[Mustard72]

Shifted gears a bit to get the chassis cleaned up a bit and painted. I also removed the original manual trans crossmember, as when this whole mess goes back together it'll have the TH350 installed for ease of wife operation. I'm probably going to sell the old 3 speed stick, Hurst Indy floor shifter, and crossmember to help offset the other costs. I gave the chassis a quick cleanup using brake cleaner and some foo foo juice I brought home from work that seemed to degrease fairly well, tooo. This is definitely not a show truck, but I wanted to do something as long as I had the cab and engine out. I used a coat of Rustoleum primer and covered it with a coat of Ace Rust Stop black paint. Spray bombed the tight areas and brushed the rest. Nothing fancy whatsoever. Pictures make it look good, and it'll be nicer to work on in the future if its cleaner and painted rather than rusty and/or greasy.

I'm torn about not tearing into the front suspension at this point, but it really needs a power washing, I think, and I cant do that in my garage and don't have the means to haul the thing anywhere at this point. I'm thinking at this point I'll get the truck done and drive it over to the self serve car wash place. Jack it up, pull the front wheels, throw a bunch of quarters into the machine and go to town on it. At this point the front brakes look good (although I'm going to replace the rubber lines) and bearings are OK. I can always tear into it more at that point once it's cleaned up. It'd just be nice to do it now without the fenders and everything in the way.