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.

18. Electrical bugaboos

August 22^nd 2011  Worked on BillyBob in the shop on saturday. Yesterday, Deerslayer and I attended three events. Started out at the breakfast meet in Fort Lauderdale. Experienced the only rain of the day at this one. After that, I attended a charity car show in Pompano with Bill Carroll. Deerslayer got a top 25 award at this one. I was parked next to a real Ford GT40 from the sixties (not the more current Ford GT). I was being bothered by a loose tooth until I got fed up and pulled it myself at the show, much to the amusement of those sitting with me. Good. I saved a hundred dollar extraction fee. I'm gonna use the savings for an engine stand. Ended up the day with a cruise down Deerfield Beach and the Wahoo's sunday nite cruise-in. Deerslayer and I got home just before eleven, tired and a bit burnt.

September 6^th 2011  On saturday morning my friend, Ed Slane, was having a garage sale at his warehouse in Dania. Ed has quite a background. His stepfather was Lon Chaney, Jr. He was a pilot for thirty-odd years, in the military and commercial. He's still a expert marksman. He raced sprint cars and still has several. I was looking forward to spending a few hours with Ed and maybe hearing a few stories.

I don't think Ed was awake yet because he sold me two jackstands and a receiver hitch for ten bucks. There was a lot of garage stuff and collectables but I don't have room for collectables. There was one thing I did want but don't have the money for. It was a roll-back carrier at the back of the warehouse. I told Ed I would give him my first-born for it if I only knew where and who he was.

This is it. A '47 Chevy COE cab on a later model truck chassis. It is powered by a Ferd 351 Cleveland mill placed admidships. Has cold air-conditioning and all the creature comforts. Ed has about fifty-six thou in it and is selling for twenty-seven five.

I did get to hear two good stories. In the first one, Ed related the experience of going to Bela Lugosi's funeral with his stepdad. Imagine riding in the back of a studio limo with the other three passengers being Lon Chaney Jr, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. The other story was bringing a Boeing 727 into Miami with the nose wheel up when he was a pilot for Eastern. Both great stories.

The garage sale was over at noon and Deerslayer and I went back to the BillyBob Shop where I worked on BillyBob the rest of the day. On sunday, I saw Ed and the others again at the Fort Lauderdale Breakfast cruise-in. Between breakfast and the sunday nite cruise-in, I continued to work on BillyBob. At the sunday nite cruise-in, we happened to have two Model T rods parked side-by-side with radically different interpretions of the same body style.

September 12^th 2011  On saturday, Ed Slane had another garage sale, this time at his house in Fort Lauderdale. I went just to hang out with him and other car guys with no intention of buying anything. That is, until I spied an old Singer sewing machine. Someday, I intend to do my own upholstery work on the trucks. I've read that most modern sewing machines aren't heavy duty enuf for this kind of work. I asked Ed what he wanted for the Singer. He said "It's seventy-five years old. For you, seventy-five dollars." I peeled seventy-five off my "Buick Nailhead Fund" roll and came home with this beautiful machine.

On sunday morning, I met with the breakfast club and Ed drove his COE to breakfast. We had a pretty nice lineup of vintage iron with my truck and Ed's as bookends. I went to a Boca Raton cruise-in in the afternoon but it had been canceled. Finished out the weekend with the sunday nite cruise-in at Wahoo's as I usually do.

September 26^th 2011  On saturday, I started a overdue tuneup on Deerslayer. The saturday before, I performed a an overdue oil change (see a pattern here?). Poured half a can of Seafoam in the gas tank and warmed the truck up for a compression check. A couple of plugs took more effort than they should have to remove so I cleaned all the plug opening threads with a gun cleaning kit wire brush and carb cleaner. Readings for cylinders 1 thru six were 185, 190, 185, 195, 185 and 210. That last one has me stumped. Installed new plugs, points, rotor and cap. The plugs I removed were AC Delco R45's from the BillyBob roadtrip box and had been in Deerslayer's 302 for over six thousand miles. I have not experienced any of the cold engine misfires (or any other misfiring with them) that I have had with the NGK R5670-7 racing plugs at around the four thousand mile mark. I installed the NGK B6S plugs I removed from BillyBob's engine. They have less than 500 miles on them. We'll see how they do for now and save the racing plugs for when I reinstall the HEI dizzy.

On sunday morning, when I got ready for a full day of cruise-in's, shows and BBQ's, Deerslayer's battery was run down from the compression check. I jumped Deerslayer's battery with Renegade's battery which was fully charged and sitting on the shop floor. I put Renegade's battery and the jumper cables in my old metal cooler and the cooler on the passenger side floor like I usually do when I take beer with me to the shows. When I got home from the last show, I picked up a small wood screw in Deerslayer's driver side rear tire when I entered the BillyBob Shop compound. Damnation! Pulled the screw and went to the BBQ. This morning, the tire was really down and the battery was still low so now I'm carrying spare battery, jumpers, and a portable air tank in the cab with me.

October 3^rd 2011  I didn't get around to addressing the tire leak until this past saturday morning. This is the first time I've had Deerslayer's rear wheel off. I pulled the drum too and took a look at the brakes. No leaks but the lining on the rear shoe is getting thin. I ordered relined shoes for a '57 Chevy Belair from RockAuto and crossed my fingers.

Back to the tire leak. I had to use the dunk tub this time to find the leak again since I had pulled the screw out of the tire the previous sunday. I found the leak and plugged the tire fairly quickly. Cleaned and put away the tools used for this task and went back to the unfinished tuneup procedures.

Deerslayer has what is a barely noticable "cut-out" sometimes under load that feels like an ignition problem. For that reason, I didn't change the condenser last week when new plugs and points were installed. If it is an ignition problem, I'm trying to isolate it. The new plugs and points did not cure things. The cut-out is still there. I switched condensers. We'll go with that for a few days to see if it makes a difference.

October is here and it is a busy show month. On saturday night, I went to a "sock hop" charity event held by the Knights of Columbus at a church in Coral Springs. I got a beef dinner and free beer all night for showing up in Deerslayer. Sunday morning was the breakfast cruise-in in Fort Lauderdale followed by a "Jazz Brunch" downtown where the city wanted some cars to show up. We assembled twenty-three rides elsewhere and cruised to the event in caravan style. Sunday nite was the weekly cruise-in at Wahoo's. I'm tired again.

October 5^th 2011  Last nite was the startup nite for the Delray Beach cruise-in at the Outback restaurant. Jeane, who has been running this show for a year now, had a DJ and a Blues Brothers impersonation duo lined up. Well over a hundred rides showed up including the Blues Brothers Dodge police cruiser. The bunch I hang with at this event didn't get out of the restaurant until after darkness had fallen and I didn't get any good pics this time around.

October 10^th 2011  Damn! I survived another weekend. I planned on attending four events but by thursday, weather forecasts had rendered those plans iffy. It looked like a whole weekend of rain and wind.

Woke up saturday to light rain. Performed monthly maintenance on Deerslayer and replaced a burned out turn signal bulb. Then I went back to the ignition condenser. The one I swapped in about a week back was performing a bit worse than the old one so I decided to swap again. I dug around under BillyBob's seat and found the old condenser from BillyBob's last tuneup. I installed it and put the condenser I had just removed in Deerslayer's glovebox along with the wrench and screwdriver used to make the switch. Later on, I would be darn glad that I put these in the truck.

The rain had let up a bit and it was time to head off for the first event, "Revenge of the Tiki 3" at the Monterey Club in Fort Lauderdale. This was an indoor/outdoor culture event with hot rods and bikers, battle of the bands, burlesque, derby girl jello wrestling and vendor elements, a marathon from two in the afternoon until four in the morning. I got there at two and settled in. I paced myself pretty well but I didn't make it to the end. Gave up and headed for the barn about three am. Attendence was low due to the rain squalls and none of the food vendors showed but those who were there had a good time.

Too good a time. Woke sunday morning under the weather and with more rain outside too. I missed the breakfast cruise-in in Fort Lauderdale. Got ready to go to a Deerfield Beach charity event. Tried to start Deerslayer to head out . . . Damn, the battery is too low again. Jumped the truck with my jeep battery and put the jumper cables and battery in the cooler again to take with me. We were 'sposed to meet at Duffy's in Deerfield to register the cars, then convoy to the beach together. I went to Duffy's but noone was there. Continued to the beach but the police had it blocked off for the event and I couldn't get in. Oh well, back to the BillyBob shop.

I was almost back to the shop when Eugene, the DJ, called me up. He said that since no cars showed up because of the weather that the show portion of the event had been canceled but he was at the beach with his DJ truck and why don't I come just to hang out? I headed back to the beach. Eugene was going to walk over to the barracade to get the police to let me in when I got there. Well, I'm headin' up the highway, in the middle lane, when the engine sputters and shuts off. No cars were around me so I was able to coast into the right lane and into a parking lot before I lost all momentum. Tried to restart a couple of times but there was no joy. It still felt like a condenser problem to me so I got the condenser and tools out of the glovebox and switched out the condensers. Deerslayer started right up and I was on my way again.

At the event, it was just Eugene and I. at the end of the day Deerslayer got a "Best Paint, Best Engine, Best of Show, Best Mustang, Best Corvette and People's Choice" award plaque for being the only vehicle in the car show. The irony is that it didn't rain on us and turned out to be a great day. Finished the day by heading off to the sunday nite cruise-in in lighthouse point. Since the rains had let up, we had a normal attendence. Here it is, monday, and I'm tired again.

October 11^th 2011  On the way to work yesterday, a lawn service truck pulled up next to me at a light and told me the Deerslayer's brake lights wern't working. Damnation! When I got to the Krash Lab, I backed Deerslayer up to the glass entrance doors so I could see the taillight reflections. Shure nuff, the brake lights were coming on and stayin' on only one out of five pumps on the brake pedal. The rest of the time, they would just flash and go off again until the next pump.

When I got to the BillyBob Shop after work, Deerslayer's floor pan was removed so I could examine the brake pedal linkage. The brake switch "lever" rests against a short vertical rod that is welded to the brake activation rod coming from the pedal and past the master cylinder. When the pedal is depressed, the rod moves forward and the switch is activated. The problem is that if the rod moves too far forward (brake pedal to the floor), the switch lever moves too far forward too and breaks contact, shutting the lights off. When I get the new shoes in and adjustments made, this will probably disappear as a problem.

I tried a temporary fix for the problem by putting short lengths of vacuum hose on the switch lever and the vertical rod so that the switch lever wouldn't travel forward as far. This helped but didn't completely rectify the issue so I went in search of thicker tubing. I thought I might have some fuel line in one of BillyBob's roadtrip boxes. Unfortunately, I haven't replaced the burned out light tubes in that part of the shop and it's dark back there. During the search I put down my mag lite for a second and it rolled and fell five feet to the floor. No more mag lite. I gave up the search. I did find another new condenser while I rootin' around in the dark so the exercise wasn't a total loss. I put the floor pan back in, put the trickle charger on the battery and called it a night.

October 17^th 2011  I had big plans for the weekend out in the BillyBob Shop, but in the end, nothin' got done. There were no shows I wanted to go to and, due to the rain, only a handful of guys showed for the sunday morning breakfast meet. I spent the rest of the weekend just piddling around.

I've had the latest condenser in Deerslayer for four days now. It's the fourth one I've tried and is the one from the BillyBob roadtrip box. It's working better than the other ones so far but there is still a cut-out from time to time. I'm not finished playin' around with this issue yet but reporting on it will have to wait until the next Deerslayer Log entry as I'm due to get this one to the presses.

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Issued Monday October 17, 2011

Updated Tuesday May 22, 2018

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