View of the day-Al wondering what the heck we got ourselves into as he examines what's left of the dash.
What a great day it turned out to be!
We put off getting down to the dash as long as we could..the sun was finally shining and we wondered if we would be able to get the job done before we got a chance to do some combining. We parked under the shade tree, bit the bullet and started to gut the dash to get to the blend door that was preventing the air from coming through the vents.
We had downloaded a service manual, which was a big help and the Dodge Forum had a lot of posts stating how it would take 8-10 hours to get the job done...that was the biggest deterrent to starting the task. Once we got down to business, it really didn't take that long to dismantle...but that's never the hard part of any job, is it? We tried to keep track of which screws went where and discovered some interesting things in behind the dash...not of them crawling, thank goodness.
Speaking of crawling...we had a spider in the camper...a BIG BLACK spider. Marilyn can handle most anything, but spiders are just too creepy, especially when they are that big...the body was at least an inch long and it had interesting colors on it's back...not that she got that close. Al managed to save the day and chucked it outside...it might still have a couple of legs left to get around...
Back to the dash. Once we got everything moved out of the way Mari
lyn was able to reach in behind to get the door out of it's housing and then the task of removing the old fitting started. We had to drill out the old plastic, but just enough so that we didn't remove the two ridges that held it in place...mission accomplished with only a small, non-crucial, chuck of plastic missing. Once that was removed, Marilyn was able to get the door back in it's place and put the new fitting in. Removing the dash was really the only way to get to the door.
After getting the dash back in place we hooked the battery back up and gave it a test...SUCCESS! Worked like a charm and after monkeying around with a few wires under the hood, we actually had cold air blowing out of the vents. What was supposed to take 8 hours, we had done in about 3.5, and now that we know how the dash comes out we could have shaved another hour off the time.
All the time we were working on the pickup, grain trucks were driving by on their way to the elevator...Al was getting antsy. After we had the heavy lifting done, he went out to the field with the General and cut a test...13.5 moisture...it was a go. Marilyn finished putting the pickup back together, then headed out to the field to take over.
Al took a load into town while Marilyn took over the bridge (watching to much Star Trek Voyager lately) and tooled out 50 acres before calling it quits for the night. Only one casualty in the pickup...the cable from the two-way radio antenna was on the wrong side of the e-brake pedal and when Marilyn set the brake in the field...she cut the cable.
Tomorrows job...fix the radio...
We put off getting down to the dash as long as we could..the sun was finally shining and we wondered if we would be able to get the job done before we got a chance to do some combining. We parked under the shade tree, bit the bullet and started to gut the dash to get to the blend door that was preventing the air from coming through the vents.
We had downloaded a service manual, which was a big help and the Dodge Forum had a lot of posts stating how it would take 8-10 hours to get the job done...that was the biggest deterrent to starting the task. Once we got down to business, it really didn't take that long to dismantle...but that's never the hard part of any job, is it? We tried to keep track of which screws went where and discovered some interesting things in behind the dash...not of them crawling, thank goodness.
Speaking of crawling...we had a spider in the camper...a BIG BLACK spider. Marilyn can handle most anything, but spiders are just too creepy, especially when they are that big...the body was at least an inch long and it had interesting colors on it's back...not that she got that close. Al managed to save the day and chucked it outside...it might still have a couple of legs left to get around...
Back to the dash. Once we got everything moved out of the way Mari
lyn was able to reach in behind to get the door out of it's housing and then the task of removing the old fitting started. We had to drill out the old plastic, but just enough so that we didn't remove the two ridges that held it in place...mission accomplished with only a small, non-crucial, chuck of plastic missing. Once that was removed, Marilyn was able to get the door back in it's place and put the new fitting in. Removing the dash was really the only way to get to the door.After getting the dash back in place we hooked the battery back up and gave it a test...SUCCESS! Worked like a charm and after monkeying around with a few wires under the hood, we actually had cold air blowing out of the vents. What was supposed to take 8 hours, we had done in about 3.5, and now that we know how the dash comes out we could have shaved another hour off the time.
All the time we were working on the pickup, grain trucks were driving by on their way to the elevator...Al was getting antsy. After we had the heavy lifting done, he went out to the field with the General and cut a test...13.5 moisture...it was a go. Marilyn finished putting the pickup back together, then headed out to the field to take over.
Al took a load into town while Marilyn took over the bridge (watching to much Star Trek Voyager lately) and tooled out 50 acres before calling it quits for the night. Only one casualty in the pickup...the cable from the two-way radio antenna was on the wrong side of the e-brake pedal and when Marilyn set the brake in the field...she cut the cable.
Tomorrows job...fix the radio...
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