Two tool bags at Ace Hardware for $9.99
Using big one for recovery gear and small one for the spill kit

 

Ohh Thats a good deal. I may have to find my way into an ace tomorrow.

 

Great ideas to try out

 

One thing I found was that my pedals were a little slick, kind of would like an automatic transmission some day.

so I found some scrap diamond plate, in about 30 minutes:

I had these made:


cost was Zippo$$ and about 30 minutes

 

Sweet! And I thought the moderators were just a bunch of pretty faces.

 

I reinforced and stiffened up my gas tank skid plate with some #3 rebar ...










then I made some some L brackets and mounted it to the frame ... (truck is heavily modified so skid plate no longer lined up with old mounting hardware)












...about $14 in rebar , $6 in primer, and I feel much more confident that my skid plate can take a good hit.

 

Music and GPS via my old phone. Always connected to charger and aux but still easily hidden from theives.

 

damn, that's slick. i might steal that idea.

 

Jolene, you might look into a 90 degree connector so the aux stays connected, but that's a fantastic setup.

My ultra-cheap mod is a light reminder (I kept draining my battery ). Get any cheap, loud 12v noise maker and wire it between the TAIL and IGN fuses (if your noise maker is dioded, wiring it one way will remind you to turn them on, the other, to turn them off; if it's not dioded, it will remind you to do both).

• 3pk fuse taps - US$9
• 2pk beeper/flasher - US$8
• 25' black/red wire - US$5

Counting the cost of the parts I used, not the parts I bought:

• 2 fuse taps - US$6
• 1 beeper/flasher - US$4
• 2' black/red wire - US$0.40

 

Did you have some ground issues?

 

Some people may not like carpet in their rig but this is a flip for me so I decided to do Home Depot carpet like I have in the past. 18 bucks and some 3M spray adhesive, little bit of measuring and some patience and it will look pretty damn good.





Had to cut out a section to go around the center bottom dash support, should have left a flap of carpet to go completely around it. Planning and measuring and really thinking about how you want to lay the carpet down makes life a lot easier





All in all I'm happy with the result and if you guys need any more info on the carpet I have the part number and exact prices and can show you the 3M spray. Let me know what y'all think.

 

looks good! hows the floor pan though?

 

Floor pan is in great shape, truck has zero rust on it, no dents and had the original paint on the floor pan that I just washed and dried before laying everything down.

 

I barely fit into my recently acquired '83 standard cab so I decided to remove the bench slider in an attempt to move the seat down and back.
First I pulled the seat (four bolts). The slider is held in place by four bolts (12mm I believe). I grabbed some cheap steel from the hardware store to make new brackets with. Here is the back bracket utilizing the stock bolt that held the slider on:




Here is how I did the front:




Pound the front one down and attach with the stock bolt/nut to the floor pan:





I just zipped a sheet metal screw in for the back one:



Repeat on the other side.
The seat sits awesome now and I have tons of room. I gained a ton of headroom, I have a nice reach to the wheel and it feels way more solid than before.

 

Not worried about what happens to those thin sheet metal brackets if you get in an accident?

 

Not really. The seatbelts are still bolted to the floorpan. Not to mention the seat is in stronger than the old rattly slider mechanism was holding it so if anything this is an improvement.

 

I think I am going to do the eye hooks in the panel it would be good for strapping things down.

 

Bump!

 

For a broken antenna here is how I go about fixing mine.

 

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got some aluminum plate from Amazon it got hole punched through - it lite and keep the brush out of belts