Project Truck Update: Patches Home Again

So the garage that's been Patches' home for a while has become structurally unsound.  We've brought it home over the summer while I have a break from grad school to fix it up and do some work.  

In order to get it running, I first had to connect up the gas tank.  I did it just like I described in the previous post.  

The second piece of hose is to prevent the tubing from rattling against the tank.

Since Patches no longer has a roof over its head, it now has a nice new coat:

One of the other essential items for any pickup truck is a tool chest in the box.  Patches really needs it because there's very little storage space in the cab.  I found a plywood one that I cleaned up and painted red to match:

A never ending war with an old truck is the battle against the rust monster.  I've cut out a big chunk and cut a patch panel to roughly fit and riveted it in place.  I may come back and weld it in later.

I'm not entirely happy with the patch job, but rivets are easy to undo.  Also, I've put in some duck tape to smooth out the edges.

Patches took forever to crank when I finally got to running it.  I had to use the old trick of pouring a capful of fresh gasoline down the open throat of the carburetor.  The gasoline (despite using Stabil) had volatilized away.  After doing a good amount of work on it this past weekend, it felt really great to take it for a leisurely spin down Lakeshore Drive.

Some of the priorities moving forward are going to be finish repairing the cab floor, replacing the rims (which are dented and leak slowly) and tires (the rear wheels are so old and dry-rotted, the tread is starting to separate), and eventually replace the wiring with the harness I purchased a while back.