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 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.

29. It's the Humidity

April 19^th 2013  A week ago when I was at the dentist, he found a broken tooth that needed a crown. Damnation! Just got back from the first session regarding the crown and it cost me more than I paid for the nailhead, a week's take home pay, as a matter of fact. This is gonna set back BillyBob Shop improvements for a few months.

April 28^th 2013  Got a full day in the shop yesterday. Performed monthly and quarterly maintenence. The brake lights have stopped working again and I messed around with that too. Couldn't get good readings with my voltmeter until I jammed the negative probe into the negative battery cable clamp. Once I got past that hurdle, I determined that the fuse for the stop lights was good and then that we were getting juice at the underfloor switch. I then made a jumper wire and bypassed the switch completely. This should have given me brake lights but didn't. Just for good measure, I checked the bulbs, even tho' I would have been greatly surprised if they were both bad. At this point, I'm pretty shure I have a short or break somewhere in the wire between the switch and the "tee" where it branches to the taillights. I know this is fundamental stuff but I've always been thick-skulled regarding electrical issues.

This morning, we were holding the breakfast cruise-in at a new spot to try to get more attendence. The ride for Deerslayer and me is about twenty-five miles (one way). It was at a Dandee Donuts Factory just off of the I-95 exit at Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, Florida. Took me about twenty minutes to get there. We did have more rides and we're gonna try this location once a month from here on out.

The weather was perfect and several of us decided to cruise the beach back. This meant running east on Hollywood Blvd to A-1-A then north to Dania Beach blvd, back west to U.S. Hwy 1, north to 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale, east again back to A-1-A and north up Fort Lauderdale Beach, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Pompano Beach, Hillsboro Mile, Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton where I stopped at the Krash Lab a few minutes before heading back to the BillyBob Shop. It was a two cigar run (Churchills).

We were led by Bill Carroll in his custom '50 Chevy. Following him was a '40 Ford business coupe, a '37 Chevy sedan, a '32 Ford fendered five-window, a '64 Chevy Impala, the Deerslayer, a '32 Ford three-window coupe, a '40 Ford tudor sedan, a '32 Ford fendered roadster and a '34 Ford pickup and there might have been a few more. When we hit Fort Lauderdale Beach, it was still early enough that traffic wasn't bogged down much and we had all the cars in line without any mundane vehicles between us. Quite a few beachgoers were appreciative of the spectacle. A few cars peeled off at Oakland Park Blvd. in north Lauderdale. The '32 Roadster peeled off in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. My friend Eugene peeled off in Pompano. That left me and the '32 Ford three-window. When I peeled off in Boca Raton, the Ford continued up the Beach to Lantana.

I puttered around the BillyBob Shop until it was time for the sunday nite cruise-in at the Lighthouse Point bowling alley. There, I found out that Eugene was having trouble with the Impala during the earlier cruise. He didn't know what it was at the time but, when we were going thru the north Lauderdale leg of the morning cruise, a spring broke in one of his rear brake drums. He thought he was losing power. He didn't know that wheel was dragging. Just as he pulled into his driveway, his rear tire blew from the heat. Lucky for Eugene that the tire and brakes were the only damage sustained.

April 30^th 2013  Little did I know that on sunday nite when I was arriving at the cruise-in, another one of my uncles was passing on. Just Damn! That's three in less than a twelve month period: Uncle Corky last summer, Uncle Dave last fall and now, Uncle Jim. My Aunt Kathy called with the sad news that all her big brothers were gone now. That makes her the oldest of my Dad's five surviving siblings. This is another of life's milestones for me.

My Dad "Bobby" was the first of thirteen. He passed on New Year's Eve 1994. "Dutch" was the second oldest. He was killed in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. "Jimmy" was the third brother and the last of the five to go on sunday. "Corky" was the fourth brother and he passed last summer. We lost "Fredie" in the seventies. He was tightly wired and a stroke got him as a fairly young man.

This second picture adds my Grandfather and Uncle Tom who is still with us and lives in Melbourne, Florida. Back row, left to right, is Fred, Dutch, Corky and Jim. Front row is my Grandfather, Bob, Tom, and my Dad, Bob. My Dad would soon be going to Burma with the Army Air Corps, Dutch would follow, joining the Navy, Jim had lost a finger in a teenage auto accident and the military would not take him. Corky would do a tour in the Navy, post war. Fred did a cold war stint in the Army in Europe and Tom would make a career in the Air Force.

May 2^nd 2013  Monsoon season has arrived in south Florida. We usually get afternoon rain every day in a normal year. Today has been an all day soaker, which is rare in this neck of the swamp. Tonite's "rain or shine" cruise-in has been called off and Deerslayer and I will have a time of it when we leave the Krash Lab, trying to navigate flooded streets. The tuesday nite cruise-in was not much better. It didn't rain on the cruise-in but many stayed home because they thought it would. One of the guys showed up with an unrestored "bathtub Nash" that was pretty nice.

May 3^rd 2013  Getting back to the BillyBob Shop last nite was an adventure and it continued to rain overnite. Today, it is clearing up and tomorrow nite's show which is a drive-in movie venue showing American Graffiti should go off without a hitch. I took a break from my work in the Krash Lab a few minutes ago and went outside where I found some new eurotrash in the Krash Lab parking lot. This is a Maybach 57 s and pretty rare. Total Maybach production from 2003 thru 2010 is a little over eleven hundred cars.

May 13^th 2013  On saturday, some quarterly maintenance was done on Deerslayer and then I jumped into the brake light problem again. Crawled under the back of the truck with the idea of tracing the "simple" brake light wiring at the place where it branches off to the two brake lights . . . Oh spit! There's more wires back here than I expected to find. I had forgotten that Tony had also rigged up wiring for trailer towing. I stopped to smoke a cigar and ponder the situation.

After the cigar, I crawled back under Deerslayer and surveyed the wiring. The two tail lights with the double filiment bulbs in them had electrical taped bundles coming from them with three wires: blue, red and black. I pulled the blue wires out of the terminal block and turned on the lights. The tail lights were out so, I put the blue wires back in the terminal block and had the tail lights back. Next, the same exercise was performed with the red wires. There was no change, leading me to think that these were the brake light wires. These red wires went to a wire nut and a third wire went from the wire nut to the terminal block. I left this third wire disconnected from the terminal block for the time being and went in search of tools.

I found my Power Probe III. I got this gadget the last time I lost the headlights, but found the loose fuse block terminal that was causing that problem before I unpacked the Power Probe. It's called the Power Probe because you connect it directly to the battery via a long cord and can actually use it to apply power to circuits and devices that you are testing. I applied it to the terminal wire coming out of the wire nut and, eureka, I had brake lights.

At this point, I decided to go into redneck engineering mode for the short term to get the brake lights back while I continue to look for the real problem with the wiring. I rigged a separate, new wire from the wire nut forward to the brake light switch. No joy. no brake lights. I put a jumper across the switch. Still no joy. This confuses me greatly, since, as I wrote before, my voltmeter indicated I had power at the switch. Next, I found an old inline fuse holder and rigged up a line directly from the hot battery terminal to the switch. Connected the two new lines with the jumper . . . Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! No joy. Oh, wait a minute. I had turned off the battery disconnect switch when messin' with the positive terminal and had forgotten to turn it back on again. Now, I had brake lights. Removed the jumper and connected the two new wires to the brake switch. I now had brake lights when stepping on the brake pedal. This is a temporary solution that will serve while I straighten out the real cause of the problem and get a better understanding of Deerslayer's wiring harness.

May 29^th 2013  Been attending a couple of car shows and cruise-ins in the last couple of weeks but not much else. Summer is here in the south and the daily rains have started. On saturday, Deerslayer and I attended the all day Fort Lauderdale Beach Party where the city blocks off three blocks of Fort Lauderdale Beach. The car show segment was limited to eighty rides. I put on sun block before I left the BillyBob Shop and several of us convoyed down the beach road together so we would be parked together.

Spent several hours sitting on Deerslayer's running board, imbibing a couple of beers and smoking cigars as I watched the bikini clad babes saunter by. In the afternoon, my friends Blake (shown here in front of Deerslayer and his '07 Shelby Mustang) and Nye and I walked down to the Elbow Room beach bar. Nye had never been to this "landmark". I've only seen Blake drink three times and this was one of them. In addition, he was buying all the rounds. The sun block had saved me from the sun but I was blistered when we left the Elbow Room. A couple of days later, I was regaling my friends regarding the high mileage pit wolfie that was hanging on me in the Elbow Room. They responded that I was mistaken . . . There were two crazy chicks tag team mauling me. Oh my!

June 3^rd 2013  After I got the brake lights working a few weeks back, they worked for two days and quit again. Damnation! Yesterday, I pulled the floor up again and went after the brake light switch, which is about the only component that I haven't replaced yet.

The brake light switch is a lever type mechanical switch. I scrounged around in BillyBob's travel supplies and found a replacement switch. One of the reasons that I haven't replaced the switch sooner is that the mounting that Tony fabbed up is a steel angle welded to the switch.

As is often the case, the first solutions for mounting a new switch floating around in my head were more complicated than they needed to be. They involved cutting and fabrication and welding. Once again, my propensity for procrastination served me well. I finally decided to cut the old switch off of the mounting angle, not at the weld but below that, leaving the portion of the switch that had the original switch mounting holes. I even resisted the Tim the Toolman "more power" urge to pull out the power tools. Just put the old switch in a vise and used a hand hacksaw, then dressed the old welds a bit with a file. Then, the new switch was attached with a couple of #8-32 x 1/2" stainless steel machine screws and hex nuts.

There were several advantages with this simplified scheme, the biggest of which was that no measuring was required. I was able to continue to use the geometry that Tony had previously figured out. Installed the new switch and I had brake lights again. I checked them again this morning when I got to the Krash Lab and they are still working.

June 14^th 2013  Okay, another two weeks have gone by without much activity in the BillyBob Shop. Deerslayer and I have attended a few cruise-ins but that's about it. Deerslayer's brake lights are still working and the next step is to take up the floor again and reconnect the old wiring harness. If the brake lights continue to work, I'll remove the new temporary circuit that I wired direct to the battery.

Summer is here in the semi-tropics. It rains almost every day and it is heating up for hurricane season. I'm movin' slow.

< Back to IntroThe Doldrums >

You can email me at  webmaster@laroke.com

Issued Friday June 14, 2013

Updated Thursday June 7, 2018

copyright © 2008-2018 Larry R. Kephart all rights reserved