Shop Truck, Part 2

I continue to make interesting and enjoyable discoveries about my new shop truck. Last Saturday, I took Mary Ellen for her first ride. All was well, except that when I reached up to adjust the inside mirror, it came right off in my hand! We laughed and laughed, and stopped by the Pep Boys store on the way home to pick up the special kit used to glue inside mirrors back on. So easy anyone can do it - just follow the instructions.
I didn't take the picture until after I had used it.

The 1003 bulb in the picture is for the inside floor-level lights that illuminate when the door is open - nice to have that working again. The weatherstrip adhesive will be used to stick down the rubber weatherstrip surrounding the door, once I get around to it. It has been nice to just be able to pull it out when I've been painting the roof.

On that same trip, we identified a more serious problem: the passenger side seat belt would not latch. Now, I am very serious about the safety equipment in my vehicles, and was fully committed to getting that fixed, no matter the cost. I went to the GMC parts site, and found that the passenger latch, which also includes center lap belt. The part number is 12549563, but that is truly useless info, because the part is NLA - discontinued and No Longer Available for sale.

I am also pretty willing to take something apart if I own it, especially if it is already broken. I removed the passenger latch from the truck, and pried it apart. Sure enough, there was a mess of broken plastic in there - no fixing that with glue. But... the truck had a working center lap belt that I was willing to sacrifice. I took it apart too, and figured out how to move the fragile plastic part to the passenger belt. No detail here, because I sure don't want the liability of teaching you how to fix a 26-year-old seat belt. As all the car ads say these days, "DO NOT ATTEMPT!"

Anyway, the latch in the foreground of the picture is the repaired one, and the piece in the center is the now useless center belt. The rear one is for the driver's side. I can only have one passenger at a time until I splash out $300 for a full new set of harnesses from LMC Truck.

Way back in January, 2013 (link), I detailed how the Z3 Coupe has a spare tire slung under the car just like a pickup truck. Now I have a pickup with that arrangement, and I wanted to see if it worked. I'm happy to say that the various factory tools were carefully packed in the compartment behind the seat, just like new. The laminated instructions were even there:

Just like the Z3 Coupe, you use a combination of tools to lower the spare to the ground, and them pull it out. Access is through a hole in the back bumper:

Once the spare was down, I could see why it only held 20 pounds of air. It's pretty badly dry-rotted, and the wheel has significant rust also. When it was under the truck, I wasn't able to get it to take any more air, and had bought some valve cores to try to fix it, but once I got it out, I was able to put enough pressure on the stem to get it aired up. This is definitely something I'll need to address further:

Then it was back to the roof. As noted in my last post, the POR-15 I used on the roof must be top-coated with regular paint to keep it from degrading in the UV light from the sun. I found a can of satin black Rustoleum spray in the shop, and decided to use that. The matte finish should help disguise the pits and bumps from the rust I covered with the POR-15.

The experts say never to mask a vehicle with newspaper when painting, but I chose to invoke the well-known "except when using a rattle can on a shop truck" exemption:

The quality of the finished paint depends totally on how tall you are. It doesn't look too bad from this view!