79 Chief "Kraken"

[CoastieReid]

Is the center console from one of the Exploders? It looks pretty close to fitting.. I was thinking of building one but that might be a better start.

Yes, it came out of an explorer.

[Laredo Matt]

Is the center console from one of the Exploders? It looks pretty close to fitting.. I was thinking of building one but that might be a better start.

Yes, it came out of an explorer.

ditto rocklaurence. Would get me 85% of the way there vs. building from scratch. What year Explorer is it out of ?

[CoastieReid]

2004

[CoastieReid]

Tried a little leather stitching. Been a long time since I did any of this.





The leather feels so nice. There are over 550 "baseball" stitches in this wrap. It took a few days (maybe 4) of stitching for an hour or two. I was doing this while I was sitting at the shop waiting on customers to come in, and finished the last 50 stitches this morning.
Did I say how nice this feels?
The same brown (cognac) leather will be on the seat upholstery.


My rear driver quarter panel came in the other day. Have had some freezing temps and some rain/snow and I have been doing calculus and accounting class homework, which is way too time consuming. Will get back to the body welding as soon as I can. The gasoline fill is in a slightly off spot compared to the original. The original panel is so crushed and most of the bottom rear is missing. What you see in the photo is just fiberglass covered in bondo.

Inside the cab is nice and dry (except where the water seeps in from no weather stripping on the doors.

[Yeller]

That steering wheel looks amazing! I love a leather wrapped wheel, it just has a nice feel.

[devildog80]

Any bovine out there, would be proud of the stitching job you did, on their deceased relative

[CoastieReid]

dashboard passenger grab bar (sissy bar) was disgusting. It was a black dirty mess, and smelled.


Took it to the trusty kitchen sink, dawn power wash, and a small nylon bristle brush.


All clean.


Since I am changing color of vehicle and interior 100%, I decided to try another stitch on leather.


the bezels are dirty, pitted and just the wrong color, so I will be painting them in the future.

I think it came out nice.

[devildog80]

Looks good

[CoastieReid]

a few weeks back, I ordered some seat hinges from a known jeep second hand dealer- I either misunderstood their listing, or they chose to send the thing I wasn't needing. I did order what I thought was a tilt forward hinge for a TJ seat. Both front passenger and driver side.
I got it a few days ago, and the passenger side is a standard recline hinge.
I contacted them, and the canned response was that they dont sell the hinge for a tilt forward individually.
Alright-= then why did I get a driver side one? and not the passenger side?

I jumped on Ebay and for the same price I paid for the wrong hinge, I got a tilt forward TJ hinge. It will be here in a few days.

The first company did send me the correct seat base that I did order as well.


Took the foam dashboard off the dash and scrubbed it in the shower. It smells like schnapps vomit. Or Jager vomit just like the sissy bar smelled.
I did scrub it down with some dawn power clean and a nylon bristle brush. I will be filling in the bad foam and recovering it. that is future me project= it's gotta dry for a while before I can use the padded dash filler.

[CoastieReid]

Have spent the last week or so locked up in the house, at school or at work. I haven't been outside much- much too cold for my body these days. Today was an exception. at 35* it felt like a heat wave.
My adhd was a bit overloaded too. I had a truckbed full of metal for the recycler, but I knew I needed to cut the rear quarter panel off the driver side so I can recycle that too. Instead of just taking the load I already had, I went ahead and rough cut the quarter. I will get to welding that one on in a week or so.




Since I have been inside, I went ahead and reupholstered the center console elbow pad.



and did the repairs to the dash pad.
I even put leather on it. Looks and feels great, but not 100% done yet. I still need to trim and fit back onto the dashboard.





I ended up using about 2 tiny cans of DAP, took my time, and used my steamer to assist in forming the corners.

The ebay order came in with the passenger side tilt/recline hinge from a TJ and I installed it. It fit great and works! I am missing the tiny little plastic button that goes over the metal latch to the rear one. I am crafty- I can figure something out.
I'd go to pick and pull, but ours here doesn't take jeeps beside XJs and later cherokees.

Up next- I bought a sheet of 1/8" ABS plastic and will cut a gauge panel insert out. I am going to try my hand at plastic welding on the original gauge cluster plastic and see if I can fix it enough to put some filler on and paint it. If I make a faceplate, I can attach it to the original cluster housing and then cut my new gauge locations. All it cost me was about $10.00 for the abs.

[Thomas792]

Put some small ABS shavings in a glass jar with some acetone. Creates a slurry that can be used to glue other ABS plastic pieces together (not sure the composition of the original gauge cluster). Might be able to fill some gaps with the mixture and let it dry then shape.

[CoastieReid]

dreaming of some warmer weather as I sit here and it is blowing a little snow outside. Not much and it wont stick, but it's there.

I was out there in the driveway the other day messing around. Was looking at engine bay, firewall, damage needing repaired on the core support etc. Pulled the radiator out and set that aside. I plan on replacing it with a champion 3 core aluminum one just like I put on my F100. Mostly looking at firewall as well to see where I need to weld patches and mount the new AC unit I bought from BJ's.

Looking at the wiring, I saw that fifal had a few nibbles of wire goodness. I believe this was done before I bought it, as I have no indication a mouse or squirrel has been in there currently.


Pulled some more of the propane contraption and the rusty battery tray. I soaked all the bolts months ago with pb blaster, and it helped.






other than this, nothing much has been done. I have been in full swing at school and a few other interior projects in the house. One of which I hope to put to bed this week that I started in October. (shelving next to my TV).
Also about two weeks ago, I get a call from a former recruit of mine (from 10 years ago) we had been friends for the last few years, and she knew a lady in NC that has a dog she needed to rehome. It was a schnauzer and I have a bad habit of collecting rusty cars and schnauzers. So I drove down and picked him up.

Kaiser (5 year old this friday) is my Yorkie/schnauzer mix rescue on the left. (the new rescue) Hans(1.5 year old) is the tall one on the right.
Hilda, my 9 year old playing empress. If she had thumbs, she would give the pollice verso (thumb turned down) like this was a gladiator fight.

Hilda is not happy of Hans being here, and Kaiser is probably the happiest I have seen him besides air humping the dog bed.
here the boys were playing all through the house for like 10 minutes. Kaiser getting "KO'd" a few times by Hans but kept coming back for more. Hilda is the referee and I think she is on the take cause not one legitimate call has been made!

[CoastieReid]

Been two weeks since I posted anything. School work taking up all my time. Need indoor projects because the weather is drunk and needs to stop messing with everything. We had like 6 inches of snow dumped on us over a course of two days and three days later it was 65*.

Painted my brake pedal. I already painted the brake pedal pedestal.

the steering column.


got one run...

It's single stage- I can fix that easy.

Work continues slowly. I need to do a lot of homework today, but free this weekend if the weather is nice, I will start welding on my rear driver quarter. I did bang on the bad dent a bit too- it's better, but not great. would be awesome if I had a stud welder (the one you use to pull dents) but I don't feel like spending money on that.

[CoastieReid]

another nice day yesterday so I did some fitment of the driver rear quarter. I have a real chewed up rear corner cap that goes under the tail light. It also has a gap- I suspect the quarters have pulled apart over the years. The gap on the tailgate is huge.
Will work on it when I have more free time and good weather. I just used self tappers to hold this in place. It allows me to make a repair patch for the rear bottom inboard side of the quarter where the fuel lines go in. The bottom 4 inches are gone currently. Same thing happened to the passenger side- sure wish i kept that cardboard template I made from that one.

[devildog80]

Holy crap batman.......you are really doing some good work there

[CoastieReid]

Friday I went to class as usual. Normally there are about 100 of us in there, but that morning, only 10 of us were. It dawned on me- Spring break started Saturday. NERDS! (yes I was there too lol).
Worked at the shop all day Saturday. It was going great till an Air Force guy brings in his giant blue F350 diesel truck to do an oil change. He spills oil everywhere on the floor, then once done with the oil change, he backs the truck out of the shop to the lot so he can finish cleaning the floors and check out. He drives off. I look outside because he didn't close the garage door, and there is a massive puddle of oil on the ground, and it trails off down the road.



He didn't get far. He turned around and ended up blocking my grey f250 truck in at the gravel side parking spot. He spent the next 2 hours cleaning this up.


Then, he went and got more oil, put it in the engine and then overfilled it. So he had to drain more out- and made another mess.

I spent the day yesterday preparing to get the engine off to the machine shop this week since I am on spring break and no work till Saturday. I stopped in and talked to the owner a bit and I would like him to take a look at the crank, cylinders and if I need to bore out- go for it. he's never done me wrong.

So I took the fenders off, hood, and inner fenders, plus the core support. Core support is okay- a little rotten in a few spots, but a big dent in it too. The hood on the other hand! I may just go get a different one. Look at the inner passenger side.

This is the driver side

Core support from this far away doesn't look bad.


I found some donor fenders, the front fenders of my wide track are missing the flare, and since I bought the bushwhackers, I need a little more meat on the forward side near the light. Well, I would have had to do a lot of work to fix those fenders so I found these and will work them in.


So here I sit for the night- I am going to do some welding on the inner rear driver fender today, and do some fitment of the rear quarter panel so I can weld it in as well. I have to go dig my engine hoist out of the back yard shed and maybe borrow a trailer to take the engine to the shop. My F250 is so tall, that I know I wont be able to get the engine block in there. I had it at max capacity lift with the F150 non-lifted truck back when I was building the F100. will post more photos as I go along. I haven't been doing my YT stuff lately- may get a video on that out soon too.

[230ohc]

Looks like your getting a fair amount of work accomplished, looks great!

[CoastieReid]

I spent Tuesday doing arts and crafts to fill in the missing rear inner quarter panel.


Patched the rear driver wheel well.

and yesterday I spent some time welding on the rear driver quarter. I got about 75% done, but ran out of wire on the spool. I have more, I just didn't feel like standing there burning in the sun for another few hours.
Funny how we went from "its too cold" to "Im getting sunburnt!".

I will finish the rear quarter today.
I have a few touch up welds to do on the passenger quarter, then I will start working on the passenger door.

The doors are really out of alignment too. The pins are worn out. I disconnected the latch mechanism on the driver door so I could at least shut it.

Another thing to do by tomorrow afternoon- get the engine out and down to my machine shop.

[CoastieReid]

finished welding on the quarter panel today. Also did some touch up welds on a few areas I knew I did a poor job on.

And then I made the engine levitate.
That was way easier than I expected. Off to the machine shop.



considering finding new to me doors too...
The door bottoms on both are pretty rotten. I can fix them, but man- not a fan.