Tinkering with Deerslayer

DEERSLAYER LINKS including vendor sites for parts and tools as well as sites for old truck and hot rod organizations

TINKERING WITH DEERSLAYER chronicles the day-by-day maintenance and improvements episodes for Deerslayer, a '37 Chevy farm truck hot rod.

CRUISIN' WITH DEERSLAYER Roadtrips, cruise-in's and truck show stories and tall tales.

TONY'S DUNGEON Tony Pascarella's forum entries at OldGMCtrucks.com and H.A.M.B. regarding Deerslayer, particularly the 302 GMC engine build in his farmhouse basement.

DEERSLAYER MAINTENANCE Ever changing detailing, oil change, lube, etc. maintenance routines specifically developed for Deerslayer, including required tools, materials and procedures.

PROJECT NAILHEAD Chronicles the rebuild of a 1954 Buick Roadmaster 322 nailhead engine as a future replacement for Deerslayer's Jimmy 302.

4. Dog Days of Summer

July 8^th 2009  Well, Deerslayer and I made it back from the family reunion in Pennsylvania in one piece. The two days spent driving in the deep south were brutally hot. I'm gonna have to do something about cab insulation before the next long roadtrip. We are setting heat records here in South Florida and it's not a day to be grunting under the trucks. It smells flinty under the shadetree today. I'll investigate a eBay purchase that arrived in my absence instead.

Ever since I broke the panhard rod mount, I've been listening during the occasional hard power shift and I think I've heard a universal joint clunk a couple of times. I'm pretty sure I have some axle wrap and I want to remedy that. I've ruled out traction bars under the leaf springs because I don't want Deerslayer to look like a drag truck and because I don't know what manner of stresses the lowering blocks make in that type solution. I favor a single ladder bar like the rockcrawlers use to keep the axle constrained. A ladder bar of this sort has a shackle at the front anchorage so that it doesn't bind up the natural movement of the leaf springs.

While I was comptemplating fabbing up my own ladder bar and hangin' out at the McMaster-Carr website building my materials list, I found a generic 32" 4x4 ladder bar on eBay for a $125 "Buy-it-Now" price. Bingo! That price is low enuf to discourage me from building the whole thing from scratch. After I got all the packaging off, I examined it closer and it looks like it's gonna work just fine. I'll trial fit it this weekend to get an idea of what I'll have to do in the way of a front mount.

July 11^th 2009  The weather channel sez forty percent chance of rain today. I'm working with an eye to the sky. All my maintenance items are way overdue because of the almost 3,000 mile roadtrip. I started out with monthly maintenance.

Played around with test fitting the ladder bar for awhile. The length is damn near perfect. The front mount will work off one of Tony's fabricated crossmembers without additional fabrication. If I mount it upside down, there won't be any clearance issues with the bottom of an original crossmember or the parking brake cables. Since Deerslayer doesn't do any rock crawling, this won't be a problem. While I was gruntin' under the truck, Lou, of the Just Us Car Club called and told me about a new cruise-in tonite.

I adjusted my plans for the cruise-in. The engine compartment has a thin coating of oil over most of it. I think I have a small leak or two at the front of the motor. I pulled out the air compressor, garden hose and grimeblaster wand and gave it a degreasing and rinse. Followed up drying the engine with compressed air. I wasn't quite finished when Donny, the lawn guy, showed up to put a kink in my activities. Damnation! I wanted to go over the engine with Wash Wax All degreaser. But I doubt that Donny will finish blowing clippings around in time for that. Donny is a disciple of the Al Goracle so I put the tools in the shed and retreated into the Krash Lab before he started spouting that gerbil worming bullspit. Beer of the day is a special batch of JR's Bilgewater Stout that he whipped up for my visit to Pennsylvania.

July 12^th 2009  The new cruise-in venue turned out to be at Yucatan's Mexican Restaurant in Deerfield Beach, a few miles from the Krash Pad and is scheduled to be a weekly event. This was the first one and 22 cars showed up. This will be a regular on my schedule if it takes off.

It's nice hot muggy weather today. I didn't wear my "crawlin' around under the truck" clothes to the Krash Lab so the work is light. Took BillyBob for a short "keep the juices flowing" run then re-inventoried the Deerslayer parts, supplies and tools I took on the roadtrip.

I'm getting into the bad habit again of having too many little tasks started and none completed. With that in mind, I went back to stripping the silver sign paint off the leading edge of the grill bars. That's a tedjus job but fairly clean work and at mid-day BillyBob's tree actually affords some shade in the work area. I kept that up until lightning strikes drove me into the Krash Lab.

July 18^th 2009  Hot and muggy under the shadetree today. Somber inside the Krash Lab. Three more of my co-workers were cut loose yesterday. With the two let go in February, that's half our company now. In a week or so, there will be another round of paycuts for the survivors. The boss and I closed the office with Vodka for him and beer for me last nite. Even with the cuts, he will be hemoraging some big money each month to keep the lights on. It would make more financial sense for him to close up shop and retire early but, in general, architects work until they keel over. Obamanomics up close and personal.

It's too hot to do much today. I did an exterior detailing on Deerslayer's body, bed, glass, britework, wheels and tires while fighting off the mild melancholy of survivors' guilt. It was still pretty hot when I headed off for the second saturday nite cruise-in at the Yucatan Restuarant.

July 26^th 2009  Muggy conditions continue. Last saturday nite's cruise-in only lasted a hour before the thunderclouds let loose and everybody headed for high ground. Sunday was more of the same. I did manage to get quarterly maintenance done on Deerslayer and an "exercise" Fort Lauderdale beach run in Renegade before the rains started again. Yesterday, I got some work done on BillyBob and detailed Deerslayer's interior before I was interrupted again. Today, I started off with a Fort Lauderdale beach run in BillyBob and then performed an oil and filter change on Deerslayer.

The first few oil and filter changes for Deerslayer, the oil and filters were bought online. Now that I'm into "Frugality Level 2" due to my pay reduction, I bought local. My FLAPS doesn't always have Vavoline VR1 Racing Oil 20w-50 in stock so I've taken to grabbing a few quarts whenever I do see it and building up an inventory. I wuz lucky last week because they had both the Purolator PL30001 filter and the oil. The difference in prices is stunning. If you buy online from JEGS, the oil is over $11 a quart, $5.80 thru Amazon. I got it here for $3.89 and the filter for $6.49. The last filter I got online cost me $19.98! I suppose I'll be doing rebates and coupons next. Damnation!

By the time I finished the oil change, it was insufferably hot under the shadetree and the sky was rumbling again. That doesn't look good for the sunday nite cruise-in. Double damnation!

August 13^th 2009  All good things come to an end. I got my second paycut a couple of weeks ago and it now totals 30% which completely wipes out my descretionary income and then some. On monday, the Boss's wife (head of the interiors department) exercised the "What's mine is mine and what's your's is mine too" law and evicted me from the storage shed so she can put "interiors stuff" in there. I cashed in a couple of "sick days" to make the move.

August 22^nd 2009  Last week when I wuz moving stuff between the shed and my warehouse bay, the Boss was taking a cig break when I arrived back in the parking lot under the shadetree. He said leave some of the tools that I use all the time in the shed. When the wife evicted me, I didn't go crying to him about it and that worked to my advantage. I told him I couldn't argue with her and he replied that he could and that he would intervene. As a result, I'm keeping the air compressor, the floor jack and a couple of boxes of hand tools here at the Krash Lab.

Yesterday, I took a day off to organize the stuff Deerslayer carried up to the warehouse bay. Currently, Renegade will fit in there with all the other stuff but BillyBob will not and that is BillyBob's place to hunker down during hurricanes. I had gotten one run to the recycling center under my belt when I wuz called back to the office for some emergency invoicing. The Boss had negotiated payment with one of our clients and I had to adjust the billing to reflect the complicated negotiation agreement. It was extensive enuf that I knew I was going to miss the friday nite cruise-in in Davie. Curses!

We were two-thirds finished when the Boss had to split due to emergency. Another client and close friend (a guy I knew as well) had put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He left behind a wife and teen daughter and a bankrupt business. Just damn!

So, even tho' the weather is good today, the mood under the shadetree is somber again. I didn't get a chance to load up any tools for this weekend's work yesterday due to the billing emergency so I stopped at the warehouse on the way in to the Krash Lab this morning. Usually, I avoid going to the warehouse early in the morning or late in the afternoon 'cause several of the neighboring bays are occupied by lawn service guys and a lot of equipment is sometimes stacked in front of my bay at these times. I was lucky today and was able to get in and out quickly.

Jacked up the front end of Deerslayer and took the grimeblaster degreaser to the underside of the front half of the truck. I forgot a scrub brush and did the best I could with paper towels between soaping and rinsing operations. I'm gonna have to get better with logistics due to this new situation with tool storage. I have twelve or so small tool boxes that are arranged by tool type which was fine when they were all in the storage shed. I think I'm gonna reorganize at least a few of them based on task for future ops. Beer of the day is Boulder Beer Company's Flashback Anniversary Ale.

September 5^th 2009  Last weekend, I didn't get anything done 'cept attend two cruise-ins. At the friday nite tower shops cruise, I saw this AD Chebby motor by me with a nice rumble. It prompted me to get up off my dead butt and go have a look at it when the owner opened the hood. It was an old Buick nailhead. Nice conversion. It was hooked op to some kinda slushbox with a high stall speed.

It is a wet Labor Day weekend here on the gold coast but I'm makin' the best of it a soldierin' on under the shadetree. Started out with monthly maintenance on Deerslayer. I still haven't gotten the new logistics squared away 'cause, while I brought all the required tools down from the warehouse yesterday, I forgot to bring the replacement fluids. Lucky for me this time, all Deerslayer needed was brake fluid, which I had on hand.

After the monthly maintenance, the engine was degreased with the grimeblaster wand and purple degreaser. The cleaning service guy showed up to get underfoot. He doesn't speak english and I don't speak his asian dialect so I didn't have to get into any political discussions with him like I do with Donny, the lawn guy. Beer of the day is Florida Beer Company's Hurricane reef Pale Ale.

September 12^th 2009  Haven't been to a cruise-in for two weeks now because of monsoon weather conditions. Today is listed as another 60 percent of chance of rain day and the radar in Miami is busted so I can't see the bad news sneaking up on me. I bought tools down from the warehouse yesterday to detail the fenders. Three of them are oxidizing badly and I decided to try the Flitz ball and polish on them. I started out putting a couple of dabs of polish on the fender and running the Flitz ball/electric drill tool over them. This is the way I did it when I used this method on BillyBob a few years back. I soon amended my method due to Deerslayer's two-tone nature.

I wuz havin' problems in the tight areas and keeping the polish away from the flat red paint of Deerslayer's body. I started using a rag to apply the polish and give it an intial buffing, then finishing up with the Flitz ball. This worked much better and kept the Flitz ball from loading up with polish which has been a problem in the past.

I didn't do the rear driver side fender. It's holding up pretty well since Tony repainted it after repairing the damage from the infamous Bambi-killer incident at Macungie in aught-seven. It got the normal Wash Wax All treatment instead. Beer of the day is Smithwick's ("smitics") Irish Ale.

I haven't posted an episode on the website for awhile and some e-mails have started to trickle in wondering WTF is going on in BillyBob's garage. Not much, I'm afraid, but I am crawling along and this one is long enuf to post even tho' there isn't much real restoration work in it. As a last word, I'll relate an incident from a cruise-in a month or so back that I posted on the OldGMCtrucks forum.

I usually sit with my "Just Us" car club buddies at the cruise-ins and am usually some distance from Deerslayer. On this particular friday nite, when I went to the truck for a beer from the cooler, A fella asked me a few questions about Deerslayer. There was another fella standing there when he finished. He introduced himself and said "Didn't I see this truck tearing ass down I-95 in Georgia a few weeks ago?" He, in fact, had. Deerslayer and I wuz comin' back from the Pennsylvania family reunion run. Tony said this truck didn't get much attention in his neighborhood. Maybe so, but people can't help but remember a loud, black and red streak around here. They don't remember cars that cost five times as much as well as they remember this one, and BillyBob too. That's only one of the reasons I'll be playin' around with these old trucks until they send me to a re-education camp.

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Issued Saturday September 12, 2009

Updated Friday May 4, 2018

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