[jbrewer]

Between a trip to the ER to get my head stitched up after getting whacked by tree stump and a trip to the leftist coast to visit family, it's been zero progress on the 123, but today I was back to it.


[LIST][*]First, I cut and tacked a piece of steel to reinforce the area where the hydro arm dampening spring thing had hogged almost thru the mating arm on the hydro itself. While I'm anything but a welder, I got couple good sturdy TIG tacks to hold the keystock in place. Those little springs and keepers remind me of the old brake shoe hold down gadgets.[*]I studied the wiring harness I removed from the 123 (intact, except for the Vreg and Generator connections) and verified how the new harness from MikeLaMar goes back on. Let me tell you, he does a really nice job of building the replacement harness. I'm glad I sprung for it. I'll put it and the key, and light switch and solenoid back in tomorrow.[*]I removed the headlight rings, and dress panel very carefully after a soak in Kroil so as to not snap off those long mounting studs. All came off after a bit of time, with no drama. I power washed it all, tossed the lights (both broken) and repainted the grill , which was getting pretty rusty. I *think* the 123 grill was painted silver, no?
I've got some LED light assemblies to replace the broken incandescent jobs. I use Kroil a lot to loosen gun parts, and it sure works well with rusty old Cub assemblies .

Much time was spent cleaning, as is true of most repair jobs. I'm calling this a "rust-o-ration" as I'm trying to fog in some paint where there's rust, without attempting a paint job on it all. To do that, I'd need to buy some real paint, not the rattle can stuff I have. Since this is going to be a worker not a trailer/barn queen, I'm just trying to keep it from degrading, not really enhancing stuff. Even so, it's good to get 50 yrs of gunk out of it.

Pictures coming....