87 Ram 50 4x4 "junkyard" rescue,

[geezer101]

Good luck, we're cheering for you!

[steve1814]

What yard did you visit?

[WarStryker13]

The one you suggested in a different thread... I call dibs on the bedliner and running boards. Lol

Thanks for pointing me to them, the back edges of that yard has some really cool old steel being reclaimed by nature. I did see some cars that were decently clean and complete, but I have no room or money.

[steve1814]

Dang, I missed the running boards.... I'm still trying to find an OEM Mighty Max sport rear bumper so if you happen to see one around in another yard let me know. None of the Car-part.com vendors will ship me one.

[WarStryker13]

The junker lives!

https://youtu.be/5M8hILgXXFM

Open header is no bueno when it backfires.

[WarStryker13]

I buttoned up the last of the little stuff, the only things left is to put some form of exhaust on it, and deal with the broken bolts...

I'm not gonna lie, I'm procrastinating on dealing with those bolts.

[WarStryker13]

Just kidding! I pulled the wiper arms off, pulled the cowl covers off and cleaned them.

There was quite a bit of dead leaves and other junk underneath there, and I vacuumed all of that out from underneath because I'm pretty sure that's where the blower pulls air from.

I cleaned all of the windows again, fixed the driver's side door dome light switch, and I cleaned up the wiper arms to get them ready for paint. I'm just going to fog them black.

I've decided that I'm just going to paint the A pillar covers, they're a little too powdery for my tastes and I just want them sealed more than anything. Most likely going to just do primer, one coat of plain grey, and then a couple coats of matte clear. And I like the idea of painting the skid plate red.

Sunday it's supposed to be nice outside, I'm going to try and get all of the painting done then.

[WarStryker13]

Working on getting the truck running right, it's not firing on cylinders 1 and 2. Decide to pull the distributor out and clean it, find all sorts of crap inside it. Get it back together, go to put the new cap on and the black plastic spacer/ring/gasket falls apart.

Turns out half of it was missing, causing the cap to tilt slightly and keeping the rotor from contacting number 1 and 2.

Tried spinning the distributor without any spacer, the rotor hits the posts inside. Now I need to figure out where the hell to find that spacer.


EDIT: figured I'd post a picture of the problem.

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[steve1814]

https://www.liftpartswarehouse.com/p...m?1=1&CartID=0

[WarStryker13]

I already found a new one on FB, but thank you for that link.

[WarStryker13]

I got a ratchet on the end of the crank, rotated it until the timing marks lined up with the groove on the pulley, and put the distributor back in pointed at number 1. I took the pieces of that spacer and spaced them out around the distributor, as a temporary fix. I just wanted to make sure that was the actual problem, but when I tried starting the truck it just kept cranking without sounding like it was trying to light off...

After I started panicking a little I realized that I just need to rotate the crank 360 degrees for it to be TDC on the compression stroke for number 1 cylinder. I did a dumb.

By that point I had to get ready for work, so I'll fix that tomorrow morning and hopefully, it'll fire right up and actually run on all four cylinders. I'll get the timing adjusted close(ish) and get it out of the garage and over to the coin-op car wash. I'm going to spray it down and try to get as much of the grease and grime off the underside and engine as I can, because I'm really tired of working on a dirty truck.

Once I get the truck over to the on-post self-service shop, I will get a timing light on it to see how close I got and if it needs any more adjustment. While I'm there I'll take an oxy-acetylene torch to those bolts in the control arm and either get them out or knock the threaded inserts off the control arm and tack weld some nuts in their place. Then I'll see about pulling the torsion bars out, getting them clocked properly and maybe crank them up a bit. Then it'll just be getting the new tires on and driving it around until I'm confident that it's running fine.

[WarStryker13]

So the guy I ordered from sent me his last one, and it's lost in the mail.

I would just order it myself online, but I've had a small issue with the bank account and all of my extra money that I can spend is cash. So I haven't touched the truck in a couple of weeks, and dealt with a load of other stuff.

The reason I'm on here, however... Is because somewhere on the truck was a spider nest. It hatched last night and there were hundreds of tiny little spiders all over the damn thing. I got most of the ones on the outside of it with a can of starting fluid and a propane torch (exactly how it sounds, but without actually setting the truck on fire), but I don't know if any moved into the truck.

Outside of using a flamethrower, what's your best trick for genocide, I mean massacre, I mean getting rid of a metric shit ton of tiny little baby spiders?

[geezer101]

Well, that is just BS dude. How much bad luck can someone deal with before going ballistic. I think you need one of those pretend professional pest control packs (the plastic bottle with the sprayer wand) and just go nuts with it. I have the joy of eradicating redback spiders from under my truck (think black widow but about 15 times worse). I break out a can of HD insect killer and gas them with extreme prejudice.
1o9ejc.jpg

[WarStryker13]

I think I got most of them with fire...

I was going to deal with the few spiders I saw while underneath the truck before something like this happened, but without the truck running it's difficult to get anything done to it.

But yes, an excessive amount of chemical warfare will be used with extreme prejudice and potentially extreme violence. And fire, definitely more fire. The truck might not survive, or the garage, but at least the spiders will be gone.

[tortron]

You could easily get a spacer 3d printed if you ask around

[WarStryker13]

I actually hadn't thought of that... I've already emailed every Mitsu and CAT dealership in this state looking for this part so I might end up with a stack of them. lol

I'm choosing to take everything in stride, I've had a lot of practice dealing with bad luck and BS and this is nothing compared to some of the shit I've dealt with. I've already put enough time and effort into this truck, all I have left to do is wait.

Plus I've got to let the baby spider carcasses all over the truck sit there for a few days as a warning to the rest of them. lol

[WarStryker13]

I forgot to mention that the brake booster is no longer functioning. It worked (ish) when I got the truck, but as I bled the brakes it just kept getting worse and now whenever I step on the brake pedal, I can hear it hissing.

Looks like I'm going to be making another trip to the salvage yard, or trying to find a decent used one...

I'm going to claim Murphy's Law, and all of these little problems and setbacks will satisfy Murphy's Law for a nice long while.

[steve1814]

You can have the booster from my parts truck if you want to come up and pull it off.

[WarStryker13]

Big thanks to steve1814 for the brake booster, it works much better than my old one.

And in other big news, the spacer/gasket showed up today. I honestly did not know that it's actually made of rubber. Lol

https://youtu.be/EoJrkIjaeHA

IT'S ALIVE!!!! And firing on all four cylinders! Still need to get the timing adjusted, but I'm happy with the progress.

Oh, and I ripped the door cards off, because spiders decided to move into the doors. I'm gonna have to figure out something to cover the inside of the doors, at least until I can get new door cards. I'm seriously considering making new ones.

[steve1814]

Glad it worked for you!

[geezer101]

Door cards are easy enough to replicate. Mine had been slaughtered by the PO who thought putting the worst quality 6x9's in pristine door cards was a good idea. I made them pretty basic - thin MDF sheet pinned to the door skin with plastic scrivets wrapped in carbon fibre film.

- fixed running issue = awesome
- having working brakes = more awesomer

You got an exhaust issue somewhere by the sounds of it from your video?

[WarStryker13]

Well the exhaust did kinda fall off... I haven't put any clamps on it yet because I still have to cut 3" out of it. It exits directly into the inside of the rear tire right now.

I did find a set of door cards in that junkyard that are in decent enough shape, so I'm thinking something slightly more temporary just to cover the inside of the doors.

[WarStryker13]

Got a lot done last night. I took a chisel to the broken bolts in the lower control arm, knocked one of the nuts completely off. The other one was a little more time consuming, but I finally got a drill bit through it and got it out. Below are pictures of my sucess. lol

40679638633_793340f766_o.jpg

Once the new front shock was in, everything else kinda just fell into place. I got (almost) everything buttoned up, got the truck back down on all four wheels, and decided to make holes in the hood.

33769548998_0d7dc8e089_o.jpg

There's still a lot of cleaning left to do, and today I'll be taking the truck for it's maiden voyage around post. I've fixed the exhaust problem I had before, and aligned both torsion bars so the truck now sits level side to side in the front, and managed to raise the truck a couple inches in the front while I was at it.

I'm relatively sure that the spiders are all dead now, or at least mostly dead. I haven't seen any new webs or activity in a few days, but I'm still going to grab another can of spider killer and spray the underside again.

As for the door cards, I couldn't find any decent vinyl fabric or suitable card stock that didn't cost more than what I had available to spend at that time, so I'm just going to temporarily re-use the old door cards. I'm going to fold the vinyl back and leave the top of the door as painted metal, because the vinyl on the driver's side is too cracked to try and save, and all of the foam has turned to powder.

I think I'll just get an unmolested set of door cards from the junkyard later, I might try to grab them when I got to pick up that bedliner.

Right now I'm heading out to try and set the timing, deal with the last little details and take a video of it driving for the first time with Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" (2001: A Space Odyssey theme song) playing, just for giggles.

[WarStryker13]

Did the last few things I could do, been a busy week.

Horn button was full of corrosion and the foam isolator pad thing was gone, so I made a new one. lol

33815233468_545cc91ef9_o.jpg

After fixing the button and cleaning off the contact points for it, I sounded the horn and was very disappointed. So I gave the truck some more bark to match it's bite.

32749477597_b0bf4592e3_o.jpg

Then for shits and giggles I mounted the cheapo off-road lights that came with the truck. One's already burnt out, but the bulbs are H3 and pretty cheap to replace. I think they look alright, maybe a little crooked in this pic but I've since tightened them down and fixed that. I still need to wire up a switch and relay for them, but that can wait for a little bit.

40726277733_ed9c65e2b8_o.jpg

I still haven't moved the truck out of my garage, it's been a long week and I won't have time to touch it until Monday. There's only 2 things to do before I drive it, which is bleed the brakes (again) and set the timing.

It's supposed to be 8-10 degrees advanced when stock, with the Weber 38 and a header I'm thinking maybe another 2 degrees?

Ish?

I'm just going to do it by ear and if I notice anything weird while driving it I'll put a timing light on it.

[geezer101]

Have a shot at doing the timing with the throttle open (once you have the engine turning over first try). The weber is going to try and over advance the timing - see if you can dial it in at about 2000 rpm. Idle rpm is going to be wobbly... So close to D day now. The work is finally paying off