ntsqd's '71 Wagon

[ntsqd]

I recalled your saying that you'd had to cut yours, so seeing how tall it is wasn't a surprise.

If you can find a Lincoln or maybe a Mercury twin the quintessential cop car Crown Vic (& maybe them too), the power seat base on the driver's side looks like it will lend itself well to having a PRP seat mounted to it and be bolted to some sort of support structure as I doubt that it will be tall enough bolted to the floor. The switches controlling it are the only odd to deal with aspect. Haven't decided yet what I'm going to do there.

I need to widen the 'skin' of the bumper a foot. To do that badly throws it's proportions off. Looks like a restart is called for. I have it preliminarily modeled, I need to double check all of my measurements and verify that it will fit as intended before having the parts cut and bent by SCS. The cost of them doing the work isn't trivial, so I need to make sure that I have it nailed.
Something like below, although I may need/want to make the returns at the fenders a tad longer. The flying panels they can't bend, I'll need to fold those over myself.



I plan to use the existing bumper as a "frame" for this bumper. The winch carrying sub-frame already bolts to it, and the skin will also bolt to it at the outer ends. The noise making tie-down loops have been cut off, not the best pic but this is what it has now:


I've got some new old stock school Dick Cepek 9" off-road lights that I'm tempted to convert to HID and put a pair of them on the bumper for a real period look.

[devildog80]

Nice looking rig, and someday will upgrade my bumpers too. Looking for front with brush guard, but will modify the brush guard to fold down, for step to reach into engine bay. I am 5'11" and can barely pull dipstick to check the engine oil, and forget about removing air cleaner without a step stool

[ntsqd]

I am intentionally keeping this vehicle low. 33's and whatever the current lift on it is, is as tall as it's going to get. At 5' 11.5" I can reach the trans dip-stick w/o effort.

Been toying with a custom fuel tank design for behind the rear axle. Goal is 33-35 usable gallons capacity in a single tank. That makes it hang a bit lower than I'd like, but I'd prefer to not have the complication of two tanks. To get that capacity it is 10" tall at the face right behind the diff cover. I have some ideas about how I might do that, but what's a real concern is that I'd prefer that the whole fuel pump & sender be OEM to an LS powered vehicle or one that I can buy with a 60 psi capable pump already installed in it. Most late model fuel tanks seem to be a lot deeper than the 8"10" range that I'm looking at. Interested in suggestions if anyone has one.

[Yeller]

I’ve shortened the rods on 2000’s Chevy 1500 pump assemblies to 10”. Makes it a drop in, even has a sending unit for the fuel gauge. The rings are easy to fab up to affix it in the tank.

PS: I went and looked, didn’t take any pics of this process.

[devildog80]

Honestly the dual tanks can still be utilized, if nothing else just run the OEM tank as a saddle, with pump to push fuel into rear tank manually. That way you can run a smaller tank off the rear, but no matter which way you configure it, still weight under the truck. Just the difference of 30 some gallons, or 50 some gallons. If you plan a lot of road trips, add the 30+ in the rear, and keep the OEM.

[ntsqd]

I wanted to avoid the complexity dual tanks. Also would like to eventually center the rear diff and can’t do that with the OE tank in place.

Were I going to do dual tanks I would set them up on the same fill neck. Then, as suggested, pump from the OE tank into the rear tank. No chance of over-filling the rear tank by brain-fade that wa as any over-fill fuel would just transfer back to the OE tank via the fill neck. If I could figure out how to shut off the transfer pump when the OE tank ran dry then I would run in parallel with the EFI pump.