be fun.

I took the F100 to the Smokehaus cruise in Hopewell this past Monday. It was pretty good, there was a good selection of cars there. K & k met me there, and we strolled around, and then had an ice cream. Sorry no photos, since it was getting dark.

The F100 has had a bad howling noise in the lower gears, that goes away in high. Classic symptoms of a bad trans input bearing, I have heard and cured this before. It was bugging me, and really takes the enjoyment out of driving the truck. With my good friend Joe V helping, we pulled the trans out Tuesday (Joe V has a vehicle lift, and is like a mechanic-guru). I was lucky to get a replacement bearing the same day. It looks like the one above, and it is a biggie, like 4" across. So far, so good.

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We finally got the trans heaved back into position, ready to go onto the bellhousing. But it would just not go in the last 1/4". We struggled with it for about an hour, there was no way we wanted to pull it back out. This is a heavy duty truck transmission, it is an IRON CASE 4-speed with the granny low (super low) first gear. This pig must go 200 lbs. It is heavy. It is even heavier over your head. We finally relented and pulled it partially out.

The bearing retainer, like above, was cracked. I must have cracked it putting it on, and it spread open just enough so it wouldn't go into the bellhousing bore (it is a very tight fit there). I was going to get a new retainer, but since the one we had was already cracked, Joe welded it up to see if that would be ok. We decided it looked good enough to try. I test fit it on the trans, when I discovered that the new bearing had an outer snap ring that was larger than the old one, which no doubt caused the retainer to crack! Who would think to check that? (This is not shown on the bearing 2nd photo above, but it would be on the outside of the outer bearing race). I swapped the old retaining ring on the new bearing and the welded retainer fit perfectly. We finally got the trans in and I finished putting the truck back together this morning. I thought this job would take about 4 hours, it actually took about 10. Whew.

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One last fix: The engine had a miss. I found one spark plug was fouled. I made sure the plug wires were engaging properly. No fixey. I put in a new plug, and the miss went away. Ran so much better I had to lower the idle speed a bunch more.

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I drove the F100 around today, and it was so nice and quiet! It purrs like a kitten.

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I fixed the vacuum leak on EV-Steve's S10 (it was a tricky one), and ordered him all new mirrors.

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That's all for now folks, thanks and listen in Friday morning.

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photos: radio: artmarket.com; bearing: bestbuyparts.com; retainer: quad4x4.com

Tech- Fabricating frame-to-body mounts, part 2

I've got some meaty tech for you today, and it's a lot of work, so let's get right to it. I received the body mount parts. I gave the bare steel parts a quick spray painting.


I didn't have any 4" wide steel, so I took 2 pieces of 2", and welded them together on both sides to make a 4". This material is 1/8" thick. I happen to have a spare S10 chassis handy to take measurements from, you could just refer to another body mount on the vehicle.

Here's the steel clamped securely onto the drill press. I'm using a 2-1/8" hole saw. Get the best quality hole saw you can. Expensive but worth it. Turn the drill speed down to as slow as it will go. Slower is better. Use a lot of oil and go to it.

Here's the hole, and I have rounded the edges off with a bandsaw and grinder. I have formed the side piece into a matching radius using my ultra-sophisticated garage-support-column tool.
I welded this up with a nice hot weld. I ended up keeping the welds mostly unground because I like the Frankenstein look.

Here, I have marked the piece for an angled cut like the stock mount had. I have it securely clamped into my bandsaw. I had to stop it to reposition the clamps, but the cut came out perfect. Oh, the things I have done with that bandsaw.

Boy, are we to mock-up already? What I have glossed over is the endless fitting, and sneaking up on cuts 1/4" at a time, and fixing tools that break, and waiting for welds to cool, and running to the store for the exact size holesaw, and the metric #12 nuts, and resetting the circuit breaker a dozen times because you have the welder up so high, etc. It took me probably 6-8-10 hours to get to this point.
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The remainder of the stock mount was toast, so I ground it all off. I used a floor jack to hold the parts in position and give me a little lift on the body. Looks good, so we'll give it a little zip-zap tack weld and remove the jack.

Here we go, all welded on there nice. I have some inside welds, and some outside welds. I painted it up nice, and then installed the bottom plate and hardware.

I finished the interior by screwing a small aluminum plate over the access hole. I hate to bury things permanently. It's doubtful we'll ever need to get to this again, it's the best part of the truck now, but you never know.
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Well that's it. Easy right? Thanks for tuning in, and if your car is coming gbhbghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnhbmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmb8
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000006 excuse me, my little girl k was helping my there. If your car is coming dismounted, give me a call and we'll get you reconnected. Thanks.

Began painting the chassis...with Por15

In a perfect world, I would take the chassis completely apart, have every part sandblasted, then prime and paint each part, before reassembling them with all new hardware. However, I am not doing a restoration, so I didn't do that. But I do want to refresh the chassis, and make it nicer than most. The chassis is solid, with surface rust on it. I don't want to sandblast it all, since that's time consuming and expensive, but just painting over the rust is not going to last for long.

I had this small can of Por15 I had bought at a swap meet probably 10-15 years ago. Never did try the stuff. I began by wire brushing some of the frame and suspension parts. I stirred the Por15 for a long time, then I began applying it. It is a rust converter. This is a coating that is similar to paint, but it has chemicals in it that react with the rust on metal, turning the rust into an inert, hard, um, substance. This stuff is well known in the hobby for just this kind of use. It supposedly works best on lightly rusted metal. Bingo!

No, I do not know what became of Por's 1-14.
I will be honest and admit that I soon pooped out on the wire brushing part. Borrrring.
I painted the stuff on with inexpensive foam brushes. It was actually kind of fun, and as I say, I just sort of kept going, only wire brushing very scaly areas, or to get dirt off.

I wore latex gloves, as this stuff reportedly will not come off skin until it wears off. Nonetheless, I did get some on me, as well as some on my wife and daughter (don't ask). Anyway, I put on some Creedence Clearwater Revival, and soon got into a bit of a groove. It is kind of difficult to do an assembled chassis, but I am putting it on literally everything that's attached, so no need to be overly neat about it. It dries in just a few hours.

I just kept going until I finished the entire pint, and I had used 11 of my 12 brushes by then also.

As you can see by looking at the pictures, I got somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of the frame done. It is hard to estimate, since I didn't get a lot of the inside of the frame rails done, and I want to do all that too. I still have to do the front suspension, and there is more to that then the rear. Finally, I am going to flip the entire chassis upside down to do the complete underside! I did about 3 hours today, so I am estimating 10-12 hours for the chassis painting.

As soon as I had begun this today, I was wondering if I should bother with it at all. I would bet that 99% of the people that do an electric conversion don't bother. It is a lot of work, and it will not make the truck run any better. But hopefully it will be worthwhile, when people ask to see the electrical parts, and they see an immaculate detailed and painted chassis. I may be off on my own here, but this is going to be so cool.

I don't know if I'll have any more for your this weekend, as I have to order more Por15. Hopefully more next weekend.

Scrapping the S10

A quick update. Took the S10 to the scrapper today. It was a major accomplishment to get down there without anything falling off of the trailer. You can see the bed going away on the loader. That loader is the only one I've ever seen with those completely untreaded tires. Bet they're expensive.

Dead S10 motor, unceremoniously pushed out of the truck and onto the ground. "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a man of infinite jest..." How'd I do?

The motor has been pushed aside by the loader. I'm now waiting to leave. I'm scrapping a neighbor's car next weekend. If anyone else has a dead car I can scrap, I'll give you $100 for it.

Here's a pile of parts I saved for possible use. I also have a second smaller pile. It was having access to all of this junk that made getting a whole truck the way to go. At least the yard looks a little better with the S10 carcass gone. Next we'll get started on the chassis.

Stripping the S10 is completed...with just a small fire

Well here we are. The motor is out of the S10 frame. There are only a couple of small brackets and things left to remove. You can see the face of the transmission as it hovers there, it is the big dark circular thing in the middle. The power brake assembly is lying on the front tire for now. I have figured out 2 possible ways around that massive ABS unit that is lying on the front of the tire.

The motor removal was quick and simple. Probably one of the easiest motor removals I have ever done, and I've done a few. Of course, it almost never happens that the motor is sitting on a bare frame out in the open like that. Nonetheless, a half dozen bolts removed, and the motor pulled free. I apologize that I do not have photos of the motor out and hanging off of the hoist like a dead tuna. I could not find the camera at the time. I justified moving forward without photos because I have done so many motor pulls that it is not a big deal to me, even thought it might look impressive to the readers. Also this was the time slot I had available, so I had to keep going.


Here's the same basic shot from the back. You can see the fabricated trans mount from last time in place and holding the trans up nicely. The stock rear trans mount is out of view. You can see the shifter, and the lower steering column in place; it has an odd orange sleeve on it.

It seems like a lot of work just to get to this point, and it was, but I am very psyched to get on with the frame refurbishment. I can't wait to see it all redone and ready for the body swap. Also I know it seems like I am not using much of the original truck, and that's true, but I also have a whole big pile of parts I am keeping for reuse. I also needed to be sure I got all of what I needed, and in good shape, so I felt that a complete truck was the only way to do that.

I made a preliminary parts list for the brakes and suspension, and then looked up the part numbers and prices on-line. Now I can go to the local auto parts chain store and have them just double check the part numbers when I go to get the parts. The prelim cost is about $550. If I don't need replacement brake rotors and drums, that would save a lot of money. I don't like to cheap out when I'm replacing parts though. It's usually more work to replace related parts later, and the new parts work better if they are not working with other worn out parts.

This rig is going to be heavy when it is done. The battery pack alone will weigh about 1500 lbs! It will be like driving around with a full load of dirt or something in the bed the whole time, so I want the brakes to be up to par.

On something like brake and suspension work, I usually figure a shop would charge the same amount as the parts cost again for labor (maybe more!), so in this case it would be $1100 total. If I do the labor, I feel like I can spend more on replacing more parts. Trust me, shops are not bashful about charging you for labor.

Here is what's left of the S10. All of this will be going to the scrapper. I almost feel bad about taking a decent truck completely apart. Almost. Got to keep your eye on the end goal. Some must be sacrificed so that others may live on, and become electrified, or something like that.

Ok. Here is the baby. The S10 motor. I drained the oil, to be environmentally friendly. This is headed to the scrapper too. I put some ads on Craigslist for all of the unneeded parts, including a running motor, but I didn't really get any responses. To be honest, I'm kind of burnt out on trying to sell stuff anyway. It's a BIG hassle. People don't know what they want, try to haggle on give-away prices, then still complain, etc. I don't have the time for that nonsense. I'll get maybe $50? from the scrapper.

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Not shown is the flywheel, clutch disc, and pressure plate, or clutch hat assembly, I took off of the rear of the motor. They all looked like they had been replaced recently. I was curious when I saw tool nicks on the attaching hardware. When I pulled it off, all of these components looked really fresh. This is a nice find; the replacement clutch parts would be about $200. Hey, it's better than having to pay for that too.

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Oh, I will save the proselytizing (never thought I'd get to use that word) about removing one more foul, polluting gas motor from circulation, and how I will be single-handedly saving mankind and the planet with the replacement electric motor, blah, blah, blah. Not up for it right now. Maybe later. Although, get a good look at that motor. It's there, under all the hoses, and belts, and wires, and pulleys, and gizmos, and the oil stains, and the grease blobs. Remember it, to compare with the nice, efficient, clean, simple, pretty electric motor that will replace it. Kind of makes the old gasser seem pretty pathetic, actually.

Lastly, we have...well, it's like this: I wanted to cut out the sheetmetal where the brake booster and clutch cylinder mounted, to splice into the firewall of the F100. Then these would just bolt up later. Easy. Figured it wouldn't hurt to have the steering shaft hole and gas pedal mount too.

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This is looking at it from where the motor was. The main wiring harness is on the right, still firmly entombed in the dashboard on the other side.

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So I fired up my plasma cutter. An electric arc jumps from the gun nozzle to the body panel, and at the same time, compressed air shoots out and blows the molten metal puddle away, leaving a small hole. You move the gun along, and an open line forms, cutting the metal. You can see the line on the panel in the photo. It burns very hot, and you can see the scorch marks from the paint catching on fire.

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Two things: First, I was waiting for a phone call about my bro's medical test while I was doing this. The call came, so I went to answer it. I look over and there's smoke billowing out of the cab. The cab's on fire! I had a bucket of water ready for this, and I calmly kept trying to put the fire out, but it would keep restarting. The dashboard was so convoluted, that I couldn't get the water all the way in to put it out. Some foam rubber had caught fire, and it was proving to be very tricky to put completely out. I wasn't worried about the cab, I was throwing that out anyway. Since it was already on the trailer, I considered just towing the thing down to the firehouse and asking them to put it out. Kind of silly, I guess, so I didn't do that. Would have been funny though. After about 15 minutes, I got it put out, before any American Indians showed up wondering what the poorly phrased smoke signals were all about. Boy was that stinky.

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The second thing is, the sheetmetal area I wanted turned out to be heavily braced from the dashboard side, and I could not cut it all out without a lot more work. So I made some measurements of the holes, drew some diagrams, and that part of the project was abandoned. I'll just make new holes.

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Got a lot done it just a couple of hours.

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A shout-out to Kieran, whom I hear reads this blog. Shouldn't everybody?

Tech- Fabricated rear trans mount

One of the big advantages of the frame swap is that I'll be using the entire driveline, from the flywheel back, as it is. This means the rearend, driveshaft, and transmission will stay in their stock positions. For one thing, repair and maintenance will be routine, since it will all be stock. Also important is that driveline phasing will not be affected. Phasing is the relative angular positions of the driveline components along their axis'. In basic terms, if the angles get messed up, the driveshaft u-joints will not work properly, and the driveshaft develops an imbalance (or perhaps it is really a binding) that causes vibration, humming, and in some cases a bad vehicle shake. This can be troubleshoot(ed?, troubleshot?) later, but it can take a lot of shimming and trial and error. I once had this problem and it only happened at certain speeds; never did get that fixed properly. So I am hoping to avoid the problem.


One thing I have to maintain is the position of the transmission. It is held up in the front by being attached to the motor, and has a single mount under the back part all the way at its rear. Taking out the motor will leave the transmission flopping about. Not good. I decided to fabricate a bracket, sort of a bridge, or girdle, to keep the transmission in position when the motor is removed. With the transmission secured, I would only have to make new motor mounts for the electric motor.

In the lead photo, you can see I made a straight bar that goes under the two stock trans-to-motor bolts. I did some grindy-grinding to make reliefs for the vertical trans strengthening ribs. I'd rather take the material out of the bracket than the trans case. Frankly, I don't think it'd matter either way. I made angled pieces that go down to friendly spots the frame rails, and welded them onto the horizontal piece.

I made two tabs to weld onto the frame. The main bracket will bolt to these. I didn't want to weld the main bracket directly to the frame. This way, if it ever needs to come out, it will be easy to do. Plus I am assuming for now that this will clear the F100 floor and firewall. If the whole thing interferes later, we will have to do something else, but at least it will maintain the trans position for now, so I can remove the motor. The tab on the left has a scallop to match where it will go on the frame .

I used through holes and did not tap either the bracket or tabs with threads. I like the simplicity of bolts and nuts.

I also like round the corners off with a "big" radius; notice it does not go tangent to the sides, but still has corners at the junction of the radius and sides. This is the sort of thing you normally get with a mass-production stamping machine, and I prefer that look over the fully rounded ends you would expect with a custom made piece. So I like the unexpectedness and irony of it. Looks more industrial too.

Here is one of the tabs clamped into position for welding to the frame. In reality I had to swing the clamp up to make room for the welder nozzle. You can see that radius detail I mentioned.

I used beefy 1/4 x 1" steel bar. I had considered going with only 1/8" thick material, to save half the weight, but decided against it. This mount will be holding up part of the motor weight too, so it will do a fair amount of supporting. Angle material would give more stiffness along the beam, but there is really only vertical and rotational (radial?) loading, not front-to-back, so the flat bar will suffice here. Look, I'm not going to have to justify every design decision here, am I? Jeesh.

Here you can see one tab welded to the frame, and the bracket in position behind it. I am going to use a transfer punch to mark the bracket for drilling the matching holes. A transfer punch is a center punch that is at the end of a particular diameter rod. These come in a set of many diameters, and you select the diameter that fits tightly into the hole in the first part, in this case, the tabs. You then whack it with a hammer, and you get a center for drilling your matching bracket hole that is exactly centered with the tab hole. This is a big improvement over the "trace the hole with a pencil and try to make an accurate matching hole" method I have used for years. The center punches have vastly improved my fabricating; parts fit together with better alignment and less slop. Way more professional.

Unfortunately they have not improved my ability to focus a camera.

Here is the bracket installed, bolted to the trans and the frame tabs. I took it off and gave it a little zippely-zoot with a spray paint can, and it's done. I like semi-gloss (semi-flat? no, satin) black, it has a factory stock look, and again is also an understated industrial look I dig. It didn't show up well in the photo after being painted. I can now remove the motor and bolt the trans to this in preparation for the rest of the conversion.

This took about 2 hours total to make. Maybe less, but I did other things while I thought about the next step, and I was trying to take photos and plan this post as well. Fabrication is the part I really enjoy most anyway, so why rush through it just to be done?

Almost done stripping the S10

Usually when I get a project car the gas in the tank is of questionable age. I drain it into containers and wonder what to do with it. I mean who ever has to get rid of gas ? It's a real problem, because I don't want to put it in the tank of anything I own, but I can't just dump it either. So I have all these 2 liter soda bottles in the garage filled with gas, and I don't know what to do with them.

Rich told me he had just put gas into the S10 recently before I picked it up. He wasn't kidding. There was 3/4 tank! Cha-ching! I drained probably 12-15 gallons of fresh liquid gold from that thing. Filled my 2 portable cans, and I put about 5 gallons into my car too. Bonus.

I got the cab loosened from the frame after a couple more hours. 2 body mount bolts needed to be torched off. I broke a couple more sockets too. BAM! Cracked socket. Craftsman too. I know they're free replacement, but I don't want to waste time and have to go all the way there. I'll work around it for now.

I rigged this up. It's a lifting strap, connected to a 2 x 4 through the cab, lifted by my engine hoist. I must say this worked exactly as well as I had hoped. Easy.

Here's another angle. I have the hydraulic clutch cylinder out. That is going to be so easy to retrofit. It's like a brake cylinder with one plastic line. Simple.

So by the end of today, Saturday, May 24, this is where it stands. The hoist made it easy to drop the cab onto my open trailer. Done. Probably did 6-8 hours today. I have about 20 hours total into the demo. Don't know if I'd do this again. This is not as simple as the 60's and 70's cars I used to do. Either this is tougher than it used to be, or I'm getting old. Or both.

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After this photo I took the exhaust off, the fuel tank out, and some miscellaneous brackets and lines off. I have the brake and clutch pedals out. Boy was that a wrestling match. Brutal.

What else...seats are out. Wiper motor and mechanism out. I'm saving lots of miscellaneous small stuff on the chance I might need it.

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I think the wiring harness is a no-go. The majority of it is still stuck in the cab. I have uncovered so many sensors and plugs, wires and connectors. I mean it is crazy what is on a modern vehicle. I did a preliminary schematic during the week, and it doesn't look too complicated to start from scratch anyway. Probably still be better than reworking the monster harness in the S10.

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I am making a bracket to hold the transmission in place for when the motor is pulled. Then I'll pull the motor and whatever's left that has to go. Almost done. It's been a lot of work, but I keep thinking how nice it will be to have that modern drivetrain, brakes, and suspension in there. Ahhhh.

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My hands are beat. Just cut up and skinned to all heck. It's been a long time since I've done this. Broke some tools too. And there's a couple of parts I couldn't figure out how to take off. Still got time for another try though. I'm tired. Looking forward to relaxing at Wilcox tomorrow.

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PS: To take a break, I mowed my lawns. My MTD riding mower threw the deck belt off, and I can't get it back on. Does anybody know how to do this and can tell me or show me? Yes, I know, how surprising, it's broken again.

Swine mower.

Still stripping the S10

I took a half day from work Friday and got some time in on the project. Here's the handsome devil gettin' ready. The camera adds 10 lbs. At least. You can see I have the front sheetmetal clip loosened here.

It may not look like much, but the manual steering box came this week. Thanks Rich!

By the end of Friday I had the front clip off. I have been doing a lot of wire labelling, but I don't know if I'm going to use it. It's a pretty complicated harness. Hard to see but I had to cut the front bumper mounts off the frame with an oxy-acetelene torch. I bought a torch rig a couple of years ago, and it has come in very handy. I literally don't know what I'd have done at that point without it. The power brake assembly is just lying on the tire, but it is all there and ready for reuse.

Here is what the interior looked like by the end of Friday. Steering column is out. Didn't get hit by the airbag. Lots of the dash is out, but the harness is sort of literally built into the dash. Don't know how I'm going to get it out, and the remainder of the dash is very difficult to remove. Kind of tough going in here. I have probably 12 hours into demo at this point. Seems like I have a lot done, but it seems like it has been a lot of work as well.

First work on the S10; bed removal, keep the wiring harness?

I got to work on the S10 Saturday afternoon, after doing some errands and chores. I only got about 4 hours in, but I made some progress. The main thing I got done is removing the bed. It isn't that difficult, but taking it off makes such a difference visually that it looks like I got a lot done in a short time. A few friends (thanks guys) helped me physically pick it up and take it off on Sunday. The bed is surprisingly light; I would estimate no more than 250 lbs. I expected it to weigh about 500. Interesting.

I do as little work under stock vehicles as possible. Mainly because it is inevitable that I will get at least a little grit in my eyes, and my contact lenses are very unforgiving in terms of comfort if I get even a small bit of grit in them. Glasses don't give me great vision, and goggles are uncomfortable, fog up, and grit gets around them anyway.

The work I was doing required that I get underneath, and of course I got some grit in my eyes, so it was not great fun after that. I was spurred on by the fun of disassembling the truck though. I also got some of the wiring harness disconnected. I am planning on using it to rewire the F100, so I have been diligently marking EVERY connection I undo with marker on a masking tape label.
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By the time I got into the underhood area, I began to realize how complicated the stock wiring harness really is. Hoo boy. There are A LOT of sensors. There are airbag sensors (and airbags inside. I don't know how I'm going to get them disconnected yet). The truck has ABS. The brake combination valve is ganged onto a huge complicated valve body of some sort that has like 3 wiring harness connections going to it. I assume I will have to substitute a non-ABS combination valve later, since I am not going to use ABS. All that mumbo-jumbo just because people don't know how to stop a vehicle. Unbelievable. There is an underhood computer with more connections.
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I was able to do a bit more on Sunday. More wiring harness labelling and disconnecting. I want to reuse this harness, but what a job this will be. I now expect that I will have to trace a lot of wires and make "jumpers" to complete circuits that have sensors that I am not using. I could just clip off unused connectors, but I doubt I could be satisfied with ghost wires (wires that lead nowhere) left in the harness, so I would end up taking the harness apart and rebundling it at some point anyway.

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I began taking the dash apart, but did not get too far. I keep looking at the airbag in the steering wheel, expecting it to blow open at any second and hit me in the head, snapping my neck and killing me. Not good. I don't know if this could happen without power, as I have the battery out. But maybe there's a capacitor in there storing energy in case of battery loss, I don't know. Don't want to find out.

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I have done a couple of complete wiring jobs on race cars, even using relays for higher load circuits and such. I think I could do this vehicle as well, but wiring a car from scratch takes a long time too. I look at time spent on this project in terms of real world labor cost and opportunity cost. A new wiring harness kit for the F100 is about $300. Professional auto repair rates are close to $100/hour. A pro shop would likely start with a kit anyway and the labor would be tacked on from there. So if I get the kit and install it I'm saving $100/hr.
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How much could I earn at my job in an hour? It's no $100, but it's something. How long will I have to mess with the S10 harness to get it to be useable? 10 hours? 20? Time is precious to me now. That's the opportunity cost; the cost of what I can't do during the time I'm working on the project. My point is this: it looks like reusing the stock S10 harness might take more time and effort (and $ value) than getting a new harness kit. I'm cheap, $300 is as much to me as it is to the next guy. But why rebuild junk to save a buck? The problem with doing so is that at the end you just have rebuilt junk that you wasted a lot of time on. I'll keep working on the stock harness for now and see how it goes. A lot to think about though.

Going for the frame swap!

I won this little beauty on ebay Sunday while I was away at the swapmeet. I paid a little more that I would have liked, but, as they say, it was just what I wanted (I am saving a lot on the mag wheels, right?). At least it has a lot of miles, so I know it must have run well. Back when it ran.

This is a Chevrolet S10, two wheel drive, short wheelbase, with the manual transmission. I am going to use the entire frame and suspension from this truck. I am also going to use the manual transmission and clutch assembly. I have a huge list of smaller items I can salvage from it for use as well.

I have pretty much committed, at least in my mind, to doing the full frame swap at this point. I know it will look like I'm taking two steps back, to go one step forward. But think ahead to when the truck is finished. Instead of bumping along on a mish-mash of reconditioned '50's era farm-truck technology, it will be rolling smoothly on a late model suspension, with brakes and parts that are engineered from the factory to work together. Probably cheaper, and easy to get parts for too.

I had an S10 for 12 years, and that was a tough little bugger. I really liked that truck, it was a decent compromise for all of the things I needed. If I was doing another EV, I would probably just do a simple S10 itself and get it over with. Something to keep in mind.

So anyway, I have to go get it in Connecticut, maybe this weekend. Just in time for mother's day.

Here's the best part: The crusty but-soon-to-be-trusty mag wheels I bought just happen to have the correct bolt pattern to fit onto the S10 chassis! Good thing I put a bid on the truck Sunday morning before I left for the swapmeet, right?