Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

A LOT has been happening since my last entry in this blog.

Following our trip to Springfield last Friday for the Oil Pros event, I took the 55 wagon to the Whiskey City Cruisers cruise last Sunday at Buzick Lumber and Home Center.

Weather was beautiful and we had a great turnout. My son came to take photos. My daughter came and my wife also stopped by for a while.

I had the tailgate down with two chairs behind the wagon. My wife was seated on the tailgate when my son decided to join her. He plopped his 350-pound ass on the tailgate next to my wife, and it took about 10 seconds for both of the tailgate support cables to pull out of their fixtures on each side of the tailgate!

My wife weights about 200 pounds; my son another 350 or so. Their combined 550 pounds resulted in the end of each support cable pulling out of their respective connectors. The tailgate, no unsupported, slammed down on the rear bumper guards. This left a small dent on the drivers’ side where the bumper guard hit, and on the passenger side, the impact dent was small, but it alos created a large dent that covered a large portion of the right side of the tail gate outer panel.

In my mind, this was a catastrophic event. A formerly original tail gate in good condition was now suffering from severe damage. I was beyond pissed that my wife and lard-ass son’s combined weight just fucked up my tail gate. It still is stuck in my craw to be honest.

After the incident, people were starting to pull out of the cruise, so I decided I wasn’t going to stay any longer. I headed home about 3 p.m.

PARTS IS PARTS — EXCEPT WHEN THEY AREN’T AVAILABLE. That afternoon I immediately began searching for replacement parts — specifically, replacement reproduction cable balls.

My first choice for parts is usually Mutton Hollow Chevys; the cable balls are not available right now. In fact, they aren’t available from any other Tri-Five parts vendor, either. Ugh!!

EXAMINATION OF THE THE FAILURE(S). I removed the cable balls and their mounting brackets on both sides of the tail gate to see what exactly failed.

The cable ball on my son’s side simply was overloaded and the ball attached to the end of the retractor cable simply pulled through the opening on the cable ball. The cable ball showed signs of where it was slightly malformed from the cable end being forced and pulled through the opening.

The passenger side cable ball didn’t show the same malformation, though its clear the forces had pushed the opening wide enough to allow the ball to be released.

So today, with help from my son, I removed the tail light fixtures and with his help, we created some slack to allow me to pull the cables through their respective holes in the tailgate opening.

I used hammer to move the bent lip of the passenger side ball, the put each of the balls in a vice to tweak each and to narrow the opening in each to try to limit the possibility of the cable ends being pulled through the balls again.

It didn’t take long to remount the cable ends in the balls and reattach them to the tail gate.

REPAIR ACCOMPLISHED WITH DAMAGED PARTS. After I modified the cable balls, they held fine once they were re-installed. I think they’ll do just fine — as long as nothing heavy is placed on the tail gate …. say, weighing more than 200 pounds.

My plan is to replace the cable balls once new repro ones become available. But for the interim, the tailgate cables are functional just fine, which means the tail gate retains all of its functionality. And despite the dented tail gate skin, everything is working properly again.

While this isn’t exactly a huge “win” given the damage this incident caused, its victory in that the tail gate is functional again — and more importantly, I can move on to more important projects in the wagon — for example, I plan to paint the garnish molding from the cargo area; install the plywood in the cargo area; install the vinyl on that flooring, and then install the window tinting on the rear cargo area windows.

That’s basically the “TO-DO” list for the wagon next six months. I think its all very do-able.

For the short term, the cargo area flooring is top priority, as well as painting the cargo window garnish moldings.

Cargo flooring also means we’ll need to strip the old linoleum from the rear seat sections and replace that with the matching black-and-white flooring.

I also need to figure out what to do with the fenderwells, which currently are yellowish. I don’t think I can use the vinyl squares on that stuff, so it may just come down to a flat or matt black finish. We’ll have to see how it all shakes out.

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