My 720 Resto

[Lockleaf]

Ceramics have better heat dissipation but semi-metallic tend to have better cold bite.

[720inOlyWa]

See how much one can learn from my 26 page resto-rant?!? My truck has metallic pads and they dust up the wheels pretty good. I ordered ceramic pads and we shall see if they improve anything. It is my habit to apply the brakes slowly as I cruise down my street to the stop sign. I figure that should heat them up a little before I break out onto the streets of OlyWa.

[Lockleaf]

Less dusting is another selling feature of the ceramics, so you should notice a reduction there. I prefer ceramics for my daily driven stuff.

[720inOlyWa]

Wouldn‘t you know it: I ordered brake components- I mean everything- for my 84 project and now the brake light is starting to come on at stop signs in my Fudgecicle. Time to get parts coming for it, too! By the time all of these brake parts are hung on these two trucks, I oughtta be pretty good at 720 brake work...

 

Before yesterday, I didn‘t realize that when it is getting time for brake pads that the brake light on the dash would come on. It must be tied into the pedal travel somehow..

[mx71]

Wouldn‘t you know it: I ordered brake components- I mean everything- for my 84 project and now the brake light is starting to come on at stop signs in my Fudgecicle. Time to get parts coming for it, too! By the time all of these brake parts are hung on these two trucks, I oughtta be pretty good at 720 brake work...

 

Before yesterday, I didn‘t realize that when it is getting time for brake pads that the brake light on the dash would come on. It must be tied into the pedal travel somehow..

 

I'm willing to bet it's a warning for low brake fluid level, which can happen when your pads are worn.

[Lockleaf]

I'm willing to bet it's a warning for low brake fluid level, which can happen when your pads are worn.

This is correct.

[720inOlyWa]

Huh. Fluid is good. Interesting!

 

(Postscript: I had Jiffylube replace the brake fluid- something I had not done since buying the truck. (For shame!) The fluid didn‘t look so great, but is new now and the light hasn‘t come on again. Beforehand, I pulled the little float switch in the master cylinder to make sure it was working fine.)

[720inOlyWa]

Well, the seat saga continues with the installation of a 2002 Isuzu Rodeo drivers seat. I was reading another thread about seats, and just got curious. I found a pair of Rodeo seats in decent shape (except the drivers side was soggy). I made the conversion as described in the current seat swap thread by using the 720 seat rails and flipping the ecu over under the seat to gain clearance.

 

I had been driving either a stock vinyl seat that I had rebuilt, or an cloth ST seat that I picked up along the way. Neither stock seat comes close to offering the comfort, support, and ride improvement that the Rodeo seat brings to the party. Ride improvement?!? Yes, ride improvement. The deeper seat biscuit, along with the fully sprung support underneath adds a noticable level of isolation from the myriad of road bumps that would otherwise be felt. This represents a huge improvement in ass and lumbar support too. 

 

I left the ST seat in for a couple of days to be absolutely certain tat I am sold. I am. Best 80 bucks that I have spent so far. You can see from the photo that the Rodeo seat has a better shape for lumbar and back support and is broader at the top of the back. The headrest is far more ergonomic as well.  I wonder now why I waited so long to add some Rocoro style seats to the Fudgecicle...

 

[720inOlyWa]

Boy, do I enjoy my Rodeo seats!

But as much as I enjoy improving comfort, it is time to re-torque the head bolts today. So I am going to get at that pleasant little job before I run out to the landfill with a load of junk from our bathroom remodelling project.

 

Whenever I have a real job to do in The Fudgecicle, it is a good day.

 

Anybody have a line on a Nissan rubber bed pad? I am looking...

[Charlie69]

Nice seat, did you buy 2?

[720inOlyWa]

Oh yeah. They are both cleaned up and installed now. What an improvement. Wow!  When I found them, I wasn’t so sure that I could fetch them back as they had been exposed to rain for several days, if not longer. The drivers seat was soaked like a sponge. It all looked pretty hopeless. But I bought them anyway and applied some shop vac to them, along with upholstery cleaner, and within a couple of days of sitting next to the heater in my shop, they dried out and the covering tightened up nicely. So I got lucky. I think they are going to be okay.

 

I am looking for another set of Rodeo seats! Another set of seats.... and another Nissan rubber bed mat.

[720inOlyWa]

We have been having a cold snap, with clear nights. Some of the moisture that soaked into the ground leaves the ground in the evening, creating dense fog. Did you know that the Olympia, Washington airport is the foggiest in the entire country? True. More fog days than anywhere else.  Our climatological idyiosyncracy offered me an excellent opportunity to fine tune the aim of my headlights, something I had been meaning to do ever since rebuilding the headlight buckets last summer. Where the beam is a bit hard to pinpoint on a clear summer evening, the center beam looks like a laser in the thick fog. Sure enough, the right low beam was a tich too high and wide, and the left low beam needed a tweak downward too. 

 

Now they are bingo zero bravo. Highly enjoyable job, slipping the phillips head onto the recently rehabbed adjustment screw...

[720inOlyWa]

All together, I have $2,837.87 invested in this truck, including the purchase price, engine, clutch and driveline rebuild along with a few splurges, like a new windshield (already cracked!), seats, and powder coating the steelies. That much dough, plus a shit ton of time and effort- all a labor of love so far.

 

 

The new seats are great, but I have hit my head on the door sill getting out of the truck...twice. I need to get in the habit of ducking on my way out, because I aint gonna give up my Rodeo seats!

 

[datzenmike]

Worth it at twice the price.....

[wayno]

So you sit higher in the Rodeo seats?

[mx71]

Nice! I've got upwards of $4,000 in my $1,000 truck. Looks like we've pretty much done ours the same way, however mine is a 4x4.

[720inOlyWa]

About 3/4ths of an inch higher, I reckon...  Not bad at all, I just need to adjust my exit slightly.  when I first started working under the hood, that damn hood latch got me a couple of times before I instinctively remembered that it was there and avoided it. Same deal with the seats, I suppose.

[captain720]

Nice! I've got upwards of $4,000 in my $1,000 truck. Looks like we've pretty much done ours the same way, however mine is a 4x4.

4x4s are generally more expensive. I have about the same in mine, but the body is pretty rough. I have bought good quality all terrains and studed winter tires, new tranni, T-Case, engine, CVs, locking hubs........... The list goes on and on. But I love her anyways.

[wayno]

I had some Neon seats in my 720 kingcab, they were around an inch higher, drove me crazy as stock 720 seats are about the same height as all the seats I have in all my trucks, every time I got in the truck it felt weird.

I never got used to it so I changed out them seats for another set I had and life is good now. :lol:

[mx71]

4x4s are generally more expensive. I have about the same in mine, but the body is pretty rough. I have bought good quality all terrains and studed winter tires, new tranni, T-Case, engine, CVs, locking hubs........... The list goes on and on. But I love her anyways.

 

Luckily, I haven't had to do anything that serious. I've had a shop install a brand new (remanufactured) carb to pass emissions, had them replace the oil pan gasket and front brake lines, and flush and fill the tranny and brake fluid. Everything else has been ticky tacky stuff. All new exterior lights, rodeo seats, parking brake cables, all new brakes all the way around, interior pieces, new windshield, pretty much all maintenance items, etc...

[720inOlyWa]

I hear that, wayno.  And while I am happy with the rodeo seats, they got me to thinking about how a stock seat set would be if one remaufactured them with better springs, etc.. It would not be hard to do, either. I saved my stock seats because my neighbor over the fence is a super upholstery craftsman and I am going to lean on him for advice in making new hide leather covers for them. I have an old CViking sewing machine in the basement that I do not know how to use. But it can sew leather, no problem. My thought was to take the seat covers apart and use them as a pattern. This is all formative thinking at this point, but having seen and sat in a set of nicely remade leather seats,.... THAT‘s what I want!

[720inOlyWa]

Yesterday, and last night, it rained a sloppy freezing rain for a good 24 hours or so. It was one of those fine mist kind of rains that enables water to penetrate everywhere. In other words, a perfect opportunity to see if the grey goo that I had trowelled around the fresh air intake for the cab stopped the leaking on the passenger side of the cab. It wasn‘t a pretty repair- I had to reach around the back side of the tube with grey mastic on my fingers and that wasn‘t easy.  But it seems to have paid off because this morning, the passenger side of the cab is bone dry. After a whole lot of effort, and several attempts, I think tat I have finally achieved a dry cab. I can check that repair off the list and move on.

 

Next up fixing the fan flap linkage to get the air controls working correctly again. No idea why, but selecting defrost, bi-level, or vent makes zero difference and the air is not coming out of the vents at nearly full force, despite the fan blowing like mad. Time to remove the console, drop the vent controls, and see what is not hooked up to whatever... for whatever reason...

[wayno]

You can see where the control lever lines go without pulling it all apart, just see why one of them isn't moving when it should be moving.

[720inOlyWa]

Although any thread posted here is a personal story- and that is a good thing- I have really tried not to make mine all about me. Even so, I realize that it comes off that way sometimes. Reason being is that this 720 project, in large measure is about two things; planning for the end of my own life, and finding ways to stay engaged with life while I am here despite being a relatively ‘poor‘ person.

 

I have a great friend who advised me- in the 8th grade, on a ski lift- that one can have ‘90% of the fun for ten percent of the cost‘. Wiser words were never spoken to me. What great advice! I put it to work for myself when, after reaching for the brass ring and working my ass off to grab it- and failing- I needed to continue on in happiness and contentment somehow. Would I rather be messing around with an old Porche instead of a 720 King Cab? I love old Porches too, but I really don‘t think so. I can find at least 90 percent of the satisfaction of rehabbing my truck as any other vehicle that I can imagine. 

 

The other bit, the part about planning for the end of my own life, falls into place when you couple an intense gerbil such as myself with the problem of low cash flow. Recognizing what I actually needed in life in terms of transportation brought me to rebuilding an old truck for myself. Since I can‘t just go write a check for one, and I can‘t afford $350 truck payments for the next sixty months, if I wanted a truck, I simply had to make one for myself. Now, at age 68, I will not need another truck in my lifetime. The Fudgecicle should do me just fine. I have the category of ‘light utility vehicle“ covered. But a truck isn‘t quite enough for me, in part because I am a greedy bastard and in part because it doesn‘t fill every one of my transportation needs.

 

I always had the feeling that if you owned a station wagon, you would never really be homeless. Now that is easy for me to say because I own my home, and the mortgage is retired. So unless I default on my taxes, it aint likely that I will ever really truly be homeless. But that is a little beside the point. Station wagons offer a sense of sanctuary, and I love that about them. Station wagons are way cool in similar ways to a 720 truck. The utility, the economy, the functionality- all superb values. What a great American invention!

 

Too bad we don‘t make station wagons anymore.

 

Well, I have driven a 1995 Subaru Legacy station wagon for a little over 300k of its 346,000 total miles. Holy cow, I love that car! Easily the best return on investment given cost per mile, my Legacy has one foot in the digital world, one foot in the analog world, just like my little 720. When I turned the corner on my 720 resto, and could use it as a daily driver, I made a decision and took my old Subaru to Eddies Blue Flame Automotive- our local Subaru master- and told him to rebuild the drivetrain completely. Take his time, work it into the rotation when things were slow, but bring it back to 100% solid and reliable again so that I might drive it to the end of my days. Do everything that it needed and don‘t scrimp. That was 11 months and $5,300 ago. Fortunately, I could stop by Eddies over the past year and lay some bread on him when I got a little ahead, to keep the project moving forward. The last $1,500 was a bit of a hard swallow, but all in all I hardly felt the expense.

 

Well, all good things come to an end and, eventually, Eddie finished his job. When I say ‘finished his job‘, let me tell you, this car has one of the last three brand new 2.2 liter Subaru engines available from the factory. It is absolutely brand new in every mechanical sense. I‘d show you under the hood, but you would need to be wearing an adult diaper, so please appreciate my concern for your chair.

 

Interesting side note, during the rebuild I saw another 95 Legacy wagon show up at Eddies. It had been pranged slightly and the hood was bent a bit. Eddie told me that the lady loved that car so much that she was going to do the same thing that I did- rebuild it and keep it. Interesting. So I am not a ‘lone kook‘ after all...

 

Point being, my transportation needs are now fulfilled from now, until the end of my driving days. I am totally covered, totally content, and paid up in full. It wasn‘t easy, but save for some continued wrecking yard fun and regular maintenance, I am done!  In fact when I croak, just recline the seat, stick me in there behind the wheel with the radio on, and roll the entire sheebang into a big pit out east of the mountains and bury me there.  Talk about 90 percent of the fun for 10 percent of the cost- oh man!

 

Excuse me for the personal ranting here today, but I am pretty excited about getting my old warhorse “Subie-Doo“ back home again. I even painted her wheel covers, as a show of appreciation. I thought you might understand.

 

[Charlie69]

Which of the 3 720s are you trying to make all yours?  LOL