[hewittca]

I've had to circle back to my center crossmember several times over the course of this build, but I think I finally have it finished! The last step was to get it all final welded and painted and I was able to complete that with the help of my friend. With that done, I was also able to get the exhaust installed for good. No surprises this time around since I've already had it installed once before while building it. One thing I started to worry about prematurely was that these Venom 250 mufflers would be too loud. If that ends up being the case, I figure I have plenty of room just behind the manifold turn downs to add resonators to quiet it down. I've heard this done before and it really cuts down on the volume while retaining the tone of the muffler.









At this point, I am pretty sure most of the heavy cutting/grinding/welding is complete on this truck (at least for now!). With that, it was time for a little motivation. I decided to throw the bed floor and a side on to get an idea of how everything will look and fit. There's not much to say in the way of progress for this step, other than the stance is going to end up exactly how I wanted it. It currently has a 1" rake front to rear which is what I was aiming for. I do believe I will leave the rear where it is and don't need to mill the blocks down at all.









With the bedside on, I realized that I could finalize the tailpipe exit now that I had my reference point. I set it up so it gets the exhaust out from under the truck without blowing water all over the fender, but still tucked enough that at most angles you don't even see it. This was facilitated by the fact that the frame is 4" higher than it normally is compared to the fender, so I actually had to turn down the pipe to get it to exit below the fender.









Next step is to get the fuel system installed and finally fire this thing up. Here's one more pic for now.