Now we're cooking with gas

One day later and my battery arrived:

A 6 Volt Group 2 battery - and it's MINE!

I went out to the garage to take a look see at the battery box (under the drivers seat and accessible through a missing body panel under the door) and looked at another bit of rust I really hadn't noticed before - although my Dad did point it out when he was up last weekend. The battery box is held on by four beefy bolts - bigger than 1/2", and my socket set doesn't go that large, so removal will have to wait. That's okay since all I planned to do was see if the battery will get Big Red started, then remove it for the winter. I can fix the rust before putting the battery back in for good in the spring.

Rust has split the left side of the battery box

And since I was out in the garage, I decided to crawl under the truck to pop off that last hubcap. It was fairly easy to pop off, but I got a surprise once it broke free - about a cup of oil sprayed out onto my garage floor. Add another item to the "to do" list...

An oil filled hubcap

A mini Exxon Valdez in my garage - quick! Save the wildlife!

You can see how close to the wall Big Red is parked, and why my Father didn't want to crawl back there to pull that hubcap off when he was here last weekend.

So, with the battery here, I'd like to see if the truck will fire up.There's a coupe things I'd like to do before I get to that point, but I'd love to see if it will rumble to life again before it gets really cold (as opposed to this mornings darn cold 28 degrees). That would be pretty sweet...