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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.

31. Bling for Deerslayer

December 23^rd 2013 In the past five years of austerity, I've been mostly dealing with paying down debt and sticking with the necessities. I do splurge a bit on my birthday and Christmas, sometimes. Last year at Christmas is when I purchased the used two-post lift that I am close to installing but not quite there yet. If I don't have something in mind, I just skip getting anything. That was the situation this year when I was searching eBay for steering wheel trim to cover the gap between the '46 repop steering wheel and the steering column mast.

I stumbled across an item that I knew existed, but had never seen on eBay or "in the wild" for that matter: a 1940 Chevrolet De Luxe "spinner" steering wheel. When I saw it, I had to have it for Deerslayer. Had a buy-it-now price of four c-notes. I held off for a day, then popped for the buy-it-now price. I am now impatiently waiting for it to arrive here at the Krash Lab the day after Christmas if the Postal Service doesn't lose it.

December 27^th 2013 The USPS delivered the spinner wheel yesterday. All the plastic is gone. My plan is to wrap the existing rim armature with rubber tubing to give me a base for another leather cover from wheelskins.com. The spline looks like it might be a match for the '46 column but I'll have to wait to check that out. This morning I placed an online order to McMaster-Carr for "Abrasion-Resistant Gum Rubber Tubing Vacuum Rated, 3/8" ID, 7/8" OD, 1/4" Wall, Tan, 5 ft. Length ". We'll see late next week if this was a good selection.

January 3^rd 2014 The tubing arrived yesterday. Shipping is a smidgeon slow, I suspect due to the holiday overload and the winter storms raging north of here. I may have gotten the inside diameter a bit tight but the length seems about right. Now, I need to figure out how to slit the tubing longitudinally to get it over the steering wheel rim. I'll fiddle around with that tomorrow.

Yesterday, my friend, Eugene, called me to see if I could transport his DJ equipment to the thursday nite cruise-in at the Hog so he could drive his finally finished '62 Corvette gasser tribute to the cruise-in. I got to his house a little after five and we headed out. We stopped for gas at one of the few stations around that has a non-ethanol pump. The vette was running good for it's maiden voyage.

January 6^th 2014 Saturday, there was a big show scheduled for late in the afternoon. I started out early in the shop with some Deerslayer monthly maintenance. Then, began messin' with the spinner wheel. Put the rubber tubing in a bench vise and started slitting it with a box cutter. When that was done, it was time to see if the forty de luxe chevy wheel would fit on the forty-six chevy truck column. It did (the spline was the same) and I breathed a sigh of relief. The rubber tubing was worked onto the spinner wheel for fit. Now, I have enuf info to order a custom leather wheelskin. The dimensions required for the order turns out to be 17-1/2" for the overall wheel diameter and 3-1/4" for the rim circumference. Before I got a chance to detail Deerslayer for the show, it was canceled due to crappy weather.

On sunday, after the coffee cruise-in, I cleaned up the BillyBob Shop and replaced some burned out light tubes.

January 9^th 2014 Performed some light shop organization and Deerslayer maintenance monday nite. Tuesday nite only six rides showed up at the first Delray cruise-in of the year due to cold, misty weather. It was a garden spot, however, compared to what the rest of the country is going thru with the "polar vortex". Yesterday, the wheelskin arrived at the Krash Lab, sooner than I expected it. A nice surprise.

I wuz gonna stop at a FLAPS to pick up some rubber-to-metal glue but it was raining so I went straight to the BillyBob Shop instead. After a bit of thrashin' around, I found some Gorilla brand superglue. Good enuf. Removed the spinner wheel, noting that it should be repositioned 'bout forty-five degrees counter-clockwise when reinstalling to be straight when traveling straight down the road.

PRE-Paint prepped the wheel rim and let it dry while I trimmed the gum rubber tubing some more so that it would not rub in the area of the spinner. Put the wheel back on and did a couple of test fittings of the rubber tubing. Applied the superglue around the rim and snapped the tubing in place to set up.

Positioned the Wheelskins leather cover and started stitching it in place, starting just north of the spinner element. Last time I did this I botched it up. I went slower with more care this time and did somewhat better. It's a mess at first 'cause you have to pull the entire length of twine (seven feet or so) thru every stitch and the twine appears to think its mission in life is to tangle and knot up at every opportunity. It gets easier as you get closer to completion and the twine line gets shorter.

Four hours, two Budweiser Black Crowns and a ceegar later, the stitching was done. The quality was about half way between what I did last time and what I would expect from a professional. I still had to deal with the five inch stretch around the spinner element where I couldn't place any stitching. The wheel was removed again and I trimmed the leather back from the spinner on both front and back so the spinner would spin freely. Last step was to superglue the trimmed leather to the gum rubber substrate and cross my fingers. So far, so good.

January 13^th 2014 Didn't get anything done over the weekend other than attending the sunday morning coffee cruise-in. On friday, I ordered a chunk of "Easy-to-Weld 4130 Alloy Steel Round Tube, 1.750" OD, .120" Wall Thickness, 1' Long " from McMaster-Carr to fill the gap between the top of the steering column mast and the bottom of the spinner wheel. It arrived today at the Krash Lab and I can see it wasn't the best choice (much too heavy) but it was the only item I could find with the correct inside diameter to fit over the steering mast. It will do for now but I need a better solution down the road.

January 22^nd 2014 Although I'm spending more time in the shop, I'm not up to speed yet and, apparently, not movin' fast enuf for Murphy. On the way to the Krash Lab yesterday morning, I noticed that Deerslayer's charging system was malfunctioning. Most of the trip, it was not charging. The ammeter needle would flicker for a few seconds, occasionally, but most of the time would be pegged on discharge due to the headlights. Blipping the engine RPM had no effect.

I mentally fussed over it all day and left the Krash Lab before dark so I didn't have to use headlights. At the BillyBob Shop I put Deerslayer on the battery tender and once again plundered the BillyBob roadtrip supplies for a fresh voltage regulator. I don't have the skill set to troubleshoot this and the voltage regulator is the easist part to replace first. This morning, I waited until daylight to head up to the Krash Lab. There was no joy. The ammeter behaviour did not improve.

January 23^rd 2014 Knowing that some new parts are defective out of the box, I tried the voltage regulator swap one more time last nite, this time with a solid state unit that was known to be working when it was removed during the BillyBob teardown. There was no change in ammeter behaviour on the way to the Krash Lab this morning. I plan on taking a vacation day tomorrow to try to swap alternators without removing any bodywork.

January 27^th 2014 With my fingers crossed, I started in on the alternator swap on friday morning. My fingers were crossed as I hoped that the swap would not require the removal of any bodywork due to the depth of the pulleys and belt into the nose. As soon as I started disconnecting the three wires from the alternator, I found the problem. All three wires were tie-wrapped together. The ten gauge charging wire had severed completely inside the ring terminal boot and remained there, held in place by the wire tie.

Floundered around fer awhile looking for a suitable ring terminal in the BillyBob Shop but there was no joy. Ended up cannibalizing BillyBob's wiring harness for its ring terminal and a few inches of ten gauge wire. It was spliced to the broken wire on the Deerslayer harness in the best tradition of trailer park engineering and we were good-to-go. I took a test ride, then did an oil and filter change in preparation for a cruise north to the Westgate River Ranch Rod Run on saturday, a three hundred mile round trip. It went well without problems with Deerslayer. One thing tho' I'm gonna have to get working on BillyBob again before he becomes a donor truck for Deerslayer.

January 28^th 2014 Last nite at the BillyBob Shop started out with some shop cleanup and Monthly Maintenance on the Deerslayer. Then I got back to the Steering Wheel and the pipe collar to cover the gap between the bottom of the wheel and the steering column mast. It turns out that the Pipe inside diameter is just a RCH too tight to fit the mast. As is the usual case, I began to think on a solution that was more complicated than it had to be. I planned to ask my friend, John Carey, to ream out one end of the pipe on his basement lathe. I explained this to my shop neighbor, Gato, on saturday and he rummaged around and handed me two air powered die grinders to try first.

Took off the spinner wheel and set the pipe in my vice. Then I donned my full face shield and started hogging out one end of the pipe to about a one inch depth. I only ran the die grinder for about twenty seconds before I took off the face mask and took the pipe to the Deerslayer to test the fit. Went thru the iteration of vice-mask-grinder-mask-vice-fit about ten more times and I had the snug fit I was looking for. I oiled Gato's die grinder and sat it aside. Checked the pipe fit on the spinner wheel before re-installing the wheel. Later, I will measure and cut the pipe to size.

Wasn't quite finished with my beer (Budweiser Black Crown) so I messed around with the nailhead a bit before calling it a nite. The donor engine did not come with a water pump. I'd been looking on eBay for one but most of the vendors require a core. Last week I found a remanufactured pump for the same price the other vendors were asking but no core was required. Paid the buy-it-now price and it arrived on friday. I checked it for fit and stored it with the rest of the nailhead parts.

January 31^st 2014 Tuesday was Delray Beach cruise night and wednesday nite I just puttered around the shop. A couple of weeks ago, I splurged and got a 14" dry-cut DeWalt chop saw. Took it out of the box and set it up, and did a fast read of the manual. I went for the more expensive dry-cut saw rather than the abasive type since cleanup is one of my weak points. Last nite was the thursday night cruise-in at the Hog in Pompano. It rained all day yesterday and turnout was light. Only three rides, including Deerslayer, were there. Everyone else came in their mundane drivers.

February 1^st 2014 Got started in the shop early. Wus thinking about removing the Deerslayer dash board to get access for installing a dash mounted horn button. Taking the dashboard off is pretty straightforward. What concerned me was disturbing the wiring behind it. After pondering on it with my first cigar of the day, I decided to remove the glove box door and glovebox cardboard first. With the glove box out of the way, I had room to work.

My idea for a horn button was something on the order of a COE truck starter switch. I settled for a Dorman boat starter button. It required a 5/8" hole. There was a plastic button cover already in the dash next to the glove box above the light and ignition switches. I removed it and used a step drill bit to enlarge it to 5/8". It was darn close to the correct size to begin with.

The button was checked for fit and then wired up. I had some red wire so I kept with Tony's red wire theme. Crimped some ring connectors for the switch and ground and crimped a splice to the horn wire that had been dangling since the steering column change a couple of months back. Good! I have a horn again. I put the glove box back together and moved on to the steering wheel.

The piece of pipe I was fabricating the steering mast cover from, was measured and clamped in the chop saw. This was the first time for my use of this tool, and I took longer than I might normally to review the safety precautions. Finally, I donned my face shield and turned the machine on. A few seconds later, I had my cover. Cleaned it up, removed the steering wheel, and snugged the cover up on the steering mask. Put the spinner wheel back on and I was done.

The spinner wheel did not come with its plastic hub insert and horn bar. These items are listed in Chevys of the Forties catalog at $175 and $85 along with the spinner grips for $75. A little rich for my blood but understandable from a small production run viewpoint. I'm going to fabricate something else to finish the hub and bar. By mid-afternoon, with a few Budweiser Black Crown beers and a couple more cigars, I had my inspiration. I did a partial mock-up but the rest will have to wait for the next log entry. This one is getting too long.