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.

40. Ember of Ambition

June 11^th 2018 When I'm looking for something, I clean and organize the BillyBob Shop until I find it. Lately, I've been looking for my ambition. No luck on that score yet. In the meantime, I'm still buying parts here and there. When I got the Latham supercharger almost two years ago, it wasn't the best fit for the Nailhead but I figured it could be adapted to work. The biggest obstacle to overcome is that it appears to be a reverse rotation model built for a boat engine. This would require a custom serpentine belt, or gearing to make it work on the Nailhead. Such an arrangement would take away from the look I'm trying to achieve. I kept looking and a couple of weeks ago, The "test mule" for Motor Trend's June 1959 Cover story came up for auction on eBay. I won the auction and it arrived here at the Krash Kubicle around lunch time. Included were two belts, the pulleys, fuelie manifold and magneto that were on the small block Chevy test engine.  It spins freely and the throttle linkage works well. This will be much easier to adapt to the 322 Nailhead and will keep its vintage appearance as well. The Latham tag still exists and this is a Model 28-A Serial Number 001359. I'm a happy camper. 

June 28^th 2018 Found a small ember of my lost ambition and I'm trying to coach it into a flame. Not the best time of year for this, summertime in South Florida.  With me, GW doesn't stand for Global Warming, it stands for Geezer Weather sensibilities. Minute changes affect me more than they did when I was a yout and I have to take note of them whether I want to or not. 

Okay, back to the Jimmy cylinder head. This thing doesn't look as good as it did when I stopped working on it in March of '17 but that's the way of things, I guess. Cleaned up the workbench and tried to start cleaning the ports with dainty 1/8" shank wire wheels and cups in a "pencil" air-powered die grinder. OOPS! The tool is too powerful. It will spin to sixty thou' and the wire wheels bend and disintegrate before touching the work!

Bought a Dremel tool flexible shaft for the next attempt. My Dremel was too old to fit the shaft so I purchased a new compaiible Dremel Motor Tool as well. That worked but it's tedjus work.

Wasn't happy with the results so I found a 1/4" shank air powered die grinder with a long snout online and, when it arrived, tried it with 80 grit sandpaper cones and rolls. Wasn't happy with that either.

Decided to clean the ports with repetitions of Oil-Eater, Scott towels and elbow grease while I puzzled over my next move. Damn, if that didn't come closer to what I wanted to achieve than any of my other efforts up to this point!

November 2^nd 2018 The shop temperatures have fallen into my comfort zone again and I'm out of excuses. Time to make another push at getting my rides mobile again. Started ramping up activity by cleaning the very dirty Elvira as best I could and pondering on how to rearrange and clean the shop. Cleaning Elvira is like swimming upstream because the City has the access road to the shop torn up and as soon as I leave the parking lot, I'm plowing thru a couple of blocks of broken asphalt and dirt or mud to get to solid pavement again. I've got my friend, Hank Lansenkamp, for inspiration. He made it to the Sunday morning coffee cruise-in to tell us of his latest cross-country trip, this time to Southern California and back in his hot rod Lincoln. Hank is a spry eighty-eight. Even so, he came by my chair and put his hand on my shoulder and said "Is everything all right?" I replied that everything seemed to be working, just not on the same day. BTW, beer of the day was Mt Carmel Brewing Company's Hibiscus Blueberry Blonde Ale. I'm glad I only had three bottles of this stuff.

November 22^nd 2018 Reorganized and cleaned the BillyBob Shop over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Managed to make it look more like a working shop and less  like an abandoned warehouse. Biggest problem was Deerslayer's angled position, which was the best I could achieve by pushing it around with wheels on the floor. Looked like a Porsche in a Walmart parking lot.

I needed wheel dollies. After research on the intarweb, and deep ponder mode thinking, I settled on Go-Jaks, expensive but probably the only solution in my diminished strength capacity. They have large quality casters and would allow me to push the trucks around by myself for a few more years. I assembled the Go-Jaks, positioned them under Deerslayer's wheels and pushed the truck around without too much trouble. I did have to position the outside casters in the direction I wanted to go to get things moving. I can now walk completely around Deerslayer. It was an obstacle course before. Beer of the day was RJ Rockers Brewing Company's Bell Ringer double pale ale. I don't remember much after the third one.

December 29^th 2018 Continued rearranging the shop. Wanted to turn Deerslayer around, end for end, so I could begin operations on the front of the truck. Put Deerslayer up on the Go-Jaks again and grunted and cursed him around into position. Also stopped long enuf during the moving to sweep to areas affected, then went into deep ponder mode for the rest of the day with beer and ceegars.

December 31^st 2018 Started the task of removing Deerslayer's nose. Cleaned my door lift/dolly first since I'm using it to lift the nose assembly off the frame. I'm cleaning all my tools as I go since they've accumulated a layer of dust from the Rough and Tumble Roofing Company's operations. Tagged and disconnected lighting and horn wire connections next and started mapping the wiring to draw up Deerslayer's existing wiring diagram. The radiator support bolts were pretty rusty so I ceased operations after giving them a good dose of Kroil penetrating oil.

January 5^th 2019Murphy took a leak in my Wheaties, first thing. The radiator support bolts should have come off with a couple of blasts from the impact wrench. A fifteen minute task turned into a project. I tore off a bit of finger nail discovering they were both spinning in place. These are carriage bolts and spinning just ain't right. Both ends of the bolts are in channels and hard to access. This will take some pondering. Took the passenger side front wheel off instead and started prepping the area for cleanup until Wayne Harlow arrived to pick me up for the 19th annual Full Throttle Show of Shows at the Sheehan Autoplex in Lighthouse Point.

January 12^th 2019 After some pondering, determined that I could rock the nose forward enuf to remove the fan, lower radiator hose and radiator for some more working room. After a small bit of grunting and cursin' this was accomplished.

Now, I was able to get access to the carriage bolt heads with a wire wheel to clean them up for welding. The plan was to weld the carriage bolt heads in place so the radiator support anchor bolt nuts could be removed from the bottom. No joy on that plan. What little I know about MIG welding, I seem to have forgotten. Wrong wire, wrong settings, I don't know. Can't hardly see the work either. My welds didn't hold against the force of the wrench from below. Okay, we're on to cutting and drilling solutions. At least I got my welder all cleaned up.

January 19^th 2019 Rummaged around until I found my 4" air-powered cut-off tool. The disk was down to a nub and I couldn't find any replacements. The plastic handle fell off in my hand. Time for a shiny new tool. I went for a "Binford 2000" variant with extended reach.

That did the trick. I had the radiator support bolts cut thru and the nose off in the twenty minutes it should have taken in the first place. I found a place in the crowded BillyBob Shop to stash the nose for the time being. Kept it on the door dolly so I can move it around as needed. A couple of guys in a scrap truck rolled thru the lot and I was able to get rid of BillyBob's old front fenders and gas tank and make some room.

January 27^th 2019 Miserable weather conditions at the BillyBob Shop the last four days were outside my comfort zone and no work got done. It was too cold, too wet and too dark. When conditions improve, the next task will be to inspect and clean the Deerslayer's front disk brakes, passenger side first. Tony didn't tell me much about the disk brakes other than they were Wilwood calipers on Camaro rotors. I found a receipt stating the conversion kit came from Jim Carter's Truck Parts and I see it is still listed on their website but no info other than price.

February 1^st 2019Took the disk brake caliper and rotor off and removed the shock on the passenger side in preparation for cleaning and painting the passenger side frame and suspension forward of the cowl line. Didn't have instructions for the Wilwood GM III brake kit and it didn't come off easy. I'm sure I did it wrong. Cleaning ops are next.

February 9^th 2019 Degreased the passenger side frame area forward of the cowl with Oil-eater, putty knife and rags. Then, went over everything with an air-powered wire wheel. Finished up with Eastwood's PRE Paint Prep, Rust Encapsulator on the springs and Chassis Black top coat.

February 10^th 2019Time to work on the driver side. More stuff to take off here. The exhaust system, oil filter and lines, steering box and column all have to come out, along with the same items that came off the passenger side. I'll chip away at this task while I wait for parts for the newly painted passenger side.

February 15^th 2019 Installed a new gas shock on the passenger side. Started to figure out the new disk brake kit. Didn't find the instructions at first so it was slow going. The caliber bracket was bare steel. I mounted it, taped the spindle up again and painted it with Chassis Black. When I worked the steering wheel, It wouldn't turn to the right. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! After a bit, I discovered the old brackets cut with a notch for a wheel stop. Examined the wheel stop and determined it had been stopping nothing (thick dirt on the contact edge). I removed it, but left the stud it was mounted on. The stud now acts as a wheel stop when the bracket contacts it. Ran into a snag mounting the new rotor. The instructions directed to remove the Camaro inner bearing race from the rotor and replace it with the Mustang/Pinto race from the kit. I don't know how to do that. I have to upgrade my Youtube Mechanic Certification.

February 16^th 2019 Removed stuff off the driver side. The header was first. I tried to take if off when Euge and Wayne were helping me remove the head but all the connections were rust-welded and not coming loose. I finally got out my new favorite tool, the extended reach cut off wheel and cut thru it. The old time drag link was next and could have been trouble but a few years ago I bought the special "blade" socket for turning the recessed ends. Amazing that I found it in the first three minutes of my hunt. The steering column and box came out easy as well. I'd done this a few years back and I had the steering arm puller from back then. Alternator and external oil filter were last. Tony had modified the generator bracket to mount both the alternator and oil filter. The harder task was finding room to stash these parts where they wouldn't get lost

February 23^rd 2019  With help from a couple of my Sunday morning coffee cruise-in friends, the League of Extraordinary Assholes, I was able to remove the Camaro inner wheel bearing race on the new passenger side rotor. Tapped it out from behind with the brass hammer and drift I used for taking the ring gear off BillyBob's flywheel a hundred years ago. Installed the Mustang/Pinto race from the kit and packed the wheel bearings with Green Grease. Installed the generic Chevy single piston caliper. Looks nice but something is wrong. The rotor does not spin freely. It will have to come back off again.

Well, I think that's enuf for this log entry. Haven't posted one in two years. It's well past time.

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Issued  Thursday February 28, 2019

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