That_98_k3500

When i graduate i’m planning to take a week off and do what i want to. I have accepted a full time job at my family’s repair shop. Currently i’m not going to any other school i’m going to start working. i got another job at orilys and i’m working part time. i’m going to be working at the shop for a few years and see if that is what i really want to do in life. and along with that with me working 2 jobs i can save all my money from the shop for a house or whatever but i can use the money from the other job for my projects.

My senior year of high school has been my best year so far. I’ve had all A’s and B’s all year, my parents haven’t yelled at me for my grades and also I’ve been busy and staying out of trouble. everyone says that the 4 years go buy in a blink of an eye and they aren’t kidding freshman and sophomore year went pretty slow but Junior and senior was like instant. this year has definitely been my favorite though, I’ve enjoyed all my classes and everyone in them. my favorite thing from this year was being able to leave school at 1:20 every day.

i have enjoyed blogging this year, its something that i have never done, and it was pretty nice. it made me think about my future or how i am going to do things. it made me think about the process and the detail and the reality of doing certain things. i will not be blogging out side of school because i am very busy with work and life.

i have started to order parts for my tuck so i can do the frame off restore. mom and dad bought some of them for my graduation present. I’m going to re do the entire truck from the ground up it will basically be a new truck. once my truck gets done then I’m going to paint my car and turbo it. my truck I’m painting it like a dark maroon and its getting a small lift kit with a nice set of wheels.

this is the end of my final blog post from my senior year. i have enjoyed blogging and this English class a lot i will miss seeing everyone at school. it has been a wild 4 years but my time has come to move on in life and that is what I’m going to do.

Towards the end of the year in 2021 my parents started the process of buying the shop from my grandparents. Over Christmas break i worked a lot and spent time with family. I had a good Christmas. On new years I stayed at home and just hung out with friends and family. For the fist time I passed first semester with all B’s and one C. I am very proud of myself for doing that. I plan on passing second semester will all b’s for second semester.

I have gotten most of the parts i need to start working on my car but there are a few that are more expensive that i haven’t got yet. I decided to just leave it stock for now because it is really good on gas mileage and i need something like that. since I have been driving the truck it started to misfire and run really bad. So I had to fix that, it was very annoying. i did a simple tune up on it and also a distributor cap and rotor. it was still misfiring so i found out that there was carbon build up on the valves and that was causing it so i did a top engine cleaner and it fixed it.

My plan after high school is going to be probably work at the shop full time and make a lot of money and save it. at some point i want to go and explore the country that I live in. My old neighbors now live in Arizona and I would love to go see them and spend time with them. I want to go and see the deserts, see the mountains, and also go and see the national monuments around the country. I hope to make 2022 one of my best years yet. and also do a lot of awesome things.

This year once I get out of school I’m planing to go to work. I need to work some more hours because my car just broke the other night and I need to fix it because its not cheep to drive the truck. I wont have very long to work full time but all the time helps because I want to build my car. The car I have is a 1991 mercury Capri that my grandma gave me a year and a half ago and the clutch went out so I’m going to fix that. I want to rebuild the entire front end on the car and replace the brakes because I’m not sure how old everything is on it. It will be a lot of work but worth it.

The car needs new tie rods, lower ball joints, axles, a clutch, valve cover gasket, shocks, and a few new tires. All of those parts are just maintenance parts that I should replace. The upgrade parts that I want are new wheels, a turbo, and a hard top for it. Just the maintenance parts alone are going to cost me a lot of money that I don’t have just lying around. The main reason that I’m putting all this money into an old car is because it gets great gas mileage and also so it can be driven for a while when the truck is getting built.

For the past few years on thanksgiving my family and I go to North Carolina to see my dads parents so we are going to North Carolina again. This year we left a day early because my grandparents are not doing very well. When we get there we have some things that we need to get done along with making sure they can take care of themselfs.

When we get to North Carolina we need to make sure we have a plan for getting their new boat out of the water. Their new boat is a 24ft pontoon boat. My dad and I are still trying to figure out why my grandparents which are 75 and 78 need to buy a new boat but they wanted one so they bought one. Also while we are there we need to go get groceries for them because they shouldn’t be driving. We got them frozen meals that you put in the microwave for like 10 minutes and then their ready to eat. My grandmas son Matt is planning on coming up from Myrtle Beach to have Thanksgiving dinner. While we were there last year My grandpa tried to give me his old pressure washer that is mounted on a trailer and my dad said we will get it next year, so i’m planning to bring home a new pressure washer.

We are planning to be at my grandparents for a week, they live on a large lake in North Carolina. they are a 14 hour drive from home, with their health not being very good we need to figure out if there is anyone in the area who can at least check up on them. They have a lot of stuff and they don’t want to get rid of anything but they also don’t want to leave their house they live in. my grandpa just recently go tout of the hospital and his doctor told us they he has cancer on his lungs. My grandma has three broken ribs and they can barely take care of herself. This trip is going to be very long and its going to be very busy.

With my truck being 23 years old it isn’t the prettiest truck around. The truck has a decent amount of rust, dents, and paint missing which is expected for a vehicle that old. As of right now it needs new front fenders, rocker panels, cab corners, and also a new hood. I want the truck to look good when I get it done and want it to run very well. This post is about the way I want it to look when I get the time and money to do so.

I want to start with fixing all the rust and dents. To do that I need to buy new fenders, cab corners, and rocker panels, that is the easy work to do its just replacing body panels. The harder work is when I start the dent repairs and the straitening of panels. After all that is done I want to rebuild the engine and make it stronger and more powerful. I will probably end up removing the cab from the frame, that way I can clean and paint the frame.I want so get a small lift kit for it and also have that painted, I haven’t decided what color yet. When I install the lift it will get all new suspension parts from ball joints to control arm bushings.

The engine build will start off as a stock 350 vortec engine, the build parts will be a 400 crank, bored.060 over and port the heads. Get a mild cam for it and convert the pcm over to a stand alone ecu. With the stand alone I will put MPFI fuel injection on it. MPFI stands for Multi Port Fuel Injection. That will put the engine around 450-500 horsepower. the final paint color of the truck will be a dark maroon red with metal flake in it. The frame will be painted black and the suspension will most likely be a white or a red and black powder coating.

When it comes to a tune up on your vehicle it normally consist of new spark plugs, spark plug wires, air filter, oil change. Most mechanics consider this a basic tune up. When you want to perform a tune up you need a variety of tools to get it done. the tools you need depends on the vehicle you drive because every vehicle is different. To do one on my truck I need a few things you need a 5/8 spark plug socket, a ratchet and a small set of hands. you start by removing the plug wires on the plugs and replacing the spark plugs. I like to replace the plug wires one at a time to ensure you don’t get any put on wrong. and before you install the new plugs be sure to check the gap of the spark plugs most of them now come pre gaped but its always good to check that. once you have checked the gap you can go ahead and install the new spark plug and the new plug wire. once you get all the spark plugs and wires changes you can check or change your air filter. most air filters are located under the hood and in a black box. The air box sometimes is held together with screws or clips it just depends on your vehicle. Once you get all of that done you can move onto the oil change. To do this you need to be able to get under the vehicle. When your under the vehicle you need to locate the drain plug and the oil filter. you need to find a wrench that fits the drain plug and a oil filter wrench that fits the filter. Once you are done draining the oil tighten everything up and go back to the top of the engine and locate the oil fill cap. Remove the cap and pour in the correct amount of oil for your vehicle. you can look it up on google. once you get done with that you are all set you just did a tune up on your vehicle.

Everything I’ve Done to My Truck

Around 4 years ago my dad and I traded my four wheeler and go kart for a truck that i’ve wanted since i was a kid.  This paper is about everything I’ve done to my truck. The truck is a 1998 Chevrolet K3500 single cab long bed. 

 It was a pretty good deal because it was in decent shape. It had the normal GM rust etc: cab corners, rockers, and fenders. The bed was rusted out on it so I had to find a new bed for the truck. I ended up finding one on Facebook Marketplace that was already red and had a tailgate for really cheap. I got the bed installed then found some new wheels and tires on Facebook marketplace for a good deal as well.

 After all that the truck sat while we were trying to get plates and insurance for it. Then on my birthday last year we did some small engine work to the truck. After we did all that I was ready to start to drive it but then COVID hit and the DMV closed right before I could get my license. Since COVID hit I decided to fix the A/C so I did that. One day dad and I were at the shop and I decided to paint the dad bezel balck with red and white splatter, and I also built a new Subwoofer box to fit in the back of the cab behind the seat. 

Then for about a year I just drove the truck and didn’t do much to it. But on my birthday I decided to tint my windows. My parents weren’t going to let me take it somewhere because of my grades so I said let’s do it by ourselves, the final product turned out pretty decent. My family owns an auto repair shop in town and I did my full custom exhaust on it. The rear bumper was all rusted out and i didnt feel like buying one so I built one from scratch. The frame of the bumper is ⅛  inch steel angle iron the face is ¼ I believe the bumper weighs about 250 pounds. 

I have big plans for my truck in the future, the truck is getting repainted, the color I want to go with is a dark candy red with some metal flakes in the paint. I want to buy some RGB LED halos for the headlight housings, they are so expensive though. I’m planning on buying a small lift kit for it because my friend’s dad has some 37” tires for me to use. I also want to build a custom front bumper to kinda match the rear bumper but with a winch in it and led pod lights. The truck I have is called a cheyenne and those models have manual windows, mirrors and locks. I want to convert the inside to the silverado, those have power everything but if I do that it is really expensive. My truck has a GM 350 small block in it now and I want to rebuild that engine and bore it over, big cam, and convert it to a mpfi fuel injection. The transmission will get a rebuild, the front and rear diffs will get rebuilt and painted. I never want to get rid of my fist truck.     My truck has come a very long way since the day I first got it. That truck and I have been through it all together, but ole girl splatter has never left me stranded anywhere. It’s been a great truck so far. 

When school got out in May my family and I went on a 2-week vacation to North Carolina. The first week we were there we stayed at a campground on the inland water, the campsite was very nice and my aunt and uncle have a permanent camper there. so during the first week, we went swimming, boating, and rode around in golf carts. The food we had was amazing the kinda food we had was ribs, fish, and sweet corn. While we were there my cousin got married and the wedding was awesome. They had hired a golf cart driver to drive them around for pictures and I got on the golf cart just to ride it around and his wife thought I was working the venue because my cousin and I were just talking and he was like yeah he’s my nephew.

The second week I was in NC my parents were gone they took a trip to the Bahamas and they left me with my dad’s brother, I was like let me go home and they made me stay but I’m glad they did because it was an awesome time.

That is only the first 2 weeks of summer vacation, I spent the remainder of my summer I spent it doing what I love, that is being a mechanic. I spent my entire summer working on cars fixing them and doing whatever the customer needed to be done. there was one truck that I was working on and it was big and lifted and it had a front suspension part brake, all of the guys I work with were like I’m not going to work on that it’s outside. so my boss looked at me and said can you get that done? I said yep’ll get it done for ya, it took longer than expected because the new joints wouldn’t go in the hole. after a while, I got them in and go tit aligned and got it out of the shop.

My name is carter and I live in the midwest. I love to work on cars and trucks, I work at my family’s repair shop.