Now, we're around thanksgiving time/early December '23. I've been working on the frame stuff that's easier with the cab off. Fuel lines, brake lines, exhaust that sort of stuff. Ended up going with a Flowmaster 817654 Stainless kit. It's designed for stock type trucks as far as crossmembers go, so I didn't get to use the exhaust sleeves I put in the trailing arm crossmember. It doesn't hang egregiously low, but time will tell I guess. With some rework, I think a person could do some fabbing to get it up in that area. The manifolds are Summit SUM-G9084B, black ceramic coated. I wanted to keep the look somewhat low profile. I tossed the idea of the different ebay headers around, and speed engineering, etc. But these were what I ultimately chose, and they tied in with enough of the extra pieces the exhaust kit came with. The engine, the aforementioned 6.0L. Your typical junkyard LQ4 cleaned up. I've seen a couple of these vintage looking LS swaps and I just really sold myself on the idea. But man is it pricey. The really nice stuff is $$$, I do that when I can, but most of the time, middle of the road is where I end up. Intake is a Holley mid-rise with their fuel rails. Valve cover adapters are from Turbo Nasty. The throttle body adapter is from Delmo's. I threw a BTR cam and springs in while I had it apart. It'll all be running on a Holley Terminator X. I think I covered most of it.
Had to do a little maneuvering around the fuel cell due to the ECE trac bar.
Black friday, brought the wheel choice to a final decision. American Racing Draft VN510's. Mulled over many options, including the traditional torque thrusts, but wanted to try something a little different. Good thing about 5x5, easy to offload and try something else is if they don't play out. I think we'll be ok though.
Got the glass in!! Glass guy being the only other human to have worked on the truck at this point, I probably could’ve have done it, but at the cost of possibly a few pieces of glass in the process. They say you can’t beat someone at their own game. Well worth it imo.
