air tools, trucks, bbq, and beer….well, beer would have been good

Saturday I got to play with an impact wrench, an air socket, and other fun toys. It was a work day for my truck. My fuel pump has been making a whine for the last 10 weeks or so. I am told they last for about two weeks when making that whine. So, I walked into my local O’Reilly Auto Parts and bought:

1. one fuel pump for a ’99 Chevy Silverado
2. one fuel filer for said truck
3. one altenator for said truck
4. one K&N air filter for said truck
5. and one Chilton’s book for said truck

I left the house at about 9:00am and was home at about 5:30pm. What a way to kill a Saturday. It was great. I got the parts and then drove to Chuck’s house. Chuck reminds me of the line from “Fastimes at Ridgemont High“…..”My step dad’s got an awesome set of tools.” Chuch has the shop that I dream of. Some of the options in this house were based off of ideas from Chuck, but I digress. His house was the correct choice though. He has the tools, know how, and a large flat area to work on cars. I have some of the tools, some of the know how, and a large sloping driveway that is not flat.

I showed up at his house by 10:00am and we pretty much started by 10:30am. We had to have coffee first. The fuel pump is located on top of the gas tank. In almost all cars that would require dropping the gas tank, but for a truck, it means just taking off the bed. It really is much easier. We used his engine hoist to hoist up the bed. It made access to the tank so much easier. The bed is held on by eight large bolts, two electrical connections and three really small bolts at the filler neck. (The place where you put gas in the tank) It did take some time to hoist the bed since this was the first time either of us had done that. We would hook it up, and start to hoist, stop, make a couple of changes to the rigging, hoist more etc. It took about two hours just to remove the bed. It would take about 30 minutes the next time.

After getting the bed out of the way we had perfect access to the fuel pump and the gas tank. Replacing the fuel pump was a cinch. It really took about 10 minutes, if that. There are three connections to the top, for fuel, air, EVAP and one electrical connection. The first three required new plastic connection pieces. So it was time to run to O’Reilly again and to Dickey’s since it was time for lunch. Working on cars and bar-b-que….doesn’t get much better than that. All we needed was some women to fetch us a beer or two.

After we got the plastic connectors, we were pretty much done with the fuel pump. The filter was next. As far as replacing things, that was the hardest. Chuck did almost all of that work, since he could fit under the truck the best. Once the filter was done, we put the bed back on. We lowered it slowly and put it into place, and the tightened it down similar to a tire. We did opposite corners loosley, and then tightened all the bolts down.

It was now about 4:00pm and I was wondering if we had time for the altenator….silly me. We were done with it by 4:30pm. We had to remove some of the air intake mainifold to get access to the tensioner. That was the hardest part of that job. You have releive the tension on the fan belt first. Once that was done, it was a piece of cake. There are two electical connections, and two bolts. I did have to use a pry bar to get the old one out and a rubber mallet to get the new one in. What can be more fun that wailing on engine parts with a rubber mallet?

One that was done, all I had to do was to put the fuel pump relay back in and hook the battery up. I turned the key to accessory three times to pressurize the fuel system before starting. It started right up. I didn not even lose my radio stations either. I did have to reset the clock though.

We used the impact wrench to loosen all the bolts for the bed, a tourque wrench to lighten them down, and an air socket to loosen and tighten the altenator bolts. Nothing quite sounds like an impact wrench. It’s a fun noise. “I love the sound of an impact wrench in the morning…….it sounds like…victory!”

We had great weather in the morning. By afternoon the sun ahd burned off the clouds, so it was getting warmish.All in all, it was a good day of fun, food and fellowship. Chuck took several pics of my bedless truck. I will post them as soon as they are available.