Tough winter

[78F250SCCS]

Went and checked on my 78 today. A little damage from the snow. The snow slid off my roof onto my hood taking a windshield wiper with it and ripping my antenna base and all off. Ripped the screws out. I had a little bubbling in my clear coat and the melting snow really made a mess of that. A huge section of clear coat peeled off over the passengers side door, and has really started to bubble on the hood. Looks like I'm going to have to sand and re-spray some clear once the weather warms up. Not something I want to do. I'd really hate to mess the paint up trying to fix the clear coat. It will be a good learning experience if I ever have to do it again.

 

[LEB Ben]

Sucks to hear that...a new wiper arm shouldn't be hard to come by or expensive either. Same for the antenna. As for the clear, shouldn't be too bad if you know what you're doing, but then again, I don't mess much with paint.

 

[bucks77ford]

Oh man that sucks. The elements on winter are really hard on our trucks (and others). I'm not expert in paint, but what is bad about having clear coat come off is that the base coat underneath can fade or become distorted really easy since it's no longer covered by clear coat. The base coat may not look bad in the spots where the clear has come off, but when the clear coat is reapplied over the base coat than those spots can look very distorted and look bad. Worse comes to worse, try to fix it and if it looks good, great. If not, than the hood will have to be re-finished completely.

 

[78F250SCCS]

Was back out at my dads where my 78 is, and I figured I would try and start her up. Hooked the battery up. Pumped it a few times and she started up. Idle was nice no sputtering or any black smoke. The only thing is my gas line is leaking from the rubber line that connects the hard line to the carb. Easy fix. If the truck wasn't behind a 6 foot frozen snow bank I would have left the Ranger at my dads and drove the 78 home. I miss my V8, but I don't miss the gas mileage, but that's part of owning a old truck. Worth every penny in my mind.