Dually Hauler from Dallas

HotWheelsBurban said:

I got them to hold up a little longer, by drilling another hole and putting another sheet metal screw in, to distribute the spring tension somewhat. It's a bad design....

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Adding another screw seems reasonable.
And you won't catch me praising the design, but I suspect that breaking the brackets comes from sticky latches or worn out cables. I had the same release mechanism on my short bed extended cab 2002 2500HD 4x4 with an 8.1L. The short bed extended cab got the small gas tank. The 8.1L 4x4 got all the weight, and the big motor got the worse mileage. I opened the hood at every gas fill to check fluids. There were a LOT of gas fills and a lot of hood popping. And that truck was still rocking it's original hood release at 280k miles.

A little back of the envelope math comes out to more than 1100 yanks on that original handle when I sold it.

Probably depends on how you pull the handle; different angles may exert force in different ways. I never had problems with the handle/assembly on our '06 Denali, and I checked under the hood before we went anywhere in it(especially once it had some miles on it).

And I agree with you on the lubrication or lack thereof, having an affect on friction in the assembly. Having had many square body trucks in the family fleet, I have been on a regular regimen of spray lubing the hood hinges and latches on all our trucks. I can happily say that we never had a hood fold or buckle on any of our trucks. That said, the square body inside hood release was designed better than the 400 ones. I never had to replace them on the older trucks....

A handle could be made with any logo on it, but we'd need a nice virgin part to pull dimensions from, I can look at yards of the are no issues with interchanges?

modernbeat said:

Dang, he just had a gray dash for sale a couple weeks ago for much less than I'm willing to pay.
I try to keep up with searches on FB Marketplace, but the intuitive search makes it hard to find what I want.
I'll send him a WTB with a generous price window. Thanks for the tip.

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I bought a few things today from the regal ridez seller, fog switch and bezel, and front diff. He parts out obs truck he buys from auctions, he has a whole storage shed full of obs parts. Nice dude, and easy to deal with

It's not much, but this week I got the truck home, swapped out the filthy, stiff drivers side seatbelt with a clean, flexible one that actually retracts properly.





And I swapped out the broken, faded, textured tailgate handle for an early gloss black handle and the replacement bezel I painted a few weeks ago.





And I pulled the ancient old tint that had gone bad. A little heat gun, some picking at the edge with a razor scraper, and a wipedown with Windex and it's all gone. I thought that in addition to the fraying edges and wavy middle that the tint was scratched. Turned out those scratches are in the glass. So I'll be looking for one.


Next will be the center caps. I've got to pull the wheels to do it right and I just didn't have the energy after working on the Model T all weekend.

modernbeat said:

A little heat gun, some picking at the edge with a razor scraper,

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FYI - a fabric steamer works better but, looking good!

I used a sticker scraper with windex. Worked like a champ. Of course, I already had my windows out of my doors at that point.
www.harborfreight.com/professional-scraper-57099.html

PlayingWithTBI said:

FYI - a fabric steamer works better but, looking good!

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The only fabric steam I have is a steam iron. So the heat gun was my best bet.
AND - this truck had THREE layers of tint. Apparently it had a layer of legal tint, then a layer of darker tint and then a clear protective layer. Never seen that before.

Black and decker Steamer with attachments is about $35 at Wally World. My wife got one for sanitizing and cleaning upholstery, plus taking wrinkles out of suits etc that should not be ironed…told her I’d gladly let her loose with it on the seatbelts when it gets warmer outside. She seems raring to go. She’s a keeper For sure.