[Stepside Jim]

Time sure passes by quick. As I've been working on the gas tank, one thing has been on my mind... weight distribution.

The front of the truck, over the 8 years, has sagged slightly, perhaps a 1/2 inch or so. The truck sits at a front downward angle. Everybody tells me it looks great to them but it's my truck so I installed a slightly stronger set of front coil springs, grrrrr I hate dealing with coil springs.

The front had to be attended to because I'm adding a very short 1/4 inch thick leaf to the rear springs. This leaf addition raised the rear about 5/8 inch. If I now put my body weight, around 170 pounds, on the rear bumper, I can squat the rear of the truck 1/2 inch. When I put the truck together I removed a leaf or two, it rides nice. If I would have left the spring stock, the extra weight probably wouldn't matter.

Why is this relevant? The truck has a cab tank now, 16 gallons, the weight of a full tank is distributed between the front axle and the rear axle.

This new tank, 20 gallons, over 120 pounds full is 100 percent on the rear axle. Long story short, I hope I've pre-thought the situation and acted accordingly to solve the stance of the truck before it's even an issue.

Couple pics of progress, putting gas in the tank should be relatively easy and hopefully without dripping gas on the bed. Lowering the tailgate, is easy, and I just installed new polished stainless linkage from Mar-k, they look great.

Plan is, drop tailgate, open lid, remove gas cap, bring in the nozzle, tip sideways, gas er up. No going over the bed side, no going over the tailgate.

I used the small polished aluminum opening cover. Pretty much too small to get your fingers in to twist the cap off. I welded on a vertical flat on the cap, easy to remove now. I went with the small opening because I didn't want to weaken the wood it fits into.

When installing the polished flip cover they don't give much space for bolting it down so I made a plate to bolt to, then welded a small tab to attach the cover opener/closer thing.