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Ok, to continue where we left off      Dave:  Remove the 42s, replace with 35s, and suddenly the rocks look alot bigger!
 Bill:
Bang! Oops! The two bolts holding the rear of the gas tank broke!
Ok, at this point my bro's digicam got bumped into manual mode, and this wrecked alot of photos, over 150(!) of them. I brightened them up in photoshop the best i could so some are clear, some the colors are washed out, and some i still couldnt fix. This is why it took me so long to get these posted! This is Pitman Rock. Ox was the only one who was able to get on top of it, rest of us didnt have the ground clearance. From this side it doesnt look too bad, but its multiple steep staggered ledges with a muddy stream running below it. Ok that puts us a little past the halfway point for saturday's pics! Ill post up some more tomorrow! Back to Ox. We both did this hillclimb back in '06, but its been pretty badly rutted out since then      Saturday's pics!            this was a cool hillclimb; steeper than it looks, and lots of mud on the rocks so it was quite slippery   lots of tire liftin action goin on      bill giving it a shot, altho its now pretty rutted out from ox     So steep Bill started having oil pressure problems  ran out cable, but still made it up under his own power  I decided after they both rutted out that climb, to try a different one:    ...yeah, i hate sidehills  ok, coming up, one of the the craziest things ive ever done, and yet for some unknown reason the truck didnt flip forward on its lid  bout to come down a pretty steep climb   these ledges are huge, each drop off is 2-3':      This one is deceiving by the pic angle...there is 5' of air underneath the rear right tire!  So i drop off the next ledge and suddenly the rear kicks sideways and plants firmly on the ground! phew!      Parked here to wait for the others. Shut it off, and it wouldnt restart; both my eec & fuel pump relays had given up the ghost!    Didja notice yet that all 4 of us are running Iroks? Some more random pics from friday. Still workin on saturday's pics, bryan took like 400!           Right hand drive lol    this one is for the peeps who think i removed too much sheetmetal:  ...and a couple more form the comp area. Playing on concrete is cool, your tires stick like glue to it. Must be what its like to wheel out west.     Got my pics of friday up, Bryan took 237 total! Here's some highlights First arrival:  The empty campsites:  First arrival gets first choice on where to set their tent:  On our way in:  First poser pic of the weekend:     BANG! Oops!  little bit of rock rash  Ox gets a kick out of smashing the exo on rocks:     In the competition area:      ...and of course my oops that cost me the passenger half door:   Just wayyy to many pics to post from the day, so yall will have to sort through em all yourself! Fridays pics For now im headed outside to see if i can get my halfdoors off. Saturday's pics coming soon! I am working on pics now, but its gonna take a little while to resize that many.
Our carnage report:
Building stuff...
Right where the a/c comp used to be  ...and the finished product officially installed, and air lines reconnected:  Had to get a longer belt. Also of note is my ignition coil; had to move it since the 86 airbox displaced the coil mount, and thats a nice stable place to put it, so there it is. So now the OBA/ARB work again :rockon Got a small leak somewhere though, gonna find it tomorrow. I ran the gas tank vent, its now just below the top of the bed, so that should be plenty high. Got a couple electrical gremlins to deal with too. The wipers dont work; this could be the switch as it was acting funny before the cab swap. I get weird clicking (maybe arcing?) noises from inside the dash. I got another switch & relay to try. Also, my heat is messed up. Air only comes out the defroster vents; this could be a vacuum issue so im gonna play with the lines in the dash tomorrow. Also, the blower only works on the Hi setting, no other. Could be thermistor, need to check. Thats all i got left to do though, and then shes ready to wheel! So yesterday i loaded the truck up on the trailer to tow it 1 mile to a local exhaust shop. The outcome:  Can ya see it? First up, the y-pipe was salvageable. It was modified after the body lift went on, and didnt fit after it came out. But he had the necessary parts to cut it, and then weld it back together so it would fit again. So from there is a piece of straight pipe, to the muffler  the muffler is a single chamber flowmaster. Fits in there nicely  ...and the itty bitty tailpipe:  All said it was $150 for everything including the muffler, and he did it on the spot, only took about 1.5 hours. So now all i have to do is get the York re-mounted and she's ready to go! OBA air tank reinstalled in roughly the same place it was before:  Couldnt put the rear air chuck back where it was, so i decided to try this out. Never got a rock up there before...  I also reconnected the ARB. No pics of that, just imagine a typical install. Still need to build a new mount for the York, but the rest of the OBA system is complete. From there i moved to the batteries. Plan is for dual batteries in the bed. I am using the same battery the diesel has, for the sake of simplicity. Here is the concept:  Made new Positive & Negative cables  Negative grounds under bed, here:  Positive, wrapped in Nylon Wire loom (has a higher temp rating than standard polyethylene wire loom) and run along the pass side frame rail:
One battery box, wired with a battery from the diesel. The angle iron keeps the boxes from sliding around, and then they get strapped down to the bed. One box removed so you can see better:  And here are the 'jumper cables' to piggyback the two batteries together:  Up front i re-mounted the original battery ground so the engine & harness was still grounded to the frame. So with that done i decided to remount my CB antenna. Mounted it the same way the diesel's is:  I then snaked the wire up through a grommet in the floor and hid it neatly behind the interior paneling (pic missing) Monday im going to try to get the exhaust done, and then, while not totally finished, she technically will be wheelable again! I considered building a flatbed. Really, i did. But, in the end, I wanted something with style. And for that, you just cant beat a stepside! Enter the secret weapon!  I removed the busted fiberglass fenders,and the rotted out xmembers, and took what was left of the bed & got it up on the frame. Well, its a tad too long:  But man if that aint a sexy tailgate!  So after some careful measuring, i decided that the bed needed to be 15" shorter. Specifically, 8" from the front, and 7"from the back. So i busted out the sawzall (again) and went to town! The shortened passenger fender in front of the d.side, shows the difference in length:  The next step was to take the stake pockets, cut the sheetmetal off the back of them and then re-spot-weld them to the newly shortened fenders. Fortunately, a buddy has a spotwelder that he lent me to do this job. And damn are they cool!   then i busted out the dremel, made some choice cuts, and viola, the stake pocket was usable again!   ...and that was basically all the fabwork for the fenders. Neat thing with these beds is, the fenders bolt to the header and the rear wall, so it was just as simple as redrilling the holes and the bed simply bolted back together, 15" shorter    Ok, so next up was to make some new xmembers for the bed. Settled on 4, since stock the bed has 5 and this one is a good bit shorter.  Then i bought a pile of 1*3s, and started making a new floor     ...and heres something cool...put the toolbox on the rails, and slid a tire in. It *just* fits:  Ok so anyways......i trimmed the floor to match the fenderwells  and got the bed set up there, so i could move it to the driveway for some welding  First things first: Narrow the bumper. Cut ~7" off each side, so figure the bumper is now roughly 18-20" narrower than a stock bronco bumper. Ill have to measure that tomorrow.  Then i cut the rear stake pockets, and then the flat panel in the back as well  So that gets us here, but the bed still isnt bolted down:  I settled on 6 mounts for the bed. 4 in the back, and two up front. Out back they are short, only 2" tall, so i made em like this  Theyre not perfect, but they work so im happy. Up front, the mounts had to be 5 3/16" tall, so i put a little more effort into them   Heavy bead inside, light one outside, ground smooth, to make them appear as if they are on piece and not 4  Coincidentally, they ended up being dead center on this xmember  ...and the other 4  So with those done, they got painted, and the bed installed for the final time. From there i used a piece of 2" filler neck hose from national, plus a 1 7/8" 45º exhaust fitting, plus halfpof my stock filler neck, to get to the inside of the bed. This is still a work in progress.    i intend to brace this up somehow, just not sure yet  So this gets me caught up to today, when the toolbox got bolted in  I also decided that there is nothing left to do that will be harder to do with the iroks on, so they finally made it back onto the truck    So this officially catches us up to today. Right now im in crunch mode....i need to relocate the batteries to the bed, re-finish the OBA and get a totally new exhaust system on it before FSB's NE Chapter Ride at Rausch Creek in 3 weeks. After that im going to go back and finish off whatevers left, and then i can start playing with the suspension again. |
