Door A Explodah

I dunno why, I glanced at the hinge area of the door. There was some flaky loose bubbly paint there… Gee. Picked at it with my finger and the paint came away pretty easily – in big chunks? Got a screwdriver and scratched it a bit… and it went through the metal. Made a sort of sickly scrunch sound. Like putting a screwdriver into some gravel? Awww… I’ll take the door off and have a look?

Door off, onto sawhorses in the driveway. Scratch a bit more with screwdriver… oh man. I’m going to be sick. Paper bag time. Breathe… gee. I’m going to need a new door. Wondering if I can find a matching color I find some used for $100-$150 but then the shipping is $250+. $400 for a new door? Hmm. For $400, at my beginner welder hourly rate of $0.25/hour, that’s 1600 hours of welding. I could probably build a whole new truck out of mig blobs in 1600 hours. I put the door back in the truck. I gotta think about this…

Next day I have another look. Gee. This doesn’t look SO bad. Its just metal. I can grind the bad stuff away and replace. Pretty clear though that the POR-15 from previous owner did nothing but hide the problem for a few years… can’t hide from the screwdriver of truth though…

I take the door back off, get out the grinder. And the mask. And the face shield. Pretty much complete welding attire to protect from the brown cloud that’s about the envelope the area.

Most of the outer skin is just gone after grinding. Some of the second layer is gone too. But there’s a ton of good metal around. This is no big deal? I’m generous with the grinder to get to nice thick metal. I am a bit concerned that what I rebuild needs to fit like the old door. The area I need to be most careful about is where the rubber seal hangs on the door. Need to follow the original lines. Otherwise the door won’t door.

Tin snips and jigsaw, I cut out metal, hammer and bend, freehand repair pieces, then glue them into place with my mig.

Having nobody to show me how this is done I get to experiment with a bunch of different techniques. The metal is nice and thick and the rust is gone I have no trouble with burn through. Lovely to have a big chunk of metal as a heat sink. The inner layer is soon filled. The other trick is lots of small blobs of metal. Zap-zap-zap. Pointillist style. Like Seurat? Gotta be careful though because its easy to have holes between the points. So sometimes after I’ve got the surface where I want it I’ll draw a bead across, melt it all a bit, then grind it back with grinder.

After I’m satisfied with inner layer I spray it all with zinc primer, then start on the outer layer. I’ve got 16g metal so that’s what I use. Even though the door is thick metal, the 16g is much thicker. I cut pieces to rougly the right shape, then grind down until they fit like my eye says they should. Weld one edge into place, then hammer the piece until another edge is in place. Eventually the piece is welded flush. Pretty neat!

End of the day I hose it all down with zinc primer. Tomorrow I’ll be done!

This was a pretty interesting process, build up with mig, then grind down. In one section I had too many pin holes, I needed more heat. So finally I cranked slowly across the whole area real slow, drew a huge fat bead. That did the trick.

What this process taught me is that no matter what, I can just grind all this muck away in the future and do it again. If there’s corrosion, if it starts to come apart, etc, if it looks at me funny… I can grind it away and do it again. I’m empowered!

Last little bit went real slow. I used a bright light to see any pits or holes, fill them with weld blob, then grind down. Weld it all, grind it all, find more pits, repeat. But finally it was good enough. Hosed it all down with vht suspension paint:

This maybe took me 10 hours of work? I reinstalled the door. It is lovely to see, smooth to the touch. The black paint isn’t really notable.

Most frustrating thing though… this is the best most complex work I’ve done and its pretty much invisible to anyone. I gotta open the door and point them into the hinge area and even then it isn’t really clear how much new metal is there.

Anyway. Now the driver’s door is looking at me funny. Looks like a lesser version of the same issue. Wonder how much easier it will go with my new skillz?

Bubbling Paint on the A Pillar (and other assorted rust bubbles)

For a while I’ve been casting sidelong glances at the top of my a pillar. Paint there is sort of bubbling. A bit.

Try not to think about it because its so horrible. What if whole a-pillar is just a giant bar of rust? Is that a fatal problem?

Today I got out the step ladder and went at that rust bubble with a screwdriver.

I didn’t take a picture before I started but it was just blue paint that had bubbled a bit. But it was also a bit soft to the fingers. So it was paint over something that wasn’t solid.

I scratched the paint off with a flathead screwdriver, then kept scratching at all the softness, the bubbling brown rust, until I’d explored the limits of the badness.

Unfortunately the rust extended to under the windshield seal, which means I can’t fix it with the mig unless I remove the windshield.

Here is right after I started to scratch:

After I’d scratched and ground it clean, then painted with ZeroRust.

I drove the car to my local awsome glass shop. They said… um… this isn’t exactly a… ‘rotisserie restoration’… the windshield will probably break if we remove it… prolly you should put in a temp fix and do the welding when the windshield needs replacement.

Just as I got home my wife got home from her moms, she handed me a half used pack of JBWeld Steel Stick. Age Unknown…

So I tore off a chunk, worked it for a minute and then jammed it in the rust hole, pressed it way up into the hole using a screwdriver. Kept pushing until it was jammed hard with whatever epoxy that is. My goal was to press out any voids.

When I was done it looked like an old hornets nest.

Then nearby were some other small bubbles in the paint… sure enough these were hidden rust holes. I gave it the same treatment except I could grind all the metal clean with my angle grinder, cleaned the underneath as well as I could, then hosed it down with some coats of zinc paint. And then I repeated that work on 2 other rust holes.

After a few hours the zinc was dry enough to weld. Because there was no seal nearby I filled the holes with zaps from the mig welder. Then grind the welds down. Pretty nice.

The main thing is to give it two small zaps, then wait until the metal is warm to the touch. Generally a minute between zaps. This keeps the heat way down, avoids warping the metal or catching the car on fyre.

Just starting to weld up a larger hole. Lots of time to take pictures while waiting for the metal to cool…

Right before I close up the welds with the final blobs I give the hole a generous blast of zinc paint. Maybe help to seal up the backside of the new metal.

Finally grind the welds down most of the way, then paint with VHT Epoxy Suspension Paint. To cover the welds I used 4 very light coats with 10 minutes between. The jbweld was thirsty though, it took 3 heavy coats, just kept sucking up the paint, which I think is fine.

Started raining last night.

I am wondering how to help reseal that windshield rubber until that distant day when the windshield comes out. Supposed to use urethane glue to hold rubber onto the metal and glass…

A Yucky Little Hole Is Fixed

One of the land cruiser logo stud holes had rusted through an perforated all around. About a 2.5×2.5″ section.

This went really easy.

Im getting lots better about controlling the heat. Pretty much only do short tacks now. Let the weld cool before I put down another one.

I even checked from the back in bright sun and no pinholes. I chalk this up to my using more heat and hitting the metal in shorter bursts. Got better penetration, no pinholes. Awesome!

Lots More Welder-ing On That Truck

Have been really busy fixing rust.

First was the passenger side rear quarter panel. Its just that little bit of rust above the mud flap?

Well, I cut in a bit large in case I found anything interesting.

Yeah… that’s not good. I need to see better, get better access…

That is the wire that tells the car that the rear passenger door is open. It goes through a big giant piece of something yummy. Some rust stuff? Filler? JBWeld? I have no idea. I pryed it loose with a screwdriver and found the underside was in really great shape! But the wire was solidly embedded into it. I cut the wire and spliced in a new one.

Then got to work grinding away and replacing bad metal.

This job went much easier than the driver’s side because the quarter panel still had its base and back side. It was good to cut away a big area for access and I was able to weld the piece back in when I was done.

Again the 16g sheet makes for some really strong wheel well arches. I left the bad metal in place to use as a form, cut it away once it was time to weld in its replacement.

The final piece of wheel arch here was sort of tricky. Had to do some Vice Origami(tm). Was surprisingly difficult to get a piece curved in 2 directions and with funny angled sides. And I screwed it up a little.

See once its welded in there is a triangle gap. Darn!

That is the last time I’m freehanding a complex metal piece. Cereal box template from now on!

So I fill that triangle with a piece I had laying around:

Once its all snug and welded in place I grind the extra away. Simple!

That double-curved boxed section is incredibly solid. Like wow.

Then weld in a new piece and get to grinding.

And finally… I hit it with filler. Ouch!

Nope, this isn’t a pro job, that’s for sure.

But it is strong!

 

 

Redeeming A Previous Welding Crime

Got sick of looking at this horrific patch I applied when I first started welding on the truck. I literally cut out a square of 24g and slapped it over a rust hole, then welded the edges. It just never stopped looking grotty. And after a month I figured it warn’t going to get better on its own…

Square patch in the upper right… its gotta go!

So… I got out the grinder and took out the welds. And found a soup of rust and misery just hiding back there to terrify me.

I don’t know what I expected to happen. I guess this was just a total lack of clear thinking. The black stuff is dynamat.

So then its clear that problem is worse than I thought, that I need to just disappear a bunch of bad metal.

Put on the cutting disk and take it away.

The thing is, there’s no point being precious about a little rust hole. Its just a huge waste of time to try and save it. Cut it all away and put in good metal. Much much easier and will be durable.

The trick is to get the new piece to fit nicely. Here I made a boo-boo and didn’t trace a nice square rectangle, I got sloppy with the angle grinder and cut out a trapezoid. So then I put on a grinding disc and made it back into a rectangle, or at least something with straight edges.

Then I cut out some 16g with the jig saw and ground it and the hole until they agreed about the shape.

Then magnets to hold the piece into place.

Interesting thing, tack the bottom edge where its flush. Then hammer the rest of the edges until they’re flush too. Just slowly coerce the thing to be flush. Once a point is flush then tack it.

This doesn’t look great but its fine. I tack the bottom edge where its flush, then the top edge can be pushed into place. No big deal.

Once the first tacks are done the magnets go away, just tack around the new metal.

Then I grind the tacks smooth, and finally I weld the seam, a butt weld. Weld about an inch at a time and let it cool. Once I’ve got a whole lap done I grind it all down.

Because I’m a terrible welder there are 10 places with holes in my welds. I weld these holes up, then grind them down to find one more hole.

Unfortunately its now snowing hard so I need to stop. I hit it all with metal etch primer and put everything away until later.

Because I used 16g the new metal is really damn strong. Looks good inside and out. Next sunny day I’ll grind the welds down smooth and paint again. This is much better and more permanent than the old patch technique. And now I’m not afraid of cutting metal away. I’m glad this was a nice flat section.

Cheers!

Replacing leaking coolant hose

Noticed wetness behind the hose from radiator to thermostat. All down the back of the hose. Coolant level is a little low but not a lot… that’s because this hose is at the top of the engine so radiator can’t fully leak. The problem is that the hose is rubbing on a pipe, I can see a tiny hole worn through the back. Someone had helpfully put some wraps of electrical tape there but looks like that wasn’t a permanent fix…

Was in Issaquah with the wife, saw the napa, asked if she minded if I stopped in for a second. “How long?” Oh… just like 5 minutes? I need a new coolant hose. “Sure…” “Cool! Thanks Hon!”

I pull in, pop the hood and measure the coolant hose with my forearms. Its about up to here in depth, and up to here in width…

Into napa, up to counter:

• “I need new coolant hose”
• “What vehicle sir?”
• “Oh, its a Canadian diesel land cruiser and you don’t have it in your system.”
• They look anyway, find the 3.4 liter diesel: “which hose?”
• “Its the one on the top”, but the vehicle isn’t in your system, can we just go in the back and pick a similar hose?”
• He types and clicks on his computer for a bit, then gives up. He doesn’t have any of the indicated parts (and they’re usually wrong anyway.)
• Into the back hose aisle we go. I describe the hose, the 1.5″ diamter, how deep, how wide, approximately what I want. Takes the guy 15 seconds to find a hose that I could cut to fit perfectly. They do this for a living, have an eye for matching hoses.
• I take the hose outside and hold it up, its going to be better than before, the new hose isn’t a right angle but a bigger gentler curve from the radiator, will be sweet!
• I head in and pay the $13.89 + tax, outside I throw the hose in the back and continue errands with wife.

At home I remove old hose, hold new one up and cut each end. Install and perfect-o!

The Napa part number for hose I used is 7573.

Holding new hose up before cutting it to right size.

Cut Once!

New hose installed.

Sluggish start, periodically doesn’t start

Blue truck lives under cover next to the house. Sometimes a few weeks without being driven. All of a sudden the truck wasn’t turning over so well. Sometimes just a click.

This happened before and I diagnosed it to bad ground wires.

This time the battery voltage was actually low though. Water level in battery is fire. I put truck on a charger overnight and it starts great, then a week later its not turning over again.

Eventually it gets pretty bad, starts great, drive somewhere, doesn’t want to start… the fact that its so periodic makes me think its wires. But I check the wires, they all look good… I remove them, grind the ends, nothing seems to help.

Given that there’s a bunch of corrosion around the batteries and they were old when I bought the truck 3 years ago, I’m thinking might as well get new batteries. I head to Costco and get a pair of 27DC batteries for $80 each. Change into truck in the parking lot and what do you know… the truck is still sluggish to start! And they are charged. Ok, not the batteries then…

New batteries but truck still has trouble starting

At home I check each battery again, undo all the cables and wires. I notice that the positive wire to the starter solenoid has a pretty loose end. This is a cable I haven’t touched. Actually the end is attached well but the wire at the end of the head is unusually bendy… yeah, seems like maybe that wire bundle is broken inside. It has low resistance if measured with a multimeter but it won’t flow enough power to start the truck.

This is the cable from battery positive to starter solenoid. That wire was pretty bendy right at the inner end of the crimp!

I cut off the end, crimp on a new one and bingo, aggressive start like I remember. I didn’t bother to replace the wire since it seems to be nice flexible stuff.

Can see how outside of cable was burned – it got toasted trying to flow too much current.

So… bad cables… evil!

New crimp from west marine, pounded onto slightly shorter cable. Is good! And no need to spend $20 on a new cable.

 

 

Debugging Electrical Problem

Symptom One:

Funny thing. My wife drives the blue bomber, comes back 5 minutes later because forgot something. Back in truck and it won’t start…

What the heck? What did she do? She broke it!!

Symptom is that voltage drops to nothing when ignition is turned.

I fiddle and play around, determine that something is amiss with the glow plug relay. I buy a ford diesel glow relay and wire it up. Works great, problem solved…

 

See that grey plastic cylinder with the 4 bolts on top? That is the glow plug relay. Small amount of current goes from batter to glow button under dash. When button is pressed that small amount of current goes to the glow relay, causes it to open which causes a large amount of current to go from the battery to the glow plugs in the engine. Reason for this is you don’t want lots of current going through a little button…

 

Symptom Two:

And then about a month later a very similar symptom occurs, voltage drops to zero when you try to ‘glow’ or start the motor.

Now I’m spending hours with the multimeter, and searching the internets for advice. The best thread I can find on ih8mud is:

IH8Mud Thread On Problem Starting 3B

Previous owner was impetuous and seemed to have extra speaker wire. Lots of spare wires zip-tied together. Lots of unplugged things (mostly from auto-glow system.)

Truck developed problem after sitting undriven for a few weeks. For in-car readings I used a cigarette lighter volt meter. Symptoms were all over the map but primary problem was:
– turn key one click, inside voltage is 10.4, yet batteries show 12.5 volts.
– turn key another click, voltage drops to 6-7 or below, yet batteries show 12.5 volts. The inside voltmeter barely displays at such low voltage.
Other times (seemingly randomly over 2 hours of exploring.)
– turn key one click, 10.4 volts
– turn key another click it stays at 10.4… woo!
o Hit glow switch and voltage dives to zero. Battery voltage never changed.
o Hit brake pedal and voltage dives to zero.
o Try and crank and voltage dives to zero.

After diving to zero the truck is dead for 30 seconds or so, then voltage recovers. The entire time the battery voltage is stable at 12.5.

I measure voltage and resistance across many places in engine bay. All seems fine. 0.3 ohms from starter to battery, from starter solenoid to battery. Cleaned battery posts and all cable ends. No difference.

Used jumper cables to ground all sorts of stuff (starter, block, frame) back to the – battery terminal. Made no difference. Jumped right battery to my… other… bj60… inside voltage shows 12.4. Try to glow and voltage goes to 6-7. Try to start, it cranks! A few seconds. Almost starts. When I stop cranking the inside voltage goes to 6-7 again.

Hmm. If jumping sort of works? Took batteries in for load test, supremely uninformative test machine gave them ‘pass’ light when set to 700cca.

Figured based on this thread to just build new ground cables because the old ones were so ugly. Worst case I have nice new cables.

Nasty old cable end

More nasty cable end.

What a pair they make, more nasty old ground cables.

 

Built new ground cable from 0/1 cable I got from Napa ($7.5/foot), and some other 0/1 cable from Lowes (napa ran out). The napa stuff was flexible, lowes was THWN-2 and is much harder to bend. Expensive fittings were $2 each at Napa. I crimped the ends on using a big vice. For kicks I also replaced the ends on the hot wire from ‘+’ of right battery to alternator.

Cables replaced:
– left negative to left battery tray bolt
– left battery tray bolt to left engine block
– right negative to right battery tray bolt
– right battery tray bolt to right engine block
– ends on that alternator cable

Passenger side engine ground attachment.

New ground wire from driver side battery to body.

 

After bolting the cables on… success. Everything is perfect and back to normal.

Woo! 12.73 volts!

 

In all of this the only thing I found wrong: I noticed that the – battery terminal clamp for the right battery was quite loose. Resistance of old cables seems fine so must have been that slightly loose clamp on the right side? When playing with jumpers I only grounded to left battery (battery + are connected with cable but negative are each independently grounded to body and block.) In hindsight I’m guessing the truck would have started working if I’d just jumpered the left and right – terminals (because I believe the left ground was good.)

Advice for building your own ground cables: After building and installing the new cables I did some research. The cheap cable from lowes is made of fewer thick sold copper wires. It is too stiff and will not age well given the motion of the diesel motor relative to the body. Marine cable is zinc coated, is the most flexible and has the best temperature and chemical resistance, and 0/1 is sold locally for between $4.50 and $7/foot. If I ever do this again I’m using that stuff. Also I’m going to get some good copper battery terminals.

Building Cables:

Well, that success lasted all of a day before I realized I couldn’t live with that hard conduit cable in the truck. No way would it last, its too stiff and will break.

I head to west marine and buy 6 feet of their ANCOR 0/1 marine cable, in black. It is very flexible and has terrific fuel safe, self extinguishing insulation. Also it is tinned so corrosion resistant. I also head back to Napa for 4 more of them $2 fittings.

Lastly I go to amazon and look to see what is available in a cable crimper!

Looking at all the crimpers on amazon, and on the internet in general I realize that a simple “Hammer Crimp” is all I need. That’s what folks used for 80 years, what old service stations used forever and ever. It ought to be fine for me, and make a better fitting that what I could achieve by squishing the ends in a vice. Further benefit is that they are ~$25.

On amazon I look at all the crimpers, all look similar, can’t tell them apart. Luckily one of the crimpers is made by Temco! Temco is BAD-ASS company that builds large industrial transformers, inverters, BIG electrical stuff, stuff that architects take into account when designing buildings. Stuff that costs $50k to $500k. They make a range of crimpers from the simple hammer crimp up to $1k pneumatic/electric crimpers. These guys make crimpers because they know what they’re doing and need good crimps. Nice that they think of the little guy, take the trouble to build a cheap reliable crimper.

They even have a photo on their site of what a proper hammer crimp looks like. The crimp with hammer hits so hard that the copper strands are welded into a solid under the crimp. BAD-ASS!

Link to Temco Hammer Crimp on Amazon

I cut new lengths, put on the shrink wrap, crimp the ends on. Wow this stuff is flexible. Never thought much about ground cables before. These are sweet!

 

Blue Bomber Sag – Need Springs

Blue bomber’s rear end is sagging. Had Torfab take a look and they recommended all new everything, good nice greasable shackles, new arb springs, etc, etc. For $2400.

Yikes. Not sure I want to invest that at the moment.

They suggested I take the truck to Aalbu Brothers just up the street in Everett.

First visit, I’m in love. Looks like a 1920s locomotive factory. Heavy tools all over.

http://aalbubrothers.com/

They say the springs are stock, totally undersprung for that vehicle. Estimate $800 to re-curve the springs and add 2 new ones to the back.

Seems great, its what I need.

Guys are awesome, everything perfect, on time.

Sucker has no sag now! But need shocks now!

 

Blue Bomber Part 2

Truck home, go over it for maintainance that’s been deferred.

Seller assures that oil change is due in a few thousand k, so that will be on hold for few thousand kms.

On a hunch we changed the fuel filter and found fuel that was poured out of filter was very black. Yuck. New filter and primed and car seemed to run better. The built in fuel priming pump on this truck is on its last legs, when unscrewed fuel is spilled everywhere while pumping. Need to install a replacement from Bosch. Meh… next time…

Removed air filter, looked dirty and covered in crud so put in a new one. Wow that helped.

Brake fluid looks good but clutch fluid was dark amber. We bleed clutch system with no issues. Clutch is simple to bleed with pedal (and an assistant) because clutch pedal sees full travel in normal use. Brakes are tricky and you need to be careful because normal brake usage doesn’t fully exercise the brake master cylinder’s travel so the bore will be corroded in the unused section. If you use full travel you’ll destroy the seal in the master cylinder. Best bet for brakes is to use a pressure bleeder (which I don’t own.)

I drive the truck to work for the next week getting a feel for its problems. Really the only problem is the big 35″ wheels which make the car so sluggish. Got to find some stock wheels. Engine seems peppy though and handling is excellent despite the huge stupid wheels. Well, gotta say the heavy tinting sucks for visibility.

I installed my voltmeter in cigarette lighter and while voltage is maintained properly at idle I see that voltage rises with rpm, going way past 14.2volts, up to 15 or 15.5. No wonder the batteries look bad. Clearly the alternator is due for a trip to Romaine Electric.

Saturday we remove and clean the batteries and see that the rubbery paint on the battery trays is delaminating. Pull on the rubber and there’s a ton of rust underneath. Yummy!

This is what you should always suspect is under the rubber coating of a battery tray…

One side is worse than the other, probably that side saw its battery boil over a few more times than the other.

Remove the trays and take to my friend with a blasting cabinet, then spray with metal etch primer and then epoxy paint (this is a new thing to try, I’ve heard metal etch primer is the key to a good paint job, we’ll see I guess.) Problem with these modern paints is that they work so well that you don’t know if paint job is “good” for 20 years or so.

Painted with metal etch primer, then covered with the VHT suspension epoxy. Hmm. The epoxy is supposed to be “DTM” so maybe the primer won’t let it adhere as well? Live and learn we’ll see I guess.

Pitting and preferation from the rust.

The metal is quite thin and flimsy in places but the tray as a whole is still strong enough.

The batteries are showing different voltages, one is 12.7, the other 12.4 I’m going to guess due to corroded cable ends and poor ground? Or something? I put the batteries on the smart charger and the low one takes more than a day to reach 12.7. Gotta keep my eye on it though but probably they’ll last a long time after the alternators voltage regulator is repaired.

View down under the passengers side tray.

Alternator prior to removal (so I can remember what goes where.)

Remove alternator is a bit of a chore. Remove oil lines, disconnect electrical plugs. The adjustment bracket that alternator bolts to is pretty badly bent so difficult to slide the alternator around. I remove the pivot bolt from the bottom but alternator won’t come loose. I end up removing the airbox too so I can see better. That takes 5 minutes and really helps for access.

Factory manual doesn’t mention anything so I search on internet for an hour or so for special tricks. Finally find a post that suggests one must reef on it and if it doesn’t come loose… find someone stronger! Ok, I can do that. Sure enough pulling hard frees the alternator. The issue are the bushings that are pressed into the bottom of the alternator stick out a bit so it takes force to work the alternator loose. Drop it off at Romaine on Monday, so now vehicle is undrivable. Remove and clean all the cable ends, sand the grounding bolts for a better connection.

bj60 alternator, see vaccum pump on left side. If you spin the alternator it spurts oil! Yay!

BJ60 Alternator, vaccum pump on top. Can clearly see the bushings that hold the pivot bolt.

Alternator takes almost 2 weeks to repair due to Romaine’s builder being sick. Comes back looking like new though. Before installing we replace all the belts. To change belts the fan doesn’t need to be removed, belts can be worked around it. Fortunate we did swap the belts because coolant pump belt was cut almost clear through.

Now that paint has cured for a few weeks we paint the tray and surrounding area with fluidfilm ar. Also take the time to fluidfilm the airbox inside and out.

Boy With Rebuilt 1984 BJ60 Alternator

That “bare metal” is actually painted with clearcoat.

Amazing work eh?

“Romaine electric and boy with rebuilt 1984 bj60 alternator.”

Alternator reinstallation I used a pry bar to lever it back onto the pivot, then replaced bolts and washers. We grind the cable ends to remove corrosion and ensure a clean connection. Also grind the area around the grounding bolt for each battery. Battery install went fine and luckily the myriad of cables all went to obvious places because I didn’t take notes when removing them. The batteries are a bit small though, truck can fit larger ones. Why buy a smaller battery than you can fit?

Big moment… the truck starts perfectly. No issues on our neighborhood victory lap.