Rusty Mouse Pee and a Stinky Cab

Yesterday was a very long, but very productive day in the garage.  Eight hours worth, to be exact. During that time, I got the truck down off of the jack stands and out into the driveway.  That was the first time that the truck had been outside of the garage in 5 years!  The point of getting it out of the garage was to completely scrub the interior to get rid of the mouse droppings/pee and the attendant smell.  Once I got it off of the stands, I had my helper get into the cab to work the newly refurbished brakes, while I pushed it out.  Before putting our full faith in my brake rebuild, I had my helper test them out by pressing on the brake pedal while I tried to push.  The first attempt was a false start, as I had forgotten to take it out of 1st gear.  After figuring that out, we tried again.  Brake pedal pushed, truck pushed and no movement!  They were holding!  Next it was release the brake pedal, start rolling backwards and engage the pedal again.  The truck instantly stopped!  Repeat several more times until the entire cab was outside.  Chocked all 4 wheels, put the truck back into first gear and she wasn't going to roll anywhere.

Before I could scrub anything, I had to make sure the cab was stripped of everything.  That was the purpose of removing the gauge clusters last weekend.  This time I started with the seat cushions and just put them into the garage for later that day.  Once the cushions were out, I took out the seat frame and put it in the yard for a good scrub with a water/soap/bleach solution and a good scrub brush. After the scrub, it got a good rinse with plain water and put into the sun to dry. Next it was time to take the primary offender out...the gas tank.  The tank was the primary offender because there was a mouse dropping/pee sludge on top of the tank, down the side of the tank and under the tank.  The only way to get it all out was to remove the tank.  I made an effort to remove the clutch head screws that held the sending unit wires to the sending unit, but somehow lost the size 1 clutch head bit. So...time for the wire cutters.  It really didn't make any difference, since I do not plan to reuse the wires.  After that I had to loosen the hold down straps and then the tank came right out.  Here are a series of pics showing the cab before cleaning:

To get a sense of just how dirty the cab floor, especially under where the tank used to be, is to click on the pic and enlarge it.  You'll see a flaky crud that is the mix of rust, droppings and pee that has dried up over the years.  It would always smell like pee whenever it was humid outside. I used the same combo of water, soap and bleach to scrub out the entire cab.  I started with the roof of the cab and worked my way down the sides doing all surfaces including the dash and doors.  I would do a little and then rinse.  After I was done, I took the leaf blower to the water puddles that were inside the cab.  Blew them right out!  I propped open the doors and let the nice breeze blow through the truck to dry it out.  While I was waiting for the inside to dry, I went back in the garage and stripped the old upholstery off of the seat back and bottom cushions.  It was gnarly!  I did find a nice, neat 1" diameter hole in the material where a little field mouse had gnawed  a hole through and got his nest material....  Once the frames were stripped, they got the same treatment.  Scrubbed and rinsed and set out in the yard to dry.

After drying the inside of the cab looked like this:

You can see that the pile of crud is gone.  You can also see the remnants of body sealer that the factory used to seal the seat apron joint to the cab floor.  Everything had a nice bleach smell.  A dramatic improvement!

Once the frames were dry, I simply oiled the seat adjustment rails, reattached the seat frame and bolted it down.  Then I set the seat cushion frames back into place and called for my helper.  With the help of a 3rd helper, we pushed the truck back into the garage and chocked the wheels.  She is now ready for a long winter of rewiring, gauge cluster refurbishment and the beginnings of removing bits from the installed engine in preparation for the engine swap next spring.

As a side note, in order to get the gas tank out, I first had to remove the petcock that was attached to the bottom of the tank.  I actually did that before getting the truck down off of the jack stands.  It was funny because when I got the petcock off of the pipe nipple I could see that the pipe nipple was completely blocked with dried mud.  It was interesting, but I didn't really think about it until I was moving the tank into the back yard.  When I was moving it, I could hear dried mud sliding around in the tank.  I didn't check to see exactly how much dirt and debris was actually in the tank, but it seems likely that I'll end up replacing the tank instead of reusing it, unless I can find someone to boil it out and it turns out to be free of holes.

All in all, it was a lot of work and a very long day, boiled down into a couple of paragraphs.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted and very sore, but it was likely the last 80 degree day and I knew I had to get it done, so I did.

Oh yeah, and I only got stung by 1 bee while I was working.  I don't know what the yellow jackets like about the smell of the Kroil, but it makes them come buzzing around and 1 of them decided that I needed to be stung.  Go figure.