Los_Control

forgot to add photos, just saying my welding sucks now but getting better ... and reason why I pushed the pilothouse to the side is I need to work on my wife car and then my truck. I am disabled and takes me 2 weeks to do what others do in 3 days. But I get er did ... eventually. Will be a few months before I get to play with the pilothouse again.

Thats fair question. Lets give a honest answer. I will show you a photo of my last welding practice. 18 gauge sitting on the bench ... I keep burning through. I know now I keep turning down the heat because sheet metal ... what I need to do is turn up the heat and if I burn through I need to turn up my wire speed. I am learning. I wont actually weld anything on my truck others can see. When I improve I will. That includes the spot weld ... possible to get 1 or 2 ... how strong will they be? The weld would have to be filed off flush with the sheet metal as the hinge slides in and out for adjustment. Main thing I am concerned with, what will I gain welding it? Will the hinge plate really be more stronger if welded? Or if pinched down tight with bolts will it be the same ... or almost the same? Will need to evaluate that. If I get in a high speed crash with a old dodge truck (40 mph ) I will get ejected from the cab and truck roll over on me ... the doors will get jammed and will have the steering column pierce my head. The truck will catch on fire and I will be cremated. I just cant think of any situation where welding that hinge plate will save a life. Just a matter of convenience. I fight attention deficit disorder all the time ... why have been working on this project for 2 years now ... not restoring, just a driver for me that will never be for sale.

@GMAS54 Let me be the first to apologize. While I was just guessing at what you wanted ... I also thought your post was not very descriptive. I gave it a effort to make sense of what you wanted ... often that way a person has a chance to come back and be a bit more descriptive, add more info ... like you did. I assure you nobody here was trolling you or trying to be a smart ass ... Many of us have been here for years, I am a noob at 5 or 6 years. We are kinda like family & friends ... We rib each other and poke fun ... everyone here wants to help. Sometimes we just need more info. Starting a conversation actually keeps your post up to the top and lets you reply. Trolls would not last long on this forum. Funny side note, I was banned from a popular forum last week. Wont name names. In a post the trolls started to come out and I laughed and joked with them ... then they started talking about my wife. I take that straight to pm. I guarantee you I am not a easy victim to trolls. So I was banned and the trolls are still there ... I am happy because trolls make me miserable. There is no trolls here, and if they show up they will not last long.

Thanks for the vote of confidence & photos. I also thought they would be fine just bolting into place. Your photos are very clear whats going on .... this prompted me to take my own photo . I take the photo by sitting on the running board and reaching around with the camera ... I cant actually get my head in position to see. There is the kick panel we see the top of, goes all the way to the floor. There is a 2" stiffener that is welded in place higher then the hinge in my case. In your photo it was lower and could see the top of hinge? There is 2 white spots, the one above is daylight shining through for the door stop. The lower white spot is lithium grease that squeezed out when tightening the hinge. That is the top of the hinge. So to actually weld this, again will be sitting on the running board, I am right handed, will have to use my left, will be reaching around blind just poking and feeling my way with the head of the welder .... "poke & hope" I just picture myself making a mess out of it, burning through the sheet metal 1/4" above the hinge and making it worse. If it was critical and about safety, I would figure it out .... I see it as convenience and just a pia the next time I pull the door, but is not that bad to use a magnet and get it back in position. Just was my thinking on deciding to do nothing.

Yeah will be fine for sure .... While my xp machine is probably from the beginnings of xp's life cycle and very ancient. XP did have a long life cycle. The Geforce will be fine. Linux has opensource nouveau drivers that are quite mature and work well. While the Nvidia drivers are also available. Usually opensource drivers are installed, if you want nvidia then you will need to check a box accepting the License agreement then those drivers will become available. I doubt you will have any issues with drivers for sound & if you install a gpu the onboard gpu/vga will be ignored. Also modern desktop environments like kde or gnome, multiple monitors is dead simple. I use 3, 24" monitors on this machine ... fits my desk ... the shop I run dual monitors. Only driver issues I find anymore, sometimes wireless can be a issue. While most are plug & play, some you need to jump through hoops to get them to work. Like install wired to the router, then accept the license agreement for closed source drivers, then install the drivers and wireless will now work.

Made perfect sense to me .... now I question my mind going Original steering box is wore out, the original column is a spear to penetrate your chest in a crash. So for safety we need to install a new box while cutting/welding a modern tilt column to the box. easy peasy .... maybe I should go sit in my corner now.

He is a clown, says exactly what he thinks IMHO, all my machines are old. This current machine posting from is a I3 with 8 gigs ram. I bought it from a auction for $10 with no hard drive & 2 gigs ram. I bought a hard drive from ebay and 8 gigs ram ... I have less then $100 in it ... just never paid attention. I bought a Dell xp machine from a yardsale for $10 a few years ago ... Very happy it came with some great powered speakers, keyboard/mouse ... I got my $10 from it. While I really needed a new shop pc, I chose to not even bother installing Linux on it. I looked for 6 more months to buy a auction pc. You can install linux on it. If you can imagine, A 10 year old pc a I3, !5, I7, My office pc is a xeon. with 16 gigs ram and have 32 gigs to install in it. My point is, I run linux on my best hardware ... it is bleeding edge and steps ahead of windows or macs. Most linux at this point, are 64 bit architecture ... all the big ones dropped 32 bit architecture. I would almost bet the xp machine is a 32 bit. This just limits you to the distributions that will work on your machine ... Long story short, a newer pc will work out of the box with linux. A older pc will work, but you need a fair amount of knowledge to make it work ... you will get frustrated. Just a heads up, your machine will work, some late xp machines were 64 bit capable. Still the ram limitations do not match what we want today, the power supply does not match what we want today ... Getting linux to work on a old xp machine is more like a novelty and for fun or show, not for use.

Ohhh you are so correct. I just popped the hood and looked at compressor and tag says R12. I never thought about that. While replacement parts are readily available ... I will have to look into a conversion kit. I appreciate the heads up on this. I just thought 1991 was new enough to be R134 ... but I have basically zero experience actually working on ac. When I was in Albuquerque it was rough with no ac but not to bad. Texas is a different story. While my wife car electrical transmission been acting funny, I was going to start on that Monday. Today Saturday her fuel pump just decided to quit working. Sunday morning when cool will tow it home and start working on it. Either way will have it in the air to work on the transmission, now is just an extra $200 for a new fuel pump to get it to run to work on the transmission You just have to love life.

Hats off to ya, not easy working in this weather. Been ~100 temps for 2 weeks or more now .... I am just finally getting use to them. Get up at 5:30 am and drink my coffee in the shop while cool & wait for it to get daylight to start work. Slowly one day to the next I have been getting accustomed to the temps. Able to stay in the shop just a little longer each day. Just today am out here at 7:00 pm and cooling down, think I am finally ready for summer AC is important if you live in West Texas ... Not impossible to drive your car, not very convenient either. Same as if you lived in Montana or North Dakota, your car must have a heater to defrost the windows to drive. In Texas you could shrivel up and pass out while driving with no AC That is one of the issues correcting on my 1991 chevy truck. I have to replace everything. Original issue when they replaced the engine, not right wrenches and they twisted the hard lines to the heater core looking thing under the dash ... it leaks. They never unplugged the compressor so it is bad, I was told the radiator looking thing should be replaced when the compressor is. So basically just replace everything. At least is a 1991 cheby truck and easy to work on. Parts may be less then $500.

Here we go, as far as I got. ... I technically had 1 more day ... Monday Morning starting on the wife car and the truck needs to be moved out of the way. No idea how long I will be working on the wife car, also am ordering parts for my daily driver truck. It will take some time ... I figure it may be fall before I get to work on the pilothouse again. I just did not want to park the truck on the side with doors that do not close, the fenders in the bed, not excited and maybe never get back to it. ...I got a little progress and I am excited to get back on it now. Happy to see the front end back on. I took a few min today to install my other gauges Thanks to @Radarsonwheels I was pretty disappointed when I installed the radiator. First time in 2 years I was able to warm it up with coolant in it and let the engine run. There was so much blue smoke once it warmed up, I could have drove around town and eliminated mosquitos in the whole county .... no way I could drive this truck. One step forward and 2 steps back. Amazing after a few heat cycles, it is pretty decent and very drive-able again Still smokes a bit ... I do not mind a puff of smoke when taking off. This truck really just wants to go for a drive. Then see where we are with the engine. Also first time it has run with a working 180 T-stat installed ... seems to like to idle at 195 ... extended idle. But with a fast idle it cools right back to 180 ... so seems to be ok. With no T-stat it just stayed at 160. Oil seems to stay at 20 psi at hot idle, 45+ fast idle. Happy with that. Am sad the temp gauge did not work with new gauges, another project.

To be honest I am not sure is possible to see where the plate is welded to the inner structure of the cowl. I imagine at some point the cowl was a flat piece of sheet metal .... the needed holes for the cowl were stamped out, the threaded plate was then welded on along with any other welds needed. Then the flat sheet metal was put in a press and pressed into shape? The pillar is 2 or 3 pieces, and shaped kinda like a E where the welded plate is in one slot and the door hinge goes in the other slot, and the bolts are started from the outside and sucking all 3 together. The top of the heavy 3/16 or 1/4" plate is actually a few inches down from the starting point of the sheet metal. Almost impossible to get to it. I thought about cutting a access panel to be able to get to at least 3 sides of the plate and weld it .... not going to be easy. I feel more then I know, The real fix would be to cut the section out of the cowl, move it to the welding table and then fix it .... then weld it back to the cowl. That would be a real fix. Just more then what I wanted to do. As far as I know, it could have been this way for 50+ years ... it was not welded when I removed the door 2 years ago.

I feel same way .... when I stopped working I stopped keeping logs ... FREEDOM! As I get more active, adding the garden for example. Using logs again will be a great help. I planted brocoli on June 6 & they sprouted 7 days later on the 13th. I have been keeping track of the temps ... last 2.5 weeks been 68-74 in the mornings and 99-103 in the afternoons. Just keeping a log will help for next year. 2 years ago I took apart the front end on my truck ....while I took a lot of photos for reference, I stored them on my shop computer without backing them up to my office computer, and lost those with a hard drive failure. I now wish I had a few hand written notes to look back on. Just a tip for those that have not kept logs, you may find it inconvenient to take a few min and write things down .... down the road you will find something interesting and glad you took the time.

I wonder why it would not be replaceable? I suspect it is the washer that is spot welded on? In this time period people did not have a dremel & mig welder to replace, Making it almost impossible to fix. The washer looks out of place, sure it was put there for a reason. It could be there to hold bushing in place. ... doubtful. Is it a shim for end play on the shaft? I wonder what end play tolerance is? Would it change if assemble starter without it as a test? I use the pilot shaft alignment tool to install pilot shaft bushings. Not exactly machinist tolerances but they do fit the bushing ... wonder if they would fit starter bushing?

Not positive PA, I think you are wrong here. Obvious the flat washer tack welded in place is holding the bushing .... Why? I do not know. I would think it would stay in position without a washer welded to hold it ..... is it possible they moved in earlier years? To me it seems obvious to remove the washer then the bushing & replace. Question is adding the washer back in . To me, this is a 1948 Desoto, the flathead six engines were around for over a decade then. Think it was 1935 they made some changes to the starter .... I just assume the washer was added for a reason. The engine & starter already been around for over a decade or two. The washer may only act as a shim ... I have no clue ... I would try to save it and replace it. I agree that it may not be needed ... unless someone can explain exactly why it was added in the first place, I would put it back. I was at church once, lady in front of me stood up to sing and her dress was caught in the crack of her arse ... so I pulled it out. .... she smacked me. Next time she stood up to sing I pushed her dress back into her arse. she smacked me again. Who knows why that washer is there, seems to be factory ... I suppose they put it there for a reason. Ask the lady in church, she may tell you none of your business. Sometimes putting it back does not turn out well either.

Different computers of different ages have different capabilities. I have never seen a computer that could not boot off of a alternative source. My current herd of computers are I3, I5, A I7 and this machine is a xeon with 32 gigs ram.... If you are talking some old pc with windows xp .... good chance it will not boot off another option, need to add the cd to it. I have no clue what you are doing. Lets say you have a old pc and want to install Linux, you have options and can be done. Linux is meant to run on your best hardware, not some old red headed step child. But it runs fine on 5 year old machines .... 10 year old and pushing your luck.

Well maybe you are correct. You certainly have a good opinion. The hard drive is important ... I have a 2 terabyte here on linux. While my lightest laptop is 8 gigs ram This pc is 32 gigs of ram on linux. ...I also have a old win xp box ... just a joke and nothing I plan to use ... I put my best hardware forward on Linux. You do you.

I suck at this ... I am just saying this is one of those moments when you tell the computer what to do ... then back it up.

With the thumb drive installed, it would naturally boot from it ... Sometimes in today world we actually need to go into bios and select what we want.

Fact is you need to get into bios & set the booting drive .... could be a thumb drive, A DVD or your hard drive ... chances are it is your hard drive now ... you need to change the boot order . Los looks at the rabbit hole

While I think they are out there, a quick google search the top 10 free versions ... then there is a list of paid versions. One was $3k 1 time payment, another was $45 a month & everything inbetween. If you have a customer base, you need to provide for them what they want .... often that is windows. @HotRodTractormentioned linux mint and it is nice. The machine I am on is using Manjaro linux. seriouslt you can go to distrowatch.com and see a list of top 100 linux distributions. There are many to choose from. If you have a old pc sitting around not being used, you could install linux on it and see what you think as a experiment. For example go to linuxmint.com and download the .iso Then you burn the image to a thumb drive or DVD. Then you boot the machine using the thumb drive you created. You will pretty much have a working linux system to try ... if you like what you see, there will be a install icon on the desktop, click it and follow the instructions, 15 min later will be rebooting on your hard drive. Be forewarned, it is a bit of a rabbit hole. Like stepping up to a HUGE all you can eat buffet & trying to decide what you want. You will try some things and think it is not very good, while others you will really like. When you download the .iso, you will see different options. such as kde or Gnome which is the desktop environment. you choose which one to use, there are others ... kde looks like win7 and gnome looks like Mac. The truth is, windows looks like kde. kde is open source and free to use, windows while they do donate money for development, then take the main source code then have their software engineers further develop it to work for them and is locked down as closed source. So choose kde if you are a windows user ... you want to play try gnome .... all is free, just the time to download and create thumb drive. Let me add you are a much better computer administrator then I. The things you do for the Amish I admire, I could not do that on windows. I will not say it is dead simple on linux, pretty straightforward though. Get a terminal and usermod command would take care of most of it ... you can control the permissions the account has to use usb, cd, internet. Most administrators would want to install sudo, with that you can fine tune permissions for individual accounts. Nothing I use. Again use what works for you .... linux works for me, windows works for my wife ..... even though today her computer habits I think I can build her a linux machine and be happy.

I am not pushing any operating system ... I personally been using linux for maybe 15 years. Same time I set up a computer for my wife and for her I use windows 10 on it. 15 years ago she had win xp .... I remember using dos 6.2 & win 3.1 .... I stood in line for a hour to purchase win 98 on the day it was released. Linux is very good, I would not use anything else myself. About 6 months ago I tried a new flavor of linux. Took about 15-20 min to install on a completely empty hard drive. Then it checked for updates, it ran for another 1/2 hour updating in the back ground while I was still using it. After 6 months it has worked flawlessly. I build my own computers ... while last few years I just buy refurbished from ebay because lazy. They do come with win10 installed. I no longer feel the need to have the latest greatest hardware. I just erase the hard drive and install linux. I do not run any anti virus, I install the programs I want to use on my computer. I tell my computer when to update, what to update & what to leave out & how much resources to use while updating. I can visit the worse porn sites on the internet and my computer is not affected. I built this computer & I built the linux os it runs on ... It does what I tell it to do. If needed I can run older versions of programs to keep them working. So is obvious I have issues with widows & it's terms of service .... Mac is ok, built off of a linux kernel and locked down so tight, then the free open source software is sold for a high price. Linux is ok for most people, and just as easy to learn & use as windows.

I cant argue with you there. You hear all the time about a Dakota or Chebby S10 frame swaps ... they seem to work. But ya never hear of someone swapping a Dakota or S10 rear end into a stock frame? I have heard of others liking the older dodges ... A duster or plymouth volare, These are classified as A or B body, I have no clue ... they work good but they are hard to find. If you have one laying around, sell it for big bucks and buy something else? If your engine, transmission is stock, the 3:73 gears are a perfect starting point. The Explorer or Jeep that is early 1990's have drum brakes They are readily available at a local wrecking yard. You can pick one up for less then $200, all your brakes are available at local parts store. You can buy spring perches at Tractor supply for $20. Just like my 1991 chebby, I need to buy 2 ujoints of different years, then mix match the caps and have a working u-joint. No reason to get hurt over brand affiliation. A transmission was built by Borg Warner or whoever then used the bolt pattern for the buyer. Same thing with rear ends, all built by Dayton or whoever ... same product but a different packaging & mounting .... And there is almost no support for these older mopar, ya kinda need to search elsewhere.

My used car market .... I took on a 1994 Dodge Dakota awhile back and went through it and did all the maintenance & repairs needed. Trying to do a favor for a buddy I sold it to him on payments ... I paid first month insurance for him, tried to help them out ... I was animate the first thing you have to do is change title over and get it out of my name ... I do not want a tow charge 3 years from now with the truck abandoned and sitting on the side of the road. Been almost 2 years now, he burned up the transmission pulling a heavy trailer. Never paid me a nickle, never changed the title. Still in my name. I had $1k into it and sold it to him for $900. He is a double amputee with 2 fake arms, hooks. Been that way since 12 years old ... one time he owned a scrap yard buying and scrapping cars ... he uses his disability to play on your feelings. Another buddy owned a casual mechanics shop ... friends hang out and work get done. Every day Charles would show up and want this fixed, then that then something else. Hundreds of $$ in debt Eventually the mechanic after telling Charles to take a hike many times, he pulled a pistol on Charles ... get the F out you are trespassing & do not come back. Charles went straight to police and claimed he was on public property, in the street. Truck was parked on street but he was on private property ... Went all the way to a jury trial. Jury took sympathy on the double amputee. My buddy lost his business, his home, 6 months in jail. Because Charles is a jerk. Sorry for long story, just saying my next car may be a repo. Just get a replacement title and have his Cousin PJ who does all the local towing go pick it up .... PJ hates this guy. I now know why. I just need to protect myself since they will not change the title over ... I wont help the guy cross the street. I also need to clarify with local police / dmv to be sure not breaking any laws. Looks like my wife is getting a 94 Dakota with cold air and decent interior 140k miles.

I have to admit I am terrible about cars, Possible I may need to buy the wife something, I just hate newer cars with all the electronics and 10k miles of wires and a spendy price tag .... they just do not impress me a bit. My cousin asked me to drive her new Ford whatever suv to connect a trailer and set it up .... I sat in it, saw it had no ignition just a start button, back up cameras and tv screens ... I pissed her off because not only would I not drive it, I would not ride in it. Los puts on his grumpy old man face. GRRRR! Yesterday on Facebook market place I seen a local Ford dealer advertise a 2001 1/2 ton 2 wheel drive truck for sale ... looked like a beater. I think it was black but all the clear coat was burned off and could have been blue or gray. If it ran well with high miles, probably a $1500 - $1800 truck. I clicked on the add to see what they wanted, I was shocked because next photo showed it with dirt, weeds, garbage in the bed .... not even cleaned out. They were asking $8k for it? A beat up 2001 ford 1/2 ton.

We got a swinger! .... I cheated and did nothing. Every fix is really kinda micky mouse ... closer inspection and do not think I could get 2 tack welds on it ... I put it back together and used the magnet to pull the plate back up and get a bolt started. It took 10 or 15 tries now that I knew what was doing, easier then last time. A few choice words helped. I can still adjust the door with no problems, only if I remove the door will I need to mess with the plate again. It's done lets get on with the day and the A-D-D sleep While the gap at the cab seems fine with me ... I needed to get this door adjusted so I can set the gap on the fenders next. Nice that I cleaned and greased all the window mechanism while it was on the saw horses. All the jambs are painted ... going to call it a win! While the door still needs work, everything can be done with it installed. 1 more to go.