Y'all. This is it. THIS IS IT! She's now officially a light duty truck instead of a van! The single A4 holding some netherlanders autograph that cost me 350€ and took 8 weeks to arrive, has arrived and I took it to the local DMV equivalient to have her re-registered for the correct weight class! Boom, 500kg's more payload and 660€ off the yearly tax with a couple bleep bloops on a computer
Swapped the OG seats in for the last time straigth away after that, off with them plywood pieces of feces. Then I got a surprise when changing the insurance because the vehicle class changed - the insurance more than doubled, just like that...
Called around and changed the company, now the best deal I got was for a little over 600€ a year with wildlife, theft, fire and vandalism protection. As a van, the same **** but with windshield, pet's, luggage and legal protection and some other little funny things was 360€ a year... Welp, Still saving about 400€ a year courtesy of the drop in taxes
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On another note, spot the fault:
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Took a peek under the hood one night coming home from work, because something under there had been squealing like their ****** integrity had just been repeatedly violated with a telephone pole, without lube, for a day or so. Apparently the harmonic balancer wiggling about has slowly been loosening the alternator so much the damn belt jumped inside out
I'm just surprised it hadn't yet jumped off. So I tightened it back up and noticed the other belts were a little loose as well, although that's my own fault, They hadn't loosened, I just didn't get them adequately tensioned when working on them the last time. So I tightened them too and everything was fine again. Then a few days later the alternator went and did it again. On the road this time, but I just turned it around and snugged it back up so it's fine again.
Also on the re-registering, light duty trucks have to have at least 6 cargo tie-downs, so I installed those one day and found some unpleasanties under the rug in the rear:
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****'s slowly rotting away. Also what's weird is that that crack in a bump there is along the edge of a body support rail. Anyway, after the first two tie-downs, I took the liberty of first puncturing and opening the rust bubbles with a steel brush, and then eating off the rust with I think a 120grit sandpaper and spraid some black primer on the area. That shoud at least slow down the process if nothing else. Didn't take any pics of that, but the finished tie-downs came out like so:
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Well, the rearmost two anyway. I also plan on using the same method of rust banishment on the outside of the truck, already started on the barn doors lowest jamb area whatever it's called, as is visible from the next picture. That was only the beginning though, I've now done just about the whole lenght. But with the pic I deliver a question; Is the edge supposed to look like that? It's almost as if someone patched the area, kinda shittily, but anyway? I wouldn't be surprised if it was factory work, but I dunno, the lower panel almost looks like a different grade of steel...
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Now I'm just going to focus on the worst bits of rust, it's going to be ugly but you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe I'll buy white primer too and make this thing a dalmatian with all them spots. Or a cow
But that's all I can do for now, as long as the GMT400 remains unsold.