In and among fighting the dreaded allergy season (all year for the most part) here in Austin, I have actually been doing more with DeTruck than I've been writing about it! (oh! the squalid reality of it all... delicious!)

The first delight is that the painting experiment went as well or better than could be hoped. Here are two pictures:


Since the white is intended to cover rust, act a primer and potentially a kind of gesso for any kind of painting I do next, it is serving very well. Matching the off-white that was there was difficult in spray paint, but I got an off-white that was a bit to dark and then gave it a light second coat with a pure white and it looks pretty good.

Matching the red will be much harder. Using a Pantone book (thanks to Debbie and the skinny Italian woman at work,) it comes in at Pantone 200C in the sun and 201C in the shade (or possibly 186C and 187C.) If I can't luck out and find matching spray paint, I'll need to use my paint sprayers (luckily I have electric and compressed air paint sprayers as well as an air brush, but they're a pain to clean when using oils or enamels.) If I have to use the sprayers, I'll want to do the truck all at once because of the hassle factor. That would delay things. Everything's a trade off.

I also added some confidence:

after reading about the dangers of a truck with 1000 gallons of water parked on grade.

The coolest thing I've ever bought in clothing arrived, my Proximity Suit (dog came extra):

It fits and it's amazing! Look out Halloween!

The next thing I'm going to start is trying to clean out the tank:

which I'm afraid will be sending large rust chips into the pump. There's a clean out plug deep under the truck that I'm sure I will abuse myself getting open. But open it I will! Then I'll use a garden hose sprayer and long brush to try and get the worst out.

I'm still waiting on my plates. An my original insurance agent finally got back to me (I went elsewhere long ago.) So the legal side of things is moving slowly. I'm also learning the difference between NST, NH, NPSH, NPT and other firehose threads, since I wasn't careful and bought a (well labeled dang it) gated wye valve that has 1.5" NPSH male threads when I need 1.5" NST male threads. Luckily adpaters do exist and adding the two I need will still make the gated wye a bargain. YAFLE (Yet another freaking learning experience.)

--Tim
posted by Tim at 1:30 PM | Link