Vacation Dreams

I have just returned from a vacation that included memorial weekend. Boy it started out pretty good. I had alot of truck related repairs and improvements planned out and was all set to tackle them. The first was stripping and repainting mt daily driver step bars. Unfortunately the bolts on both sides were rusted tight. I knew I had to get a professional involved. So I drove down to Mike's (my mechanic/ friend) who has a shop down on rt9 in Linden. His guy struggled and struggled, finally he snapped one bolt off on both sides of each step bar. Great I had planned to have the entire job done by that afternoon. Anyway once off I had found that both step bars were rusting from the insides. Both had 2 to 3 pounds of rust flakes side out of them when I picked them up. Ruined... four years of Northeast winters had done them in.

Okay with day one main goal sandbagged, I went back to the house and rust proofed my bed box and the replacement wheel well I bought for the Blazer. That kept me occupied for the rest of the day.

The second day I drove up to work (where I keep my project Blazer) and spent the next four hours removing the ratted out carpet and padding on the Blazer. I had alot of fun working on the truck, things are so simple and basic, on the C5 opposed to my 2003 Silverado. I like simple. Unfortunately for me I found new (new to me) rust holes in the Blazer cab bed.

This was of course unplanned and has thrown my restoration project behind schedule. I now have to figure out how to replace and repair not only the tailgate area, but now the center portion of the bed. Ah challenges.

The next day I was at the Blazer again, this time to replace the rusted out wheel well. Removing the old one was pretty easy, just messy. It was also the hottest day of the month 95+. the replacement took three hours and it was very straight forward. In the end I was amazed at how much of the old well was gone.

The replacement however is not a perfect match for the old one so the battery tray and cooler tank won't go back in their original places. I'll have to come up with another fix.

This was how I spent my first three days of my vacation, I hadn't known then that that would be the high point of my vacation, after that their was unexpected family commitments and alot driving. I did get to have dinner with friend from my Bouncer days. So people won't understand working on a 22 year old truck as fun, especially over a vacation week. But for me I've always enjoyed working with my hands, and tinkering with machines. I guess I got it from my dad. My only regret about my last vacation is that I didn't get to spend anymore time with my project.