Rich, I'd love to send some rain your way. All the heat you guys are getting is spilling over our way now and it has turned in to a muggy mess. I thought I was back in Mississippi yesterday. All the rain saturated ground is creating a steam bath with heat index values approaching 110*.
I got a bit more accomplished yesterday and I discovered my plan to fit the bed is flawed after I got the needed hardware to install the running boards. Once I got all the needed nuts and bolts, I was able to check the fit with the 1" spacers under the bed sills. These running boards "tweak" when not bolted in place, which made the fit appear to be good. Once everything was bolted in and the boards squared up, They are 1" higher then the body line on the cab, so the spacers will have to go. While I was looking at the bed in the midst of getting the boards mounted, I found I am missing one cross sill and there is at least one cross sill that is only one inch tall, vs. the remainder that are 2" and bolt to the frame. My plan is now to move the 1" tall cross sill to the slot over the gas tank hump, perhaps with a bit of modification for added clearance just to be safe. Even without modification, there is about 1/2" of gap with everything square and level. I didn't get any pics yesterday, but I took one with the running board "tweaked" and one with the board square for comparison.
^^^ "Tweaked" ^^^
^^^ A little dark since I took this on my way out the door this morning, but here it is squared up. ^^^
Getting that extra inch back will have things lined up within reason. Since I don't have a garage to park the truck in, I'm thinking of using tread plate for the bed floor instead of wood. No sense doing nice wood work only to encourage rot and rust. If I knew the shop would be completed soon, I'd opt for wood. The beauty is I can do a wood floor later on, when I have dry parking.
Again, no pics from yesterday, but I managed to get the driveshaft cut to the proper length. I took 1 7/8" out of the tube length at the rear axle yoke and the fit at the transmission slip yoke is dead on. There is room for suspension travel and the slip yoke is positioned where it was originally from the factory, perfect since I'm not adding any additional lift. All that is left to due it take the unit to the drive line shop to have it trued, welded and re-balanced.
Small steps forward...
-Joe