The Road Ranger. 1997 SEMI

[Rick W]

Sides didn’t come out too bad. I still have to cut a couple holes, but fully focused on the truck wiring now.

And in case anybody’s wondering how you get them to turn out flat:

With clients getting in my way all day, I didn’t actually get any of the wiring done, but I figured out everything I had pulled in advance, and what I would have to add new. And I also came up with a cheat sheet to stick in the glove box for when I have to chase of wire a year from now.

I wasn’t ready to quit, so I started to figure out how I’m going to hang the air tank (that will look like a gas tank) just behind the drivers door. I don’t know if I ever shared one of my proprietary blue prints with you guys before. I struggled over this one five or six minutes:

The diamond plate in the picture is the second lid of the toolbox that I’ve been cutting up for two years. I’m going to make it a hinged top over the tank.

And if you look in the first picture, kind of in the bottom left, there’s one of those stick on the counter chains for the pen like you find in the bank. I’m thinking that’s the perfect airhorn chain.

At this point, I’ll start taking suggestions for what to hang on the bottom of the airhorn chain. Remember sweet pea rides in the truck sometimes, so it’s got to be G-rated. And, it will be in my line of sight, so I can’t use a basketball or a kitchen faucet or anything else that big.

 

[scotts90ranger]

I was trying to think of something silly but then came up with a brilliant idea, it's coming up to christmas time and there are ALL SORTS of silly ornaments out anymore... like mini trucks, glass pickles, disco ball, sky's the limit!

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Disco ball ftw.

 

[Rick W]

Well, I thought I had it all down perfect, but when I was doing a test mount of everything, the CB was hanging down to low, so I couldn’t adjust the rearview mirror. I actually discovered that a couple days ago. I thought long and hard over the solutions. I didn’t want to cut the middle of the headliner out. The whole time I’ve been doing this, it’s been like working with a fragile antique, every time I touched the headliner (which is near perfect) it crumbled.

I thought of mounting a new windshield clip, but then the mirror would be too low and right in my line of sight. So I finally sliced out the middle of the headliner, about an eighth of an inch of time, so everything was snug up in there. I had to flatten out the back part of my new mount that bolts to the windshield, and put that fold further up so it would all sit further up. It’s still very close.

Today I took the seats out, and the whole left side of the cab apart, to route the wires. I pretty much had it roughed in a couple years ago, but as I got more exotic, I needed about five more wires, and then some spares. The goal was to get it from the CB location and down the side of the windshield in the front, and run it over my head, an out under the jump seat behind me, ready to poke a hole somewhere to carry it backwards. I also crimped terminals on all the overhead wires.

I ran out of sunlight, and I was creeping up on a Halloween party, so that’s where I had to leave it for today.

Now I just have to lay down on my back upside down and backwards, and screw all the terminals down.

I have new carpet, and there’s a couple of other things I want to do while the interior is out, and then I have seat covers also. I think I can finish the wiring in a day, but it’s probably going to take a few days to get the rest of the interior where I want it. and it’s still coupled to the trailer, I wanted that, so when I finish up the wiring behind the cab, I can test everything at one time.

But hey, it’s progress.!

(and yes, that is a piece of a 16/3 extension cord. Of course it was in the shed of miracles, and have you checked out the price of wire lately?)

 

[Rick W]

A little under the weather this weekend, but the wiring continues. There are three major junction points:

• Obviously, the overhead switch panel is number one
• Number two is a terminal strip where the second battery is located in the toolbox. This will receive all the feeds from the overhead switch box that have to go to the roof and the headache rack (the code 3 beacon, the traffic advisor bar, forward floods, rear floods, and the air horn compressors, and the air tank compressor in the toolbox)
• The third junction point is under the hood in front of the driver near the fender. That’s for the raptor lights, the bright strobes around the corners, and anything that has to feed from the front along truck to the back and the trailers.

I was dreading having to snake the wires into the top back of the toolbox under the headache rack between the stacks, etc., etc., but it actually went pretty easily using a coat hanger as a wire puller.

Today I got two of the last four bright strobes mounted on either side of the extended part of the cab, and I finished up running the wires into the toolbox from both the switch box, and from overhead, for feeding a terminal strip just above the second battery. I also have the wires that go from the overhead switch box to the rear all inside the cab trim again.

What’s left to do is the third junction point under the hood. It’s pretty much half done from before, but I have to redo the circuits to my raptor lights (they flicker, need thicker wire), and then run the wires to the back, install the last two bright strobes, and wire up the low strobe connection to the trailer.

Then I get to mount and connect the switch mount and the CB and start testing everything. Hope the truck doesn’t burn up!

Then, I’m really looking forward to the carpet and the seat covers which should make a significant improvement in the overall condition and appearance..

I also played with the pinstriping some more today. For some reason on the passenger door, it doesn’t want to stick. There’s something that always has to be a pain, huh?

 

[Rick W]

Yesterday, when I went out, the first thing I had to do was blow the leaves off everything. Here we are less than 24 hours later:

I didn’t have it in me to do it again just for an hour or two, so I just sat at the workbench a little bit.

I dug up a 10 LED light that was in one of the weather guard truck boxes when I got it, and I got a mercury switch from under the hood of a town car in the scrapyard a zillion years ago. I had to take the switch completely apart and clean everything and put it back together, but when I did it worked like a charm.

Then I made a little bracket for the light, so when the lid is up, it will actually shine down at a 45° angle. The LEDs are focused, so if it’s flat under the lid, when you open the lid, it points at the guy behind you.

To make the mercury switch work, I just took the bulb out, and I used a female bayonet connector to stick in where the bulb was. The light is grounded, so I will only run the hot wire through the switch.

I also cleaned off the workbench so I can see what the hell I’m doing next.

 

[sgtsandman]

Yesterday, when I went out, the first thing I had to do was blow the leaves off everything. Here we are less than 24 hours later:

View attachment 101067View attachment 101068

I didn’t have it in me to do it again just for an hour or two, so I just sat at the workbench a little bit.

I dug up a 10 LED light that was in one of the weather guard truck boxes when I got it, and I got a mercury switch from under the hood of a town car in the scrapyard a zillion years ago. I had to take the switch completely apart and clean everything and put it back together, but when I did it worked like a charm.

Then I made a little bracket for the light, so when the lid is up, it will actually shine down at a 45° angle. The LEDs are focused, so if it’s flat under the lid, when you open the lid, it points at the guy behind you.

To make the mercury switch work, I just took the bulb out, and I used a female bayonet connector to stick in where the bulb was. The light is grounded, so I will only run the hot wire through the switch.

View attachment 101069

I also cleaned off the workbench so I can see what the hell I’m doing next.

Everything here is leaf covered too but wet. It's going to take a few days for things to dry enough for me to use the shredder vac.

 

[Rick W]

Woohoo

I checked it out later after dark when I walked Lincoln. Doesn’t light worth a damn (if you think about digging in the toolbox on the side of the road when you’re broken down and pissed off). Switch works great. When I catch up on everything else, I’ll probably swap it for some LED strips under the edges. If I got paid $2/hr, I could’ve bought 15 flashlights….

I’ll clean up the wiring so you can’t see it with some cable tie stickers before I finish…

I also pulled the grill to check why my raptor lights flicker. All the wiring to the lights was fine, and the wires were heavy enough. Then I checked the grounds. I had just stripped an inch of wire and put it underneath the screws/bolts that mount the fiberglass grill shell to the metal frame. Apparently the wires just twisted around and acted like a rubber washer, preventing the stripped part of the wire from making a good ground (I think). Like a lot of things I do like this, I actually grounded it in two points, but I think both were the same. So I took both ends of the ground wire loose, crimped on an eyelet, and screwed it directly into the radiator surround. I have them on an “ignition always on“ circuit, and I didn’t have the key with me to check it.

i’ve also been struggling with swapping out my traffic alert bar to one that has an internal display screen. The price has come down to like $70, but it’s all the work to change it out on my headache rack. The one I have now has a momentary contact that changes through the 17 patterns. When I was wiring all this, I figured out that that momentary contact just touches it to the ground. So when I put the terminal strip in the toolbox, I tapped into that circuit and made up a little teeny tiny push button (pencil eraser size) that goes to ground that I will mount on the side of the box by the drivers door. That way, when I turn it on and I step out, I can change the pattern right there without having to go back-and-forth into the truck. I haven’t put it in yet, I have three or four things to finish up.

More to follow…

 

[Rick W]

I think I finally got the pinstripe where I like it, now, the damn thing won’t stick!

I wanted a red, white and blue reflective, and I had the 3M tape. When I put it on, the white was really bright white, and the white in the flag decal is actually almost gray. Ditto on the blue, just didn’t match. I finally came up with this.

I used the classic double pinstripe where one is a little bit wider, put the blue on, and then I inverted the silver. I overlapped them, so the wider stripes are top and bottom, and the skinny stripes are in the middle, but they alternate. And if you look close, there is a red reflective stripe just above the blue and silver. The red just about disappears in the daytime, but it shows well at night.

It looks yellow in the picture (from the flash), but it’s actually a bright red and the right color.

I’m still having a problem with the silver sticking on the front 6 inches of the passenger door. I cleaned the door with 409, I cleaned the door with alcohol, and I changed the tape twice. I’m going to try warming it up with the heat gun tomorrow, and if that doesn’t work, I’m gonna try some different kind of solvent like Acetone. If that doesn’t work, I’ll use pop rivets.

 

[Rick W]

I’m stumped.

Won’t stick on that 10” of passenger door…

 

[scotts90ranger]

You ever use silicone spray on anything near it? I've heard NOTHING sticks to it and also nothing washes it off...

 

[RobbieD]

That is a stumper.

Does the tape still feel "sticky"? The only thing that I can think of, like scotts90ranger, is that something like silicone got on that area.

I'm wondering if you can mask a strip where the tape will, and carefully sand that strip with very fine sandpaper, lay new tape then come back with a little wax to gloss up any exposed paint (like between the stripes).

I don't know if any good solvent, like Acrysol, would remove whatever it is that's killing the pin stripe adhesion. It may be worth a try.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

At work we use an adhesion promoter. Not sure of the brand but I'm sure 3m would have some.

 

[Rick W]

I pushed the loose stuff back on, and then I warmed the tape and the fender with a heat gun, hoping to activate the glue. All that happened was the tape shrunk like a heat shrink tube.

So I cleaned it with 97% isopropyl alcohol (which should remove any silicone), heated the spot on the truck with a heat gun, and stuck new tape down while it was warm.

Damnest thing I’ve ever seen. But I will not be defeated.

I pulled the tape off, cleaned that spot with alcohol again. Then I cleaned it with acetone (very lightly, since it actually started to take the red paint off). I was going to wrap a tiny piece of emery paper over the tip of the screwdriver and etch the track, but since the acetone removed some of the paint, I figured whatever was on it was gone to.

I heated it up with the heat gun, and I put new tape on it. Then I put the tiniest bit of superglue on the forward end of the tape at the edge of the door.

More to follow. (I could’ve built another truck by now.)

 

[RobbieD]

That's really odd; it looks like the blue is doing OK.