Preparing for Chicagoland Emergency Vehicle Show
posted @ Wednesday, August 3, 2005
It's been a lot of work over the last week, getting the truck ready for it's television debut in Chicago on Friday. Even the small details seem to take forever. Monday, we finished up the Flex-a-lite fan installation by completing the wiring to get the fan operational as well as having to replace a plug in the driver's side head to stop a really annoying exhaust leak. It seems that person that rebuilt the 460 big block motor for us did not have new plugs installed in the heads where the exhaust gas crossover ports are located. So this one burned through, probably after the carbon build up in the port was cleaned out from the hot tank, and we had a really bad exhaust leak right behind the power steering bracket. It was time consuming job, disassembling the brackets and moving the air conditioning compressor and the power steering pump so we could remove the brackets from the engine and get to the exhaust port.
After several hours of effort, the old plug was finally extricated and the new plug installed and painted (so it won't rust). Then we still had to put everything back and make sure everything was tight and operational. It sure would be nice if we had air conditioning in the shop. Next we had to service the pump motor on the skid unit. It seems that the gas had been left in there too long and the fuel line had gotten gummed up, constricting the fuel flow. After several hours, and a piece of new fuel line, the pump is working flawlessly. There were also several smaller issues such as tightening the bolts that mount the Havis Shields Consolidator console to the floor of the truck. Apparently, we had not gotten them tight enough the first time around and they were all extremely loose.
It's not like we had any major issues, other than replacing the fan last week, that we had to deal with, but all of the little issues do add up. At any rate, we'll be 100% operational for the trip to Chicago and our 15 minutes of fame on WGN. Now all we have left is to install a cut-off valve on the heater hose that runs to the heater core on the firewall so the A/C doesn't have to work so hard to keep the air cool.
See you in Chicago.