Thinking on any possible emergency I installed the engine shut-off line though I was not able to set it up correctly and had to rely on the manual procedure to stop the engine if anything happened. So, I assembled everything back and cranked the engine again. Oh, great feeling to push the start button from the cabin! The mighty V8 started at once and remained at idle for a couple of minutes while I checked that the seal of the oil filler neck was perfect and that everything was allright and there was not smoke nor fire in the cabin.
And, suddenly, a pretty loud and acute noise was heard, a very known kind of noise, a loose V-belt noise. I run nervously under the cabin and cut off the fuel supply manually, disconnected the batteries and checked the V-belt. It was tight enough, though I tightened it a little bit more.
I cranked the engine again and the noise was always there. You can immmagine how uncomfortable it was to hear such a noise coming from under the cabin. I had these strange feeling that something I had forgotten or mistaken may cause the truck to break, explode and burn instantaneously.
Asked for help from Eduardo to check the belt while I started the engine again. He commanded to shut the engine off after a few seconds, because it was the alternator not to work. In fact, it was completely jammed and did not spin a single degree, stuck in itself as a rock. What?
I took it out, always thinking that it was serviced “recently”, and inspected it for good. No way. It was dead.
Speaking of a bigger power source for the electric system, the truck spoke for himself and asked for a new alternator. The old piece, of 55 Amp output, decided it was done with the project and with life itself. We started to look for a new alternator and, in the end, we ordered a bigger one suited for the Merkabah, the most powerful we could find.
Franz, the air conditioning man, showed up at some moment and reminded me that we would need to place the AC filter somewhere before thinking on putting all the hoses to make the system work. He inspected what I had done so far to install the compressor, lifted up an eyebrow and simply said: Good. Hmm…
I got my hands to it and fabricated an ad hoc support for the filter from material I found around, as always, and after a couple of hours, some bending, some drilling and cutting, it was ready and placed. It would need further finishing and painting but I was not in the mood at that moment so I moved on into something else.
Finishing the front of the cabin was not a priority though I really wanted to do it. I did not like to have the thin and long pieces, ready and painted, leaning on the wall or lying on some boxes, susceptible of being damaged. I went out to get some meters of hose and of a rubber profile and routed the windshield washerwiper water supply from the “new” pump, after cleaning and painting the hose retainers, of course, and put on the long and narrow plate that covered the wiper support. But… the mighty and infamous “but”… the plate had a thin flange that had to go under the weatherstrip of the windshield.
To make it short, after one hour and two broken old credit cards the cover was correctly placed and the weatherstrip was over it, not damaged at all. Good. My fingertips ached a little, though.
Oh, as you see, the rubber profile for the edge of the cover was not the original one as there was no original weatherstrip available, not in San Felipe not at the official dealer in Santiago. A modified U profile would do the job for the moment.
I hung the bigger front cover from under the smaller one then, and the cabin looked a little bit more complete and pretty good to me. The central little hatch for the brake fluid reservoir was placed momentarily just to complete the view as I was not able to remember where the hell I kept the locking mechanism.
And, suddenly, I remembered that I had another big front cover somewhere. I looked for it and found the rusted piece in the attic, almost sunken in dirt.