Had an epic weekend.
Saturday morning my buddy Asher and I loaded up the tools and headed out to the yard for some digging.
I came up with exactly what I was looking for, 1981 ford F100. 9" axle, 65" wide, 31 spline and 5x4.5 lug pattern. The axle that we found was missing some hardware on one axle end, but it was complete other than that.
By the time we got home it was about 1 pm. We got busy getting to work.
Pulled the motor back out and set it aside, stripped off everything from the firewall that was left. Sanded, sanded and sanded some more, little work with the wire wheel to clean it up where there was some rust and hit it with two coats of epoxy primer.
As that was drying, we got with the program and unloaded everything I was storing in the bed and got that sweet bumper pulled off, unbolted the bed and got that set aside.
Oh what fun, more rivets to get off for the rear crossmember. I have a pretty good method though. Grind off the head with a flap disc, then drill out just a little bit of the rivet and it pops right out.
So with a little time I was mocking up the fuel tank and see what I was going to do back here.
My buddy Dan came by in the evening and was awesome enough to tackle the Trans GO HD-2 shift kit installation in the 4l80E tranny. He got it all finished up with the exception of a pan gasket and a filter.
Although not a terrible task, I was able to keep working and knew that it was in capable hands with Dan on the tranny.
Pretty much see what I left in the garage on Saturday night.
Sunday morning was clean up time, we left it a mess on Saturday.
Saturday started by buttoning up the tranny so that I could get back to some dirty work.
Picked up parts and got that done early.
I have seen a couple folks build the frame and set the fuel tank inside the framerails. While I like the idea of gaining some clearance in the rear, the idea of having to pull the bumper, the bed and the rear crossmember to get the tank out was not for me. So I went a little different route.
Its going to reside between the rear crossmember and the next crossmember forward. I am hanging it under the frame and holding it in place with two straps.
I got the tank where it needed to go, marked it out and bet up some straps. Welded some nuts to the inside of the crossmembers and got the tank hung.
Also went to town on the rear frame with a wire wheel and lots of elbow grease. The frame is in perfect shape though and I have still yet to find a single spot of rust on the entire truck. Body mounts, cab corners everything is in great shape metal wise.
So with the tank all mounted, the weather looking good I hit the firewall with some scotchbrite and knocked down a couple of little flaws, mixed up some paint and tacked off the firewall....Here is the end result of my driveway reshoot on the frontend. Aside from a run or two, the paint turned out great and should allow me to get to putting stuff back together this week.
I dont know how, but it was still only 1 pm at this time.
We headed over to Daves place who runs Old School EFI here locally in vancouver. I took him my ls harness a couple weeks ago. He set it up for stand alone operation, added in relays for fan 1, fan 2, fuel pump, starter and all the works. Literally a three wire hookup and it runs. He did an awesome job on the harness and reprogram.
Got back and went to work on the rearend. Cut off all the brackets off the new 9" ground everything down after Asher got after it with the wire wheel. It was looking good. Took some measurements on the old rearend and got everything tacked up. Doing a spring under swap on the rearend.
Pulled the old rearend and amazingly every bolt came off without any major problems. Rolled in the new rearend and lightly bolted it in.
Oh what a difference the stance of a project makes. Looks a lot better, front end might need to come down a little bit but its a heck of a lot better.
Pretty much where I left it off this evening.
Hope to get brakes plumbed and start on the firewall reassembly this week.
Sean