Air Horn
Certainly something I did not need is an air horn Ive always said that your horn as equipment in your car should be used for only two things 1 quick greetings and salutations 2 emergencies However now that Im getting older and more grumpy by the day and with the addition of people sitting at green lights so they can tweet their twitters Ive been honking a lot more to let people know theyre holding up the lineIm moving to a smaller slower area soon so this may change again and return back to slow But just in case I installed this air horn into the front grill areaI should back up a minute first and talk about the horn condition When I first got the beast it had an aftermarket steering wheel with a button in the middle for the horn This button doesnt do anything but click when you push it I figured the horn may have been borked because how card could it be to hook up a horn button Not too easy Ill get into that later but the plunger is number 9 hereI found the fuse was missing so I slowly put in a new fuse I was expecting the horn to blare and maybe thats why the fuse wasnt there Nothin I tried pushing the plunger in with my pinky nothin While thinking there must be a rabbit hole type of wiring problem I tried one more time with a screwdriver I found that its
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Truck Purchase
Out on an isolated farm in San Tan Valley I found the beast for sale I had been looking for a Blazer or a Bronco to come along that was a good enough deal for me to invest in I didnt have too much of a checklistHad to be runningHad to be 4x4 optionally with manual lockersHad to be stick shiftHad to have a V8 preferably 350351 so parts are super easy to findI remember the most recent one that I had seen was a white 70something Blazer out in Prescott Valley for 4000 The ad basically stated that there was nothing wrong with the truck the owner just needed some money I let that one go in hopes to find something newer with a better pricetagI test drove a Bronco near downtown Phoenix a couple months later that was going for 2500 with a 50 V8 The owner asked me to let him know when I was coming so he can start it up and let it run for a while before I got there This was fine because I figure what Im looking for cheap may have engine problems I mostly figure that for around 2000 to 3000 it will either have pretty bad problems with the engine or pretty bad problems with the bodyframe This Bronco was frame This thing felt like it was trying to buck me out of the driver seat I was pretty sure this wasnt the beast when I turned a corner and the
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Extra Battery
I want to get a second battery for the beast Currently I have the solar panel charging the main battery which works well
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Center Console
Center ConsoleThe center console will be quite the undertaking The original one was long gone when I got the Beast so Ill have to construct my own As you can see the luxurious one that came with the Beast was beautiful Had 2 dimes in it Im twenty cents aheadAs always I first started looking for a replacement starting with OEM replacement At the time of writing this I cant find much in the way of OEM consoles There are a lot of aftermarket consoles that are now seemingly more reasonable than what they were last time I looked I may go with one of thoseIf not though my plan is to make one out of fiberglass andor wood Now that the floor is cleaned up you can see that the center console area is pretty moundy I found an article online about building fiberglass spearkboxes and Im going to take a page out of that bookThe process involves laying down some wax paper then laying down layers of fiberglass to match the shape of the floor Once that hardens up that becomes the base Then I can build a wood box out of birch word and either wrap that in more fiberglass or pad it and put some vinyl on itMy current plan includes adding a 23 touchscreen computer that is on the top of the center console for music maps traffic cameras etc Then the console will open like a normal console does which would allow to see the
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Power Steering Gear
It is finally done I cant lie I had procrastinated on many occasions to get this part replaced I was never looking forward to it Although in hindsight it wasnt as bad as I thought it would be Granted it is summertime in Phoenix I drank coffee all day and very little water and got a mild case of heat exhaustion I was able to hold it together to get it finishedI was able to buy the part from rockauto Luckily they allow a 6 month window to return your core 5 months 10 days into that window I got serious about getting it swapped outFor posterity Ill put the step by step here with some pitfalls I ran intoDrain out power steering fluid Well this was already done from driving it around a few times The consistency that it would leak was pretty fluid ah thank you It was still pretty messy so I was sure to have a lot of towels handyBrake and AC lines are bolted all over in your way so youll have to take those off 13mm I thinkPitman arm removal This was the part that I dreaded the most because I heard you need an impact wrench and a pitman arm puller I think most pitman arms a puller is needed but I was lucky My pitman arm has a slit in the side of it so all I needed to do was power off the bolt and grab my 24 flathead screwdriver that I
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