Spring is in the air here in Virginia. Some updates from over the last few weekends. The bed skirt in the previous post is now done with a new end cap made. It's been skimmed , primed and blocked. Good to go:
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Most of my time has been spent blocking out and fixing imperfections in the cab. New seam sealer on the exterior and rain gutters. The entire cab then got 2 coats of high build 2k priner. And the blocking began, and continued, and then kept going... I even took the doors back home with me and worked them a few evenings during the week.
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A lot of my past several weekends have been spent on tweaking the cab body to get it done to a point where it's ready for a 400 wet sand. Currently at 95% I think.
Took some time away from the blocks and installed new rear brakes with new hardware. Also welded in new shock tabs and installed rear shocks.
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So, at a certain point you have to just stop looking for more minor imperfections and flaws, cause you're always going to find something to tweak. Saturday night I decided it was time to move on to the next step. Built a lifting frame out of old fence posts, carboard and what not and lifted the cab back onto the frame. New cab mount bushings, cleaned up the original hardware and on she went with the tractor loader. It was awkward, especially since we really have no flat ground on the property. But voila:
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Having it in place on the frame and 2 feet up shone a light on a few more areas that need massaging so, on to that. The real purpose was to do a dry fit of all the reworked, mismatched panels to see how well things line up. Honestly, this was frustrating, and it's still not close. But it's a process and we love the process. Front inner and outer fenders, radiator support all loosely bolted on. 2 things right off the bat, the front cab mounts appear to be too short, gonna try shims first etc. Secondly, and maybe more disappointing was the realization that the radiator support was really tweaked in the hood latch area (see last pic). I can't believe i looked past this in all the prep I'd done on it. Really frustrating. I'm gonna try and work it back, or look for another one I dunno yet. Anyways, next steps are to finish aligning the front clip and hang the doors. I'm seriously setting aside a whole day for that project.
On a final note, since we share our successes AND our failures on this board; setting a cab, by yourself,on an incline, in the dark without a spotter....is asking for trouble. Both rear cab corners got dinged in the process by the forward bed mounts. Out come the hammers again...
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Fleet Fox
I do things my way, and I pay a high price.... JCM