other dog

I took the carburetor off and cleaned it as best I could, it will run but only with the choke mostly closed, the next thing I'm going to check is the vacuum in the distributor. It acts like it has a vacuum leak but I couldn't find any, and that's the only thing I haven't checked yet.

You got that right! Reminds me of the time I took a Dodge pickup I had to a little garage in Concord for something. The man said "I can't work on that, it's got a carburetor and I don't work on anything that old". It was a '91 model I think, which to me is not "that old". And it didn't have a carburetor, it had the throttle body injection. What he was REALLY saying was " if I can't just plug a computer into it and let it tell me what the issue is I can't work on it".

I'm going out there and try to see what I can see on the carburetor but I'm waiting for it to warm up a little. We had frost here this morning and it's only up to the lower 50's now. I'm going to try to take that pressure regulator off and look at it. I won't know what I'm looking at, but I'll look. The gas had to go through 3 filters before it got that far but that doesn't mean much, it was still running on that crappy gas when it was running. It has the in-line filter, a little canister type filter, then the electric fuel pump has a filter in it too.

I put $23 worth of non ethanol in my 5 gallon can for this truck sitting in the driveway that doesn't run.

I got a gas gauge when I got the sending unit, but it didn't get a bracket because it was almost as much as the gauge. You'd think it would come with a bracket but it didn't. I figured I'd pick up a "cheap"- if there's any such thing anymore- oil pressure or temp. gauge at the parts store for it and use the bracket. The original gauge in the truck didn't budge. But I still have my stick.

I've posted the first truck I drove for H.H. Moore Jr. before, it was a '74 Transtar too, red with white stripes, had a VT 903 in it with a 13 speed direct transmission. I don't have a single picture of that first one, it was white and had a gray stripe and a maroon stripe around the cab.

That's another thing we used to think about when we were moving. We moved from Gladys, Va. to Spout Spring, Va. Google says it's 33 miles. And after we moved enough stuff here to start staying here we'd stay here during the week and move on weekends. And every time we'd go over to Gladys we'd say "hope no squatters moved in during the week".

Maybe I should hold my phone down close to the timing marks and I'll be able to read them...

Got a pretty good picture of the distributor.

The very first truck I drove when I started my driving career was a '74 Transtar. Had a 290 Cummins and a 13 speed.

Got that tank on today. It has some issues, but it's on. Has about 3 1/2 inches of gas in it, according to my stick.

That reminds me of the time- wait, did I tell this story before?..stop me if I did- I went down to see my Mom in Cumberland one time and she wanted me to ride up to her parents old home with her. They had both passed away years earlier but she was renting their old home to a couple, a pair of deadbeats apparently because they hadn't paid any rent for months. Mom even had the power shut off to the house to try to get rid of them, but then they complained to somebody and they told Ma "you can't do that", and she had to have the electricity turned back on. Even though they hadn't paid for anything. My mother was elderly then, maybe in her 60s, maybe 70s, I don't remember now, it was a while back. So I was no spring chicken myself. And when we got there this body builder looking guy probably in his 20s came out of the front door with a pit bull on a leash. His skank girlfriend was right inside the front door holding another pit bull. I didn't know if he was planning to unleash the beast, then the skank would have released her hound, and we would have been killed right there in the yard. Or maybe Ma was expecting me to whip his ass. But while all this was running through my mind and Mom was arguing with the deadbeat, my uncle David, my mother's brother pulled up. He lived just up the hill, a couple of hundred yards away. He was a magistrate in Cumberland County, and he's always been my favorite uncle but when he got out of his vehicle that day I had never been so glad to see him. He was obviously packing some serious heat, right there on his side for all to see. I don't even remember if he said anything, but the smart ass non-rent paying punk didn't have anything else to say either, and went back inside and closed the door. Ma finally got rid of their sorry good for nothing asses but it took a long time, she had to take them to court to get rid of them, even after they hadn't paid rent since who knows when. One of the main reasons we weren't interested in renting our place in Gladys, it probably would have been destroyed and no rent paid, so we just wanted to sell it and be done with it.

Well let me know before you throw it away, I'll look at mine when I take it off and if it's the same starter I'll pay to have it shipped. Most of the ones I looked at on the old International site were around $300. I put a starter on the pickup last year and was astonished at the price, about 3 times what I was expecting it to be.

I sure appreciate your very kind offer, that's really nice of you. But I think I'll just get my starter rebuilt at the place in Roanoke and see how it goes. At least for now.

My fuel tank strap rubber came late this afternoon, too late for me to start working on anything anyway. I also ordered a new sending unit when I ordered the rubber. I thought one would have came with the tank but it didn't, it came with nothing- no fittings, no plugs, no nuthin'. I didn't want to use the old one because it still had black gunk on it that carburetor cleaner wouldn't take off. So since I got a new sending unit I figured I'd just get a fuel gauge too. Thought I just had to hook a wire to the sending unit and run it to the gauge, but nothing is ever simple. I got to step 2 on the instructions and said "WTF?" I have a multimeter that somebody gave me a few years ago, but I don't even know how to use it. But no worries, I still have a stick in the side box that I can check the gas with. Even I can run the measuring stick.