Well, I have finally got most of the big items blasted and painted this past weekend. That was my main goal as we are getting closer to snowfall here. I'm hoping to have a rolling chassis by Thanksgiving, but we'll see how that goes. As I said before, I had ordered some parts from ECE and they showed up last week.
I think there is some unwritten rule about showing the box pile so here it is.
Contents Include:
-4"/6" Drop Kit - 2.5" Spindles, 1.5" Front Springs, 6" Rear Springs,
-Front/Rear Shocks
-Shock Relocator Kit
-Super Track Bar
-LS Engine Mounts
-Lower A-Arm U-Bolts
-Swaybar bushing set w/ lowered brackets
-Trailing Arm Bushings
-Weld-on axle saddles
-ECE Transmission Crossmember
-Coil Spring Retainer Kit
This stuff was all packaged very nicely into those boxes and everything was well wrapped. I thought for sure that a few boxes were missing or coming later, but it was packed into those.
For anyone that has sandblasted their own parts, I'm sure you will agree with me that any future projects will be taken to somebody. I bought this pot blaster 10 years ago when I started this thing, and hadn't used it until I started this truck. It works really good, when a person is blasting. Most of the time is spent not blasting though. Time is spent setting up a catch area if you plan on reusing your media. You've got to sweep up and collect your media. You have to screen it all before you put it back in the blaster. Add in breaks for your air compressor and so forth, and you've got a lot of time wondering why you didn't hire it out. I set up this blasting "horseshoe" four times in the last couple of months and every time I do, I dread it. It works good for recollecting the media, but it is a very slow process if you are not setup for it regularly.
The weeekend prior to this past one, I blasted the trailing arms I picked up the week prior, the rear most crossmember, my front cab mount brackets, center link, rear brake drums, my '72 leaf spring rear end after grinding off all of the brackets, and the ends of the axles.
The trailing arms I picked up were in really good shape. Probably about the best possible condition you'll find them in this state anyways. Every set I've seen have gotten small rocks wedged between the two rails and they keep collecting inside and spreading the rails further apart. These had only a slight gap but I wanted to clean them out anyways. So they were split apart and then rebolted back together after blasting, followed up by a few stitch welds on the top and bottom.
Thursday night I was able to get some paint on them and my other blasted pieces. You don't realize until you're running a brush on these arms, but there is a ton of surface area to cover, they must have take 20-30 mins each.
Also blasted and painted this high hump cover I picked up for $15 at the same place I picked up the trailing arms for $75 each. Pretty happy with that find.
Here's the leaf spring rear end that came out the truck in the original post. This one has 3.07 gears in it compared to the 3.73's that were in the 6 lug rear I was going to use. I'm not sure how well it's going to work with the 6l80, but I guess we'll see.
So after talking with Stan at ECE, he didn't seem to recall of having to shim rear ends for the normal drops that they offer, so I decided to match the pinion angle of the other rear end I had. I used some steel tubing and a variety of shims to set up a level work platform. I placed the factory coil spring rear end on it and took a bunch of reference measurements. Then I placed my blasted housing on the saddles, and after a couple hours of measuring, rechecking, and measuring again I placed a few tack welds on, and checked a few times more. Once I was sure it was where it needed to be, I welded the new saddles on, stitching about an inch at a time alternating between sides and letting it cool down some.
Slapped some paint on it Saturday and a few other parts and we're good to go.
I didn't get much time yesterday to work on the truck, but at least now, the big stuff is out of the way, and I can get some work done. I mounted most of the misc. small brackets and loosely installed the trailing arms after putting the new bushings in. Put the LS engine mounts on as well.
