We’ve been all over the place this week and I wanted to take today and catch several people up on where we are with them:
The guys are really getting the old shop cleaned out. If you’ve been here you know about this… here is the old “motor room” where all the greasy mechanical parts once roamed free 
Wow, …. clean… well, not messed up. Hey and Miss Piggy is parked in front of the “Nearly New” department loading up 
. She is certainly pulling her load….. check her out loaded with the last vestiges of that room 
Loaded to the gills with a complete dash sitting on top staying safe as it was tucked away in back so many years 
A moving great heap of Unobtanium freshly mined 
What an awesome moving machine!!!
After giving a couple of days to harden up, Ray started after wet sanding Bills fresh paint 
This final paint process will actually create the gloss finish you see on a fine car finish 
While Ray is doing that… hey I found something hanging off one of the junk palates on Miss Piggy…. This is a rare stainless steel water heater cover only used to my knowledge on Airstream units. “Gotta be silver” this rare door will be an awesome option on Bill’s coach. Kinda like a lighted hood ornament, a stainless steel door like that is “show rare” to me.
Bill’s original door wasn’t an original. It was something that was made up from probably a broken door… showing hinge and screws… just not pretty 
So with some 4aught steel wool, McGuires aluminum polish and body shaping tools I went after it. It had obviously been on the bottom of a stack of something in the back of the room… I would have never found this if the guys had not done such a good job. A little elbow grease and some wacks with the dead mallet and check it out 
and in place you can see how special it really is
You’re welcome Bill…..
Moving on, hey JD, look what we found buried under the chassis 
. Somehow tied into the rear brakes, there are 2 master cylinders and 3 boosters (countum) connected to the original master/booster set up. WOW, 3 master cylinders? Hey, we knew we would be finding weird stuff but that’s a new one to me.
Listen guys, doing “special” things to your coach cause you can is all OK but remember this thing needs to be fixed where it stops….. a tow bill will melt your wallet and the darn thing is just too big to push! If you have stuff like this and you break down… brother YOU had better be the nechanic with all the books, manuals, tools, parts and band aids because Bubba OR Scooter will not be able to help you. This double booster deal probably wrenched tight the rear wheels but if you can’t fix in on the side of the road you my friend are at rick. You do not want to pay to have something fixed out there…. it could be bad.
Give you another one on JD’s coach. The enthusiastic previous owner spent the big bucks to install that Tec II Electromotive sequential direct port fuel injection system like the one I had in my coach a decade ago 
Hey it truly is a cool system all hooked up to your lap top running on programmable bin files.. you can watch the lap top performance screen and NEVER get bored! Well, I stopped installing it preferring to put a carb back on so Bubba COULD actually maybe fix it on the road. That TecII set up was certainly cool but it took a trained technician to play with it. JD happens to be one of those guys currently working with the military on combat helicopters, JD has been collecting all the software and adapters and he CAN maintain the unit so we’re leaving it in but the way the fuel delivery system was plumbed…. well, they dripped holes in the fuel tank senders 
and with 2 fuel solenouds, 3 filters, 2 check I’m not sure if the Big Man could figure out what was going on… Oh yeah, JD had vapor lock problems with the rig bringing it in. We’re redesigning the 2 tank system plumbing it to be a single supply. 
Removing the supply and return solenoids with all of it’s restrictions… we are tieing the tanks together on the drain ports basically letting all fuel mix right to the bottom. You want an unbroken, constant fuel source with a direct to tank return system on a fuel injection system. Our plan is tieing the tanks together we can now pull fuel from the rear tank as before but return the fuel into the other tanks fuel sender. Good supply for the 125psi electric fuel pump and an unrestricted return into the single plumbed system. THAT’s what any fuel injection system needs. I firmly believe the reason the electric fuel pump is always the first thing to check (of course other than electric motors are the highest failure component in electronics) having too much back pressure after the regulated output makes pressure build up forcing the electric pump to have to withstand backpressure. This is another good reason to add a check valve in electric fuel pumps that drive fuel injection systems. So we’re applying the years I spent frustrating over FI. We also may add a fuel cooler to the system. For those of you out there with fi systems, the return fuel is hotter than the static fuel in the tanks. Returning hot fuel to an already hot tank being only inches from that stupid hot black road…. you can boil the fuel in your tanks! Adding a fuel cooler after the regulator (pressurizing the fuel process releases heat when the pressure is released) to cool that go juice before it gets back to the tank.
OK, that’s enough about fuel injection…. right now I don’t recommend it. Recently though the race folks have come up with an inexpensive…. self programming…. all in one like a carb fi systems that are like $800 complete. Now using one of these, you can buy 2 complete sets… put one still wrapped up under the sofa and if anything goes wrong you have a brand new system… currently the hot thing with a complete second set up for whatever the diagnostic says it needs. EVERYTHING…. so hey, maybe a system like that would not be as much a liability the currently used fi systems are? So maybe for the regular guy… not the motorgod type mechanic CAN actually use and maintain a new fuel injection system? Maybe…. leave the distributer alone I like it for reliability…. just gimme a juice shoot at the right time and I’m sold! Hu, guess I wasn’t finished talking about fuel injection…. listen don’t run out and do this…. wait a little, lets see how these things are reviewed. We want something maintainable on the road withouthuge special knowledge right? So lets see how these do….
Speaking of this again.. Hey Bruce, I got that tangled up throttle body fi system out of your motor…. extracted it all and it’s in a box for someone who wants it and we have a good ole Q-jet purring like a kitten on that custom aluminum intake 
. Everything wasn’t just a bolt up though. The aluminum intake must have been one of the early production runs because the secondary ports needed to be resized. See the aluminum sticking out at the bottom of the 4bbl gasket) 
Using the 2bbl. throttle body, there was no clearance issue . That meat had to be ground out in place. 
A roll of Bounty and a die grinded and it was done. You ask, “How can the intake be made wrong? Listen, with all custom things there are “unexpected results” and the manual drilling of the intake caused this to happen. Whenever working on your GMC remember the phrase “It ALMOST fits perfect”. But hey, you get through is and we now have a 455…. same as it ever was…. strong and reliable… running like a top on a carb. Now, you can fix it on the road …. Guys, you just need to think about travelling in a GMC that way. One of the great things about a 70’s machine like this is it WAS made to work on with a Sears set of tools. Keep it that way and hey maybe Capt. Hook won’t need to be called.
Just fielded a call of a guy looking to get restoration work done on a 2004 Airstream. His logic was he likes the idea of having a classic coach but wanted more reliability. I respectfully submit his logic has a flaw…. A 12 year old motorhome built today is probably at the end of the use envelope on many things. It’s terrible but the same money spent on a GMC (which is why he called me to work on his rig) he could have made a really reliable GMC … that’s what he really wanted. Guys, again let me suggest doing a real full restoration will end you with a more reliable, better function, more enjoyable machine… something to be proud of. The GMC Motorhome is the cheapest, best and most fun toy in the box! Well, our customers feel so!
OK, gotta go, it’s Saturday… I need a weekend too. I’m only working til noon…. half day off, what a great deal……. see ya tomorrow… Janie is taking another fun AARP “Magic Bus” tour so it will be work work for me. Well alrighty then…. again, I’ll see yea tomorrow…
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