Thanks!! Yeah, locker in snow = good. Locker on ice = baaad.
Well, now that my project is tapering off, I am able to accurately inventory my parts and supplies that have accumulated over the past eight years or so. I have made it a mission to organize the shop/shed/side yard/etc. It was getting pretty bad out there. Walking through my shop was very similar to walking through a three foot snow drift. Waaay too much stuff. I started cleaning it out a few weeks ago. I am throwing away, recycling, scrapping or organizing what I have. So far it has worked great. I am ejoying all of the available space I have now. I have gotten rid of about 10-12 garbage cans of stuff, probably the same number of recycle cans, I loaded the Suburban with about 1800lb of scrap, and I have a load of household hazmat and what looks like one dump run and one more trip to the scrap yard left. Ironically, I have not gone through my stash of Suburban parts yet. I have just been making room around the shop.
So, as I clean, I find more and more stuff. Some that was or is slated for installation on the Sub. Some of the stuff has been bouncing around for awhile. One of those items was a pinion shovel for the 14FF that I got from DIY 4X4. I had installed it when I got it, but the bolts were the wrong length and did not engage enough threads. I bought different bolts, but they were too long. Bah!! I pulled it off and left it in the shop. Well, I got sick of moving it around so I grabbed it and a handful of bolts and put it on. No issues whatsoever. I have no idea why it gave me so much grief prior, but I got it on now. I guess I really don't need it so much now that he pinion is rotated up now, but I figured I had it and I am sick of moving it in the shop, so maybe it will do some good on the truck instead.
I also came across a set of airbags that I had. These had not been lingering around for too long, but I still had moved them several times. So on they went. I pretty much used them as they were, but I used some of the IHC flange head bolts and flange lock-nut for the bracketry. These got used when I hauled the 1800+ pounds of scrap to the yard. I am engineering an air compressor setup on the truck to fill the bags. I haven't gotten it finished, so it is just bags right now.
I put new backup lenses in the truck when I built it a couple years ago. They turned yellow almost immediately. I picked up a set of NOS Guide backup lenses recently and decided to throw them in.
Crap vs NOS:
More crap vs NOS:
So with the craptastic quality of the backup lenses, I was a bit leery of getting aftermarket park lamp lenses for the front bumper. Well, in amongst my cleaning, I found the original bumper that was bent up pretty good at the frame shop once-upon-a-time. Whoa, the lenses look pretty good. I compared them to the ones that came in my used bumper and my originals are much brighter than those, so I swapped my originals back in:
So I am still in full-on cleaning mode, but some progress is being made on the truck. Hopefully I will get the rest of this cleaned up and get on to some projects that I am hoping to do while it is still cool out.