Got to love these Gold Line Hubs!!! And here's the complete kit, it definitely needs some clean up, and I will be plating a few areas to keep it alive. And here is the parts pile.

The front end had taken a fairly hard hit. It smashed the radiator into the clutch fan, and put a pretty solid buckle in the passenger side core support. I am crossing my fingers that the water pump is ok, and I can get away with just replacing the fan clutch assembly. I was lucky that all of the impact was above the frame rails, they measured consistently from side to side.

A few hours later I was able to get it to this point. As you can see in the background, the donor truck is starting to look real sad! I strategically cut the each core support out so as to leave alignment holes that I was able to run bolts through for alignment.



After grafting the two together, I was able to determine that donor core support was straight along the fender mount area, but unfortunately had taken a front end dinger of its own. The grill clips fell short of their mounts, and the headlight buckets are severely angled in. I was hoping for a quick turn around, but at this point it's looking like I will need to fabricate a core support from the firewall forward.

On a positive note, the not so great factory core support will serve as great reference while building the new tubular structure. The factory core support is just flat out ugly too. With some forethought, I should be able to make something very clean and potentially incorporate some aluminum panels with mesh inserts. I think in the long run I will be happy I did this.

The challenges ahead will be:

Relocating the battery to the bed

New mounts for the radiator, AC condenser/receiver, ignition coil, fuse box, power steering reservoir, intake (& probably a few other small things I am forgetting)

New headlights

For the headlights I am leaning towards running a stem mounted 6x9 off road light. Light bars and LED's dominate the light market, so finding the proper 6x7 light I need is impossible. I can really only find these Pro Comp lights. If anyone has another recommendation, please let me know!

I'm pretty picky about batteries, & especially with this truck being an automatic. I plan to take it deep into Baja, 100+ miles from civilization. I'm not a fan of Optimas, & I think Odyssey's are over priced. I had a few other smaller sized options, but ended up with this group 24 Exide AGM. I wanted something bigger to keep the tunes going during soda breaks & I didn't need massive CCA's. These batteries have good reviews, and a good warranty, and it was only $150. I also picked up 20ft of 1/O wire to relocate it to the bed and into a metal storage box.

Cleaned up the interior. Overall, it's in great shape. With the battery hooked up I finally got a chance to check out the stereo. It came with a nice Pioneer with Bluetooth/USB and & Pioneer speakers mounted up in the extra cab. I'll definitely be doing a tablet mount mount soon.

Truck is now running I still need to tie up some loose ends, but it fired right up on the first attempt. I was able to pull it out of the garage and bolt up the perfect era correct "push bar". Don't think I can call it a bumper quite yet. It'll keep me out of some light trouble, but it's definitely not doing any nerfing.

Riding dirty to get a few street miles. Definitely have an exhaust leak, but so far so good

Definitely needed to make this a 3 seater. Seats are not mounted yet. The rear seat will go down a little and the front seats will come up a bit, it should even out pretty nice.




When you're working on an older truck, sometimes the little $9 amenities make all the difference!

Just about ready to start putting some miles on this thing. I was able to use the core support and stock headlights/mounts, so that saved a ton of effort. Almost time to tear it down for the suspension!

Some progress. Gotta love an engine cage on a stock

Here's a few more pics. What you're seeing is all that's done right now. I still need to do the vertical, & diagonal tubes in the rear. The two pieces with bends are 1.75, & the rest is 1.5. I only have a 1.75 die, so everything that needs a bend on this build will be 1.75. Other than the main cage structure, I want to do as much 1.5 and smaller tube as possible.




Kicking around these ideas

- A bolt in X over the motor with 1.25 tube

- Core support delete with a bumper/radiator structure that bolts into where the bends are, and off the top of the front of the frame rails

Learn something new everyday. Apparently you can fail smog with a high NOX reading because of an exhaust leak upstream of the cat. Even a very small leak can cause this, and my leak was huge. The exhaust manifold to collector flange was the culprit. All 3 studs were pissed off, and in hindsight, some heat and wd40 may have helped. I managed to snap all of them. I got extremely lucky and was able to weld a nut to each stud with a hot and heavy weld, and then quickly pull each one while smoking hot. Disaster averted, manifold stayed in place, and a new cat and Flowmaster will go in with the re-assembly.

Found a class 10 team moving up to 35's and scored on 9 33x10.50R15 BFG's

Blast from the past, brand new, never used Downey idler arm gusset!

Picked up a fiberglass hood. Took a second to weigh both. Stock was about 30 lbs & the fiberglass was 15 lbs. Nice little weight reduction and it definitely looks a lot better being one color. With the bent core support, getting everything line up nice is a chore & work in progress.




Also picked up some new to me FK heims that are plenty tight and bungs for new tie rods. The kit came with oem style tie rod ends that are seized into the tie rods. The FK's and some 1.5" chromoly will be a nice upgrade.




Final news of the weekend is a set of F67's & 12" shackles. The plan is to keep the factory bed/bedsides. I'll need to upgrade to an 8" rear end, & tub the wheel wells for tire clearance at bump. I'm thinking at only 3.5" over up front, the factory rear end with maybe a 1" spacer will look pretty good. I think it will have somewhat of a sleeper feel with 18" of wheel travel in the rear!




Right now I'm stripping all the spray paint, and Fabtech blue powder coat off the uppers, lowers, & subframe. Next week I'm planning on mounting the tires, and finalizing the engine cage. Hopefully by the weekend I'll be ready to dive into the kit install, and fab the tie rods, and upper/lower shock mounts.

Engine cage came out for the final time to get welds on the tough to reach spots. It's now back in and fully welded into place.




Had to get a little creative with the piece going over the booster. You probably wouldn't even notice it was notched if I didn't point it out.




Idler arm gusset is on & its starting to look like an off road truck. Running out of things to do before the kit goes on!

Officially blessed by the legend!