Now came the next hard part. Making the tailgate a 350 tailgate. To actually bring myself to do this took about 2 days of saying yes and no. But it needs to be on the truck and be a part of its perfection. So out came the caliper and markings were made and the drill fired up….
And for those who are observant, I ran into an issue. When I pulled this truck apart, I never planned for it to go to this extent. I was figuring it would just be a tranny swap, maybe a bit of a safety refresh and call it a day. I was also a lot more inexperienced. I never knew may tailgate was warper (or possible I just did not care).
Anyways, here is a shot of the surprise I got when I put the original tailgate on:
I was planning to swap the trim but once I saw this, I decided against it. The pic does not really show justice to the bow, but fair to say it is a 3/8″ gap on the bottom between the bed floor and gate at centreline. Since I prepped the new tailgate for the holes, I have been working on a way to attempt to straiten the old one, but if that fails, the new one will have to be painted to match and go from there. Either way the painter forgot to paint the red stripe on the bottom so it has to go in for some paint….just don’t know what gate it will be yet!
And that once again brings us up to date!
OK. Where did we leave off. Oh yes. First thing up on the plate next was silver soldering a bung onto the oil pan for the temp probe. So the pan was dropped, drilled, soldered and primed. Has also been painted already even though I don’t have pics yet of that.
Next up was actually not directly but indirectly related. I am starting the interior map of the gauge layout for the truck. This posed a problem as I was not sure my theory of gauge layout would work. So I decided the best plan was to finish the gauges on the 1990 and if it worked, I would know what the crew layout would be. So I got busy ripping the existing gauges out of the daily and this is the result. I like it. So I will move this direction for the crew as well!
Who says a 1st gen can’t have a 4 pillar pod! HA!!
OK. I apologize for the delay in getting the pics up. Just been working on the truck more than hanging out online. Its winter in Canada again. Over the course of the Christmas holidays I started back into the truck again. With 2013, I have made it one of my goals for the year to finish the truck. On December 24th I hit the 6 year anniversary of starting this project, so I felt with work not needing me as much right now, I would focus on the completion. So far between Dec 24 and Jan 20th there has been close to 130 hours logged on the truck. Some excellent progress has been made but I have been trying to do more working and less typing so I have not updated this in a while! As I am again sitting on a plane, I have several hours to kill. May as well do an update!
First off, you will notice I added a new tool to the assistance of completion on the truck. Over the course of the summer and fall, I worked many extra hours and with not buying any truck parts, it allowed me to save for a lift. After having tried to balance it on the 2 post last year and knowing it will still take several months to complete, I saved what I could and kept an eye out for a used lift. This one was found a few hours from home and with some time, muscle, and the trusty W250; it came home. Although I did lose some time prepping for the install and all, the ease of working by way of standing has already made up for the lost time.
But back to the truck….
The first item tackled was the mounting of the rear bumper:
Next item I tackled was to get the tailgate out for paint. As the original was bowed (read back a few pages), I had picked up the second tailgate. So the measurements were taken for the stripes and the gate was sent out for paint.
The gates came back a week later in beautiful condition! Once how, the assembly began! Observe masking tape covered line puller so it would not scratch the paint!
Now, as with all projects that take this long, you forget some small details like what side you stuck the tailgate wiring connector. Guess what side it is not. 😉 So disassembly began… Aaaaaand, then in a matter of a split second, my day went downhill. While removing one of the model 19 lenses, I slipped with the flat blade and took a chunk of my paint out! Son of a &*%$#@!!!!! Well after a little drive I cooled down and came back to inspect. Yup, right through the fresh clean and paint. Soooooo, the entire gate was stripped and it will go back to the painter (different one by the way from the one that painted the truck!!) for touch up/repaint.
Next on my mental list is to finish the underside of the truck. Underneath the truck has several things that are still outstanding. They include:
Compressor – The air compressor needs to be tucked up under the body behind the frame rail to keep it out of the weather. So a custom bracket was made.
Water pump – The water pump for the on board water tank needed to also be mounted in a area it would stay clean. So a bracket for that was made as well.
E brake cable – The e brake cable was replaced about 1500 miles before the truck came off the road 6 years ago so it was still good to reuse after a quick clean up. Found the ebrake cable (took me 2 hours to find it!!) and went to unstall it but found an issue. Remember the FASS pump?
Well guess what line it sits in? Yup. Directly in line with the E brake cable. 🙁 And as I am not really fond of the pumps location due to being in a rock pining zone, I decided to relocate it to location number three! Now removing is not simple. Due to its location it actually required the removal of the fuel tank so I could access the bolts!! What a dumb location I installed it! If I ever had it fail and needed to do a side of the road pump swap that would have been near impossible! So I proceeded to remove it and during its removal I had lowered the truck to allow for reaching up to the top of the tank area for bolt loosening (as the front tank had to drop) and I managed to smack my head off the main air tank elbow (that is now of course much lower than it was 10 minutes ago!) Well this resulted in a mild concussion, whiplash, and a lot of blood. One could say this put a damper on my efforts for the next few days. But enough of my whining….. 😀
So the pump was originally here:
And now it will inside the frame rail where it is more protected (And not in the way of the e brake cable!). So a bracket was made to hold it in a location that was considered OK by the fuel lines.
Next up was finish the front passenger side air lines as they had once been installed but removed so the exhaust would fit there. But as I have determined I will route the exhaust differently, it allows them to go back in.
I also had a trip to the sandblast room so I could sand blast the small components for the E brake system.
Horns: Next on the list is the train horns. These buggers are big. I spent close to 3 hours trying to find a spot they would be protected, out of the weather, yet they also fit! It was determined they would go up under the drivers box fender. So brackets were made….
And in the end after making the brackets, we just couldn’t get it to fit in there. So the horns will have to wait for now. I am thinking I will run them in the e brake cable area once it is in as well as the running boards.
Air jack: I also added a line to feed an external air line. I routed this from the tank to the rear end of the truck.
NP205: The t case was still sitting there unpainted as it was quickly stuffed back into the truck a year and a bit ago as I needed it off the 2 post for another job (the 1990 broke) so I thought it was time to fix that. So out came the masking tape and away I went! Here are the before and after shots:
Now, while all this was going on, dad was playing wiring. The custom dash gauges were still left in a semi completed state from a few years ago when his electrical genius started on the project. So he had to re study all his hand made diagrams and finish it. So where it sits now the factory dash wiring has been spliced and new connectors were made. In the dash insert I have allowances for turn signals, high beams, alarm light, and fuel levels (both run live) so all these supplied by factory wires had to be redone. This took close to 12 hours to finish on its own! Much of the time was taken up by the factory fuel pump and level sensor in the Ramcharger tank that I am using to still feed data to the dash. The issue is the level sensor power is actually fed through the gauge and THEN to the tank. So basically the factory gauge measures the amount of current passing through it! So with now the Autometer gauges, we had to ensure it was all wired correctly!
Also started on the rear seat frame to hold the two bucket seats and console.
So that brings me up to current. All the brackets are back from powder tailgate is out again. Once back all the underbody stuff can be mounted and I can move onto the engine compartment! Time to get that sealed up! 🙂