Walter, an okay daily and an okay offroader

[cjpett]

I for one will definitely be interested in how your radio goes together and mounts into your truck.

Thanks, man! I'll definitely post more about it then!

1995 was a transition year for OBS trucks ... it has the newer style interior, with the TBI engine. Yours is a clean looking truck.

Yeah, it being a 95 has sort of made it tough to do anything, at least not without jumping through a few hoops first. I appreciate the compliment! I've done my best to keep it looking stock-ish while still doing what I want with it.

It was used to keep track of hours and time of a driver. Usually used in semi's. From what i remember it used a round card that was divided into 24hr time table.
It recorded Speed, Hours driven and maybe engine speed. If a driver was pulled over or stopped at a scale house the DOT would look at that card to make sure the driver was not in violation of the driving laws.
I'm sure it could have been used to keep track of buses, or delivery drivers or anybody that had a driving job back then.

Very good info! You've told me more in one paragraph than 2 hours' worth of research has. I would like to find one of those cards to try and use it. I don't think this particular one clocked engine speed, but I think versions of these did.

 

[cjpett]

Not much has happened with Walter in the past few days. I know I said I would replace the ABS sensor this weekend, but I ended up not doing that. Instead, I worked a lot. I worked on the radio I've been developing in my free time. I'm just trying to get it to the point where I can put it in the truck for one day to make sure everything is how I like it. I'm not going to worry about automatic power-up and shutdown for now. I want to get a general idea of everything before I finalize the locations of the components.

I'm curious about what people think about my front plate design. I have to tweak some things anyways, so now is the time to add/remove whatever. I designed it so that you should be able to do all basic functions without using the touchscreen at all.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

The internals are pretty straightforward. I have a Raspberry Pi, an amp, a USB to AUX adapter, an FM adapter, a Bluetooth dongle, and an Arduino to handle button inputs. It's going to get more complicated as I add the power delivery system and harness. As you can see, it is built into the stock case. I put quite a bit of work into making it fit into it, so I don't have to worry about mounting it. I would like to use a stock amplifier, but the radio I pulled was a single circuit board version. Maybe I'll run out to the pick'n'pull to find a dual circuit board unit.

I've made the decision to go with a headache rack rather than a full-on rollbar. I realized that I wanted to keep the functionality of my bed, and I want to keep my toolbox. It's also going to be so much easier to design and make.

I also bought some KC Daylighters. Okay, not real KC Daylighters, I just can't justify spending 500 dollars on a pair of 6" LEDs. What I can justify is spending 200 dollars on the cheaper KC Apollo halogens. I think I'm going to mount these to the grill guard. They show up Thursday, so I'm hoping to get them on by Friday. I'm going to have to get another pair when I finish the headache rack. I might go for the classic move of buying cheap lights and then just getting KC branded covers.

That's it for this post. I'll let you guys know how things go on Friday. Hopefully, I'll be ready to hit the trails by the end of this week! I already got my permit, so I'm all set in the eyes of the law, but I want some brakes so I don't go careening off a cliff like the bad guys in an 80s TV show.

 

[df2x4]

Your custom radio project is super cool. I want to see how that turns out.

I think it would be awesome to have a custom source unit like that that could feed a signal to external amps. Do you have any plans to add pre-outs?

 

[cjpett]

Your custom radio project is super cool. I want to see how that turns out.

I think it would be awesome to have a custom source unit like that that could feed a signal to external amps. Do you have any plans to add pre-outs?

Early on I did consider only having an external amp with pre-outs leading to it, but I thought that having an internal amp hooked to the standard connections would make it easier to install into the truck, and if I didn't like it then I could just go back to a stock radio. Making pre-outs would be pretty easy though. I would just have to abandon the internal amp and swap the USB to AUX adapter to a USB to RCA adapter.

 

[fancyTBI]

What do you mean by deflector shield? When I look it up all I get is bug shields, and I doubt that's what you're talking about.



Thanks! Once I figured out what to look for it was pretty easy to find them. Summit has them for 400 dollars, but I know you can find them cheaper.

I had one a few years ago, a Lund. I could not give the thing away! Ended up finding someone who gave me $75 for it.

 

[cjpett]

I had one a few years ago, a Lund. I could not give the thing away! Ended up finding someone who gave me $75 for it.

Man, I would love to find one for that price! I can't seem to find one for less than 250, new or used. I'm probably going to end up with the summit one when all of this is over.

 

[cjpett]

Welp. The past week has been full ****. Walter both proved itself as a daily and an offroader, but followed it up by falling apart. Last Thursday was fun. My friend decided to take his '02 F-350 CCLB with a 7.3 and bald tires offroading. In the rain. In one of the muddiest places that you can easily access. He got stuck pretty quickly. So some buddies and I had to go over and try to haul him out. It did not go well. Fun Fact: You can not tow a 6000-pound Ford out of the mud with only a K1500 and a Jeep. We gave up for the day and went back on Friday. This went far better. We had a 2013 Chevy 3500 hooked to the Ford and anchored with Walter and my friend's 2013 Dodge. It took some work but we were able to get it out pretty quickly. I unfortunately don't have many pics of actually hauling the truck out, but I have a couple from the day before.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

After all that excitement I went home and started to replace the ABS sensor, only to realize that no auto parts store stocks them. So I ordered one up, and it should hopefully be here on Wednesday. After doing a bunch of work for nothing, I decided to bleed the brakes. I got them all right, but I don't think they will be great until I can bleed with ABS. My KC lights arrived and they are installed. I didn't get a chance to wire them yet, I was hoping to do that today, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I had some trouble getting Walter to start this morning. I figured it was the battery, I've had it for like 5 or 6 years now, so it struggles to start in the morning, but it usually gets there, and will last for the rest of the day. As I pulled out of my neighborhood, the engine died. Thankfully I was able to restart it and get moving again. It ran fine until I accelerated at an intersection and it died again. Again, I was able to get to the side and pull into a parking lot. I tried to get it to start again, but nothing. I had to push it into a parking spot and get a ride from a friend. I think it would start again, but the battery's dead. Yesterday my Dad and I emptied the gas out of the tank of his '67, and we poured some of it (like 3 gallons) into my tank. It was like 6-7 months old, but I pretty much had a full tank. I'm really really hoping it's just bad gas that maybe clogged a filter or something and I didn't kill my fuel pump or something.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know. It seemed to only die while accelerating, but not every time I accelerate.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

 

[Vanishing Point]

I'm a little late to the party, so please excuse me if you have already address these issues. So how about some deferred maintenance or if you prefer some (Preventative Maintenance), and let's start off with the easy one's first. 1.) Maybe replace the 12 volt battery with new sealed 3-4 year longevity, high CCA one. 2.) When was the last time you checked and or replaced the fuel filter, air filter, plugs, wires, rotor, distributor cap, and timing? Hopefully that should help a little with some of your most immediate concerns. Lets us know if this helps, and good luck to you.

 

[cjpett]

I'm a little late to the party, so please excuse me if you have already address these issues. So how about some deferred maintenance or if you prefer some (Preventative Maintenance), and let's start off with the easy one's first. 1.) Maybe replace the 12 volt battery with new sealed 3-4 year longevity, high CCA one. 2.) When was the last time you checked and or replaced the fuel filter, air filter, plugs, wires, rotor, distributor cap, and timing? Hopefully that should help a little with some of your most immediate concerns. Lets us know if this helps, and good luck to you.

Hey man better late than never! I am definitely going to replace the battery soon. It's been more of a nuisance than an actual problem so I'm going to hold out a little longer.

I did make it home, thanks to a jump and left foot braking. We pretty well figured out that it was the bad gas. I usually read my fuel using the tripometer because I don't trust my fuel gauge but I did quite a bit of idling so both were probably messed up, and I think we put in more bad gas than I thought. Instead of 2-3 gallons of bad gas in a full tank it's probably closer to 5-6 gallons in a 3/4 full tank.

I am definitely going to do all that preventive maintenance stuff on my next oil change. This was a great wakeup call for me to actually make sure Walter is running right. Currently I am just running the engine in my driveway to sort of purge all that gas. I'm gonna make a risky run to the store and buy some fuel stabilizer or something to hopefully help it out.

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

Hey man better late than never! I am definitely going to replace the battery soon. It's been more of a nuisance than an actual problem so I'm going to hold out a little longer.

I did make it home, thanks to a jump and left foot braking. We pretty well figured out that it was the bad gas. I usually read my fuel using the tripometer because I don't trust my fuel gauge but I did quite a bit of idling so both were probably messed up, and I think we put in more bad gas than I thought. Instead of 2-3 gallons of bad gas in a full tank it's probably closer to 5-6 gallons in a 3/4 full tank.

I am definitely going to do all that preventive maintenance stuff on my next oil change. This was a great wakeup call for me to actually make sure Walter is running right. Currently I am just running the engine in my driveway to sort of purge all that gas. I'm gonna make a risky run to the store and buy some fuel stabilizer or something to hopefully help it out.

When I got my crew cab, it had been sitting for a while and not driven much. So it had icky gas in it when I got it! Ran great when on the throttle, but all ants in its pants on idle. I ran a few cans of B12 Berrymans chemtool through it, the first few tanks, and changed the fuel filter. That helped tremendously, and new cap, rotor and plugs helped a lot too.