I'm sure some have noticed that the old StinkBug hasn't seen much action the last few years. With my busy competition schedule, and the building of several new vehicles including my Super Trooper I haven't had much time to devote to my loyal old Amigo. I'm sad to admit that the last time Stinky saw dirt was at TDS, 2-1/2 years ago. The last time it saw Moab was at ZuZoo VII. It's basically been collecting dust in my driveway or in the back of the shop. As of this month it was actually 11 months overdue on smog so I wasn't even able to legally drive it anywhere. Well after a long season of competition I saw a break in my schedule and decided it was time to get it running again.

There really wasn't anything wrong with the StinkBug, but it was getting pretty ugly looking, with the paint literally falling off, and a good layer of rust forming on the cage. Another thing that had been bothering me was the wiring. I built this truck 6 years ago, when I was 19 years old. I've learned an awful lot since then and one of the things I've gotten pretty good at is neat, clean wiring. When the StinkBug was built I simply bought a 4.3 Vortec wiring harness and plugged it in. To put it simply it was a mess, with tons of extra wire going all over the place. After wiring several competition buggies and a few trail rigs my own truck was really starting to bother me. Heres what the motor looked like when I started...




And here's the engine harness once it was removed from the truck.




The cure for this is a very painstaking process of unraveling the harness and going through it one sensor at a time and rerouting, shortening and rebundling every single wire in the harness. I've never actually counted but I'd guess that's somewhere between 2-300 wires. After doing at least 5 of these harnesses I've gotten the process down to about 16 hours. Yeah, it isn't easy, but it makes a huge difference in how clean everything is.




Heres what the harness looks like now. Just a little bit smaller.




And heres how it looks installed on the motor. My engine compartment is still far from tidy but it's a big step in the right direction. The harness still needs to be covered in wire loom, but I'm waiting for some special loom to arrive from painless. They make this stuff called PowerBraid, which IMHO is the best wire covering you can buy. It's a braided plastic loom that's split down the length so it's easy to slide into place, and it also expands to cover a variety of different sizes of wiring bundles.





.....to be continued.


Dallas

Once the electrical work was done, it was time to deal with cosmetics. Originally the StinkBug was blue and at some point a previous owner had painted it black (with a lot of bondo underneath). After I dovetailed the back end I repainted it once again in it's now trademark green. Well I made the mistake of using rattle cans to paint it and the color didn't last long. After the second round of sawzall work, this time removing the roof, I gave it another coat of el cheapo paint. For the last couple years this paint has been gradually deteriorating from the sun, and just plain poor quality. I decided it was time to give it a decent paint job so the neighbors would stop complaining, and I could be proud of this thing again.




The first step was to sand all the old green paint and primer off. With the poor quality of that paint I knew the new stuff wouldn't stick well unless I got rid of as much as possible. I got some help with this part of the job from my buddy Mikey Foster. He worked with both Blue Torch Fabworks and Team RedBull helping to build the RockHer2. He's now a student at The Fab School in Riverside, CA and works with me as pit crew for the RedBull team. I dont know how I talked him into helping on this crappy dirty hot tedious job, but I sure appreciated it.






Here you can see all the bondo on the B-Pillar. Originally I had cut the body for the dovetail right at the back edge of the roof. Later when i chopped the top off I ended up welding the pillar back together. It's kinda scary how many layers of modifications are in this thing <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />



Since pretty much every body panel on the truck is removable now the only thing I actually sprayed on the truck was the small section of roof above the windshield. Everything else was pulled off, and put on tables or sawhorses.




Dallas

Cool. I also am guilty of a couple of <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" /> fixes/modifications I did before I knew any better. I've got to go back and fix that stuff, now that my truck has these bling bling coil-overs.

What other plans do you have?

I went to a local paint shop and had this custom mixed for me. I was really lookin for the green that Kawasaki uses on their newer sport bikes, but that color is surprisingly hard to match, and the shop didn't have the exact paint code. This is pretty close though.



I chose a basecoat/clearcoat style paint this time around. It takes a little longer to spray, but IMHO the end result is much nicer.



While I was at it I took a sander to the rollcage, bumpers, etc. and repainted it all gloss black, as well as repainting the lower sections of the doors. Looks like a brand new truck now. Goes well with the brand new wheels and tires I got from ProComp <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

As of right now the plan is simply to finish off a little bit of canvas work to enclose the cab again, and go camping!

I miss being able to just drive somewhere set up a tent, run some fun easy trails and not worry about tow vehicles and trailers etc. My goal for this project was to get my street legal wheeler back in action and have some fun. I even went so far as to install a couple speakers and a small amp so I can listen to my iPod on the highway.

Dallas

Wow, that looks like a LOT of not fun work there! The end result is worth it though, looks great. I'm sure you have a small emotional connection with the stinkbug, even though you could go bigger and better, it wouldn't be the same, right? I know thats how I'll be in a few years with my rodeo. A pain sometimes, but you love it anyway! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Another thing that has always bothered me while driving this truck is the gauges. Pretty much none of them work. The Voltmeter, and fuel gauges were the only functional stock gauges, and I was using a really cheesy mini tach to gauge both engine speed, and travel speed. The reason I wasn't using the stock tach was that I didn't know which wire it used for its signal, and it was calibrated for a 4cyl and wouldn't be accurate on a V6. I had read on Houlster's web site years ago about how to recalibrate the stock tach, so I decided it was about time to do so.

After removing the gauge cluster, the clear plastic lens, speedo and tach needles and the gauge faces you can see all the internals of the gauge cluster.




Since I wasn't sure what wire signaled the tach to function I removed it from the cluster. It's held in place by 3 screws which also function as electrical contacts. You can see the + and - near the lower 2 holes and the P on the center one. Thats the signal contact, and as luck would have it the contact was actually already labeled on the back of the cluster next to the connector socket. It's a Black wire with a red stripe IIRC. I simply cut that wire from the stock harness and connected it to the tach wire in the Chevy harness.




Now to the calibration. On the upper left corner of the tach is a small potentiometer that adjusts the calibration. It's the little white piece with a philips screwdriver slot in it.



Normally this isn't accessible from outside the cluster making it hard to calibrate. I simply figured out where it was in relation to the housing and drilled a hole in the top of the cluster to access it. now I can adjust it while the cluster is plugged in. I just plugged in the stock cluster, and an aftermarket tach and adjusted until the 2 needles matched.



In the interest of comedy, and since my speedo doesn't actually work I figured I'd have a little fun while I was in there.




The StinkBug is now clean and shiny and ready to rock. I even got it smogged last week so it's fully street legal again.

Dallas

Well I kinda did go bigger and better, but it's a totally different kinda animal. I am really glad I kept the StinkBug as is though.



The Super Trooper is damn cool, but it's definitely missing some amenities, like a roof, doors, windshield, heater, and lisence plate. Sometimes it's more fun to go camping and wheeling in a less built rig.

Dallas

<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Nice work getting the 'ole girl up and running, Dallas <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Way to go Dallas. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> How much of a pain was it getting it through the BAR's inspection???