2016 Oklahoma Get-Together

[Gary Lewis]

Here's the reportback from the 2016 Okie GTG. IT WAS GREAT! So, if you missed it you shouldn't have.

Participants included: (if I miss someone, I AM SORRY!)

• David/1986F150Six, from Sheffield, Alabama

• Chris/ctubutis from Denver

• Eli/smokenchoken from Peru, plus his wife, son, and BiL

• John Keeline, from Skiatook, body/paint man supreme and responsible for the work on Dad's truck

• Cash/cashman and his friend Cassie, from Tulsa?

• Paul/Rogue_Wulffe from Sapulpa

Beyond talking about Ford trucks, and to some extent boats, we had two projects:

• Chris' bumper

• David's gauges, including lighting, cleaning, and painting. The lighting and painting are explained below, but the cleaning was of the circuit board on the tach, which hadn't been working correctly. Fortunately afterward it seems to work well.

And, here are some pictures to show some of the participants as well as the work that was done.

First, here's David's approach to masking the needles on his gauges. Note the refreshments behind the paint, which was from WhiteGauges.net.

And here's a closeup of the fuel gauge before painting:

Here's the fuel gauge after painting. Note that it looks like a new needle.

And here are all of the gauges after painting:

This is Cassie, playing like she's studying:

And, this is a rare shot - Chris working. }> He's touching up the bumper with sandpaper before we powder coated it.

Here's the bumper with the powder on it before curing. Unfortunately we didn't get an "after" shot before wrapping it for the trip back to Denver, but hopefully Chris will post a pic.

And here David and I are wiring up a ballast resistor for the gauge lights. We had replaced the incandescent bulbs with LED's that pull far less current but give many times more light. But, that means the dimmer won't work very well so we added the resistor.

And, you may ask, did the LED's work? YES! Here's them on full brilliance, which doesn't seem too bright: