Guess I'll update now while my photobucket pictures are still up.



Rear suspension working.


Front still has lots of room.


Tie Rod to Pitman arm. Box has been leaking like a sieve since day one.


My 37's showed up at work yesterday. Still waiting on my wheels, unfortunately.
Wheels will be some 17x9 w/ 5" BS unique 297's (aka Cragar soft 8's).


My Barnes 4WD winch plate showed up also. It looks great. Only issue is the rear bolt holes of the winch will be right on top of the crossmember. Not entirely sure what to do about that. I don't want to raise the plate off of the frame and crossmember. But pushing it forward an inch or so may decrease approach angle too much. We'll see.

 

The dirty sevens are on.
The cragar's barely clear the calipers with the 5" back spacing, but it works just fine.
They balanced out well. A couple of the assembly's took nearly 12 ounces to balance but they zeroed out.










Power isn't too bad. Took a few runs down the highway to make sure my speedo calibration was working well at higher speeds. Head winds suck. Tail winds are great. I no longer feel like reaching for a 6th gear after getting to speed in 5th. She purrs right at 2750 at 70.
Hopefully that might help with highway mileage slightly. Only time will tell.

Have to re-seal the oil pan tomorrow. A slow dribble has turned into a full on leak.

 

Great. Now I'm gonna have to get bigger tires.

 

Got the front bumper done this weekend. It came out a little different than I originally planned but that's okay. It still has the basic shape I wanted.
I won't take all the credit for it since a couple of my buddies did a lot of the bending and critiqued/ changed some of the design. However, I had a lot of fun building it!

First things first, here's how I solved the issue of the winch bolts landing on top of the cross member. Took a 1.75" hole saw through the front of the cross member and put half of a piece of 1.75" tube in the gap and welded it up. Worked great!



It got fully welded after this picture.


We got the winch plate centered and tacked then tied top of it in and made it the "base" for the top cross tube.


Added a couple supports and it really began to take shape.


Got the stinger done as the last piece. Added a couple gussets under the winch plate and elsewhere and was done.


I'm currently waiting for the paint to dry so I can bolt the winch up. Picked up a smittybilt 9.5 xrc on Friday. It should do the job just fine.

 

Looks good, steve.

Front bumper just welded on?

 

Thanks. And yeah, it's welded on. Fully committed.

 

nice. Yeah, I need to weld mine up. make it a little more dependable with the 9k winch on it.

Any plan for headlight hoops?

 

Best way to do things!

 

Here are a few pictures of the finished product painted and all. Got my Smittybilt 9.5K and my old Lightforce 170's mounted up.

 

Thats a thing of beauty

 

My daughter just moved to Austin. She is on the look out for your truck.
Will have to look you up when I fly out to visit.

Bumper came out great

 

I saw that on FB. I'm in the Round Rock/ pflugerville area. If she ever needs any help out here, pass on my info.
First round is on me when you come visit, sir!

 

Will do Thanks

 

Damn scuba.

I was browsin pirate and saw your build. This thing has come a LONG way since you first got it. Keep up the good work bro!

 

Thanks Mike! It took me a while to get it to where it is now. Only a couple more small things (crawl box, battery relocation, odds/ ends) and I can basically call it "done". Although I know it'll never actually be done.

 

So youre back in texas? Last i heard you were working for allpro.

 

I worked at Allpro from April 2012- April 2013. I left there for a job in Alabama. That lasted until September 2013. I landed in Austin shortly after that. No plans to leave here any time soon.
I'll PM my Facebook info so we can keep up with each other on there.

 

Got the truck out on the trail this weekend at Hidden Falls. It did great. Flat out works. I thought I'd have a really tough time with 37's and no crawl box but it was fine. I still want to get one put in before Moab in September.
Not a whole lot of really good pictures, but here they are:

 

Nice batch of pics!