A couple little things have been done. I ordered some cushions online, they finally came in! They look great! They are 3″ thick, and Sunbrella outdoor fabric, made to my sizes. Glad I just had them made.
Dinette Cushions
Also put new marker light bulbs in the truck. One was out, and they always seem to follow each other so the others were probably close behind. I used some LED ones.
Marker Light’s new bulb
Also stopped by my local Air Harbor to pick up some Jet A, I am going to try running the furnace on it, it should be nearly the same kerosense. Much much cheaper, and you get to see the cool planes when they are filling you.
Took a quick overnight to play in the snow. Truck did great! 4×4 worked great, just had to manually lock in the hubs, which meant I couldn’t drive in mu slippers….. Life is hard.
We headed up Smithbrook road near Stevens pass again, lots more snow this time!
But first a quick stop at Stevens Pass ski area, they were letting people sled! Not kicking people out, which is unheard of in my experience. So we stopped and had lunch and did some sledding.
Lunch at StevensSledding!
After lunch and some fun we headed up Smithbrook road. We had to push a couple cars up the road to a wide spot to get turned around and headed back down so we could sneak past them.
Camp spot!
Snow was pretty deep where we stopped to camp. Pretty spot and fluffy, but polished really slick from traffic up the road.
Nice little trip, it got cold, we had a nice fire, and enjoyed a lot of sledding!
I don’t generally like to leave the big bright porch light on, I know a lot of RV people do, but in the middle of nowhere when its really damn dark, that is too bright.
I wanted just a little light to help find the stairs, or just see a little light around the truck. So I came up with a plan. I bought some trailer marker lights, they are small LED’s 60 lumens ish, and mount in a 3/4″ hole. This was important, the flange around the bottom on the box is ~1 1/4″. My idea is to mount them to just shine on the ground around the bottom edge of the box. They are cheap and waterproof, can be found here.
LED Marker light
So the first step is to drill a hole, A step bit was used to do this.
3/4″ hole in the bottom flange
The lights work by removing the rubber, slipping that into the hole, then slipping the light into that. Its pretty secure in there actually.
Light in place
Then the wiring. I had run a circuit to the passenger side tool box area when I was wiring the truck. I figured it would be handy for something in the future to have power out there. I used a light up push button switch, and an old antenna mount to hold it. It had to be spaced away from the corner a bit to clear the door for the propane access.
Switch in the tool box.
And the final result! Its awesome! Just a nice little bit of light around the truck. The camera makes it look a little brighter than it is, its just a subtle bit of light.
After our last snow trip I noticed the carpet under the dog bed was a bit wet from condensation. Need to do something about that. I had planed to insulate the back wall of the cab anyway, it was bare metal panels where the window used to be, so I had planned to do that for noise if nothing else.
So I ordered a roll of thin foam insulation (I ended up with EZ Cool) and got to work.
Pull all the plastic trims out, pulled the back seat, and rolled the carpet up onto the front seats. I am only doing the rear section at the moment, I don’t have time to pull all the front stuff out too. It takes forever….. Not much insulation from the factory.
Carpet pulled back
Cut a piece bigger than you think you need. All the bends and curves make it shrink!
Piece cut
Then start at one end and work across forming, cutting taping. Don’t forget the holes for seats, seat belts etc! I stuffed it as far forward as I could then made sure it was kind of square and started working towards the back. It bends and shapes ok, not sure easy. But making cuts and taping it seems to get it to hold its shape.
Floor done
Once the floor was done I flopped the carpet back down and started to work on the back walls. much harder, curves, small pieces, slots for the trim panels. But it got done. Spray glue worked great to hold in on the larger flat panels.
Seat belt area.Up the the back wall.
I also wrapped around the gasket between the box and the cab. Its not a lot of insulation, but any little bit helps. You can see the seats and trims are back in here too. Eventually I will probably carpet the back wall to match the trucks interior, but for now its shiny!
So the backup lights have never worked, no idea why. So it was finally dark enough to warrant fixing them. Backing up twisty FS roads in the dusk the previous weekend reminded me….
I had checked the fuses but its a complicated mess. Three fuses, two inside, one under the hood, one relay, the transmission selector switch and the added wring of the box, and tow harness… So I started at the junction box where all the lights connect in the back under the box, everything looked good. Traced the wiring all the way back to the transmission, all looked good. Range switch seemed fine and adjusted correctly. So I went back to fuses again….. There it was, one fuse turned sideways, I was checking the wring one. But new fuse in pace and all better!
But I had decided to add more reverse light. A cheap 20″ light bar should work well. I tied it to the trailer wiring so as not to overload the factory reverse circuit.
A couple of rivnuts in the aluminum plates above the back bumper and I have a spot to mount a light. This was my first use of rivnuts, super handy! They work like a rivet but leave a threaded inset.
Rivnut installed.
A couple of stainless 1/4-20 bolts and the bar is installed.
