[hgs_notes]

Since May it's mostly been parked while I work on the crewcab. That thread has been getting some updates. This last weekend I got the rear gears changed out. No real complications with that except I found out it had 4.10 gears in it. Apparently the tachometer was way off because the math worked out perfectly for 4.56 gears. Oh well, now it's got a locker. Or limited slip, whatever GM used in them in 1988, which is what the differential came out of.

First time doing a diff swap. Had a friend with some experience help me out and it's a good thing he was here because it didn't have a standard install. When I removed the inner pinion bearing race there were shims in behind it. We made a call to another guy who does these all the time and were told sometimes that was done during the set up and if the gears looked good it should be fine, just put them back in behind the new race. We did and then used the regular pinion shims according to the manual. It said to add .001 based on the numbers etched into the button on the pinion gears. We did that and it was close when we checked the gear mesh but we ended up putting the original shims back in and it looked good.

I sandblasted the diff cover because it was pretty crusty. Fresh paint, lube and got it all back together this morning. The test drive went fine. No weird noises or anything. Also I think the fuel problem I had was a weak fuel pump. It barely fills the filter up and it took forever to get it to pump after sitting a couple months. I'm thinking electric pump so it will fill the float bowl when I turn the key, then start cranking. Once there's gas in the carb it fires right up.

I also started getting things together to widen my plow. I cut 8" off each end of the donor. That will get me almost 9' wide. Still have a few months before the snow flies.