Friday, June 19, 2009

Project Truck Update: Ticking Timebomb Edition

I've been using the truck to move things and smelled gasoline, but I assumed it was part of the usual aroma. I was showing the truck off to a certain brain-eater when he noticed a trickle of gasoline coming out from the gas tank.
Fixing gas tank
Been busy, so haven't gotten a chance to fix it until today. All I had to do was play around with things and tighten them down, fortunately. I guess I didn't do a good enough job when I changed out the gas gauge. I made sure to keep a fire extinguisher handy when I was working, though. Very important. Now the fire extinguisher lives in the glove box (along with that bracket, the registration, a bottle of WD-40, random tools, and other various and sundry nebulous odds and ends).
Permission to lower property values
The new house is in a 2-hour resident zone, so I had to get a permit. Now the truck has permission to lower property values in the Garden District!
Two seat belts
Installed a second seatbelt. Anyone want to go for a ride while sitting on 20 gallons of 93 octane?

One of the older draftsmen told me that on these old trucks, there was a cruel trick you could play on your passengers: the dash is made out of bare steel and the seat only has a lap belt. Slam on the brakes and the passenger will fly forward and nail their head on the dash. Many noses were broken that way, allegedly.

5 comments:

GENTILLY YARD ART said...

don't forget a pair of vice grips and a pair of needle nose vice grips.

really come in handy in a jam.



my favorite old school trick when i used to drive a big old pick up in the day was to have two of your buds in the front seat.

as soon as you got on the old bridge from algiers to n.o. (back than there was only one bridge) your pal who was in on the joke and riding shotgun would crouch down on the floor to make it look like the guy in the middle was with his boo a.k.a. the driver.


as the driver of the truck it allways cracked me up even thou dem boys from the "bestbank " was shooting me the bird.

GENTILLY YARD ART said...

my other memory of that jaunt from algiers point to the french 1/4 back in the day was one time my hood lock was gimpy and about half way up the bridge my hood stood at full attention.

i had to drive the rest of the way up the bridge and over and down all the way to the first exit looking thru the tiny crack between my hood and the windsheild.


pop your hood one day in your driveway to see the visual im talking about.

again the best bankers were flipping me off and driving like crazy people.

i like to believe it was pay back for my dumb ass prank.

Jason Brad Berry said...

so can a zombie get credited with saving your life for that? I'm fully willing to embellish my voodoo prowess and say that Dambala put me there that day in order to discover your gas leak. :)

Clay said...

Many thanks. I thought I had it fixed, but I had to redo it.

Jason Brad Berry said...

no....thanks to you.....my dad has a truck that's almost identical to yours.

It was a pleasure seeing you and your chiquita.

Let's do dinner one night...we're testing out some recipes and would love to have you guys over.