More Progress

My Current Progress...

(click any image to reveal a high resolution image)

Here is shot from last summer! and my guage cluster restoration. I have an original tach cluster that has been fully restored inside and out; the glass has been buffed and I reset the odometer to zero mileage.

Here is the current condition of the truck; After a ton of blocksanding. I'm getting very tired of all the dust and exhaustion; but it'll pay off!

Just a quick shot of the rear after a quick little wash down.

*LED ROLLPAN PROJECT!*

For my tail-lights, I'm going to do something a little trick and go with 1/2"x6" LED lights flush mounted in the rollpan I picked up from Mar-k's. The project is quite extensive. As you will see, you have to mount the lenses in the body, and then fabricate a housing for the LED card...

Here is the diagram supplied by the company. The first part of the project is to cut these holes in the steel pan, by first drilling two half inch holes & then connecting them.

I apologize for the terrible image quality, but this is to give an idea of what I'm working with. That is one of the red lenses on the left.

If anyone else is going to tackle a project like this, I HIGHLY suggest that you practice cutting your holes out of the same guage material; I ended up cutting about 6 or 7 holes with about 4 different air tools in order to find a formula that worked. Remember, you only get one shot when you are cutting the actual pan! :-)

After I cut a great hole, I used it as a template to mark the holes.

A couple passes of a spray-baum and my pattern was on.

Using a square, I used a center punch to mark the holes for the final cutting...

In the midst of my rollpan project, my step fenders came back from having work done on them.

Basically, the fenders are brandnew, but they had a few creases from where they were stamped out; Everything looks perfect now! ;-)

I picked up the remainder of the bed and things turned out great. With just a few bolts, I temporarily assembled the bed to see how things fit together.

Of course, I couldn't just assemble the bed and let it sit beside the chassis... It had to be put on! Overall, everything fits well.

Here you can see that things appear to be totally assembled, but my fenders are only held on with a few bolts. Notice the polished stainless steel bed stips :-)

I also used some of the old pine boards so that I could temporarily set the bed on the frame.

It wasn't too long and I took some things back apart. I have a new posi rearend, so I took out my stock rearend.

Here's both axles side by side. My factory is a 12 bolt. The "new" axle is a posi that was set up for the strip with 4.88 gears; those will be replaced by 3.73's more than likely.

Progress1	Progress2	Progress3	Progress4	Progress5	Progress6	Progress7	Progress8
Progress9	Progress10	Progress11	Progress12	Progress13	Progress14	Progress15	Progress16
Progress17	Progress18	Progress19	Progress20	Progress21	Progress22	Progress23	Progress24