Well did I finish in time? Did I make my goal? Wait... I bet you saw the photo next to this already... dang... well just come read the story anyway...
"I am convinced that this truck is trying to kill me. I think it is winning."
Day's 21 22 23 & 24
Well... if you have been following along from Day 1 you would know that the plan was to have the truck complete and driving by today. Well, if you are reading this today you know that the goal was not met. The truck is close to being complete, well the rear half anyway, and I have bought myself (literally) another week to work on it. So now the drop dead date to finish it is Monday June 4th, and I plan to take it on a 500mile road trip that day so I sure hope its done and working.
Anyway, onto the updates. Despite not finishing the truck I did get a lot done on this long weekend. You may have noticed that it almost looks like a truck again. I managed to complete the bed cage this weekend. It is built out of 1 3/4" .120 DOM and 1 1/2" .120 DOM tubing. Where it contacts the frame has also been platted. There are still a couple tubes I want to put in, but for the most part it is complete.
As you may have also noticed there is now a fuel cell sitting in the tube work. I also started mounting the fuel cell. Once the cell is completely mounted I can plumb and wire it in and hope the truck starts. This truck happened to have a returnless fuel system which at first appeared to be easier to plumb, until I figured out that the pressure regulator is incorporated into the stock fuel pump. What does this mean? It meant a trip to the local hot-rod shop was in order to pick up an external fuel pressure regulator and an expensive handful of AN fittings. With any luck I will have this all hooked up in the next few days.
I also picked up one of the biggest pieces that I still needed, the new tone
ring. I had to relocate the tone ring and vehicle speed sensor from the rear
axle (where it was in the stock 8.8) to the drive shaft flange on the rear of
the transfercase. A friend of mine designed and drew it in CAD then he had it
cut by waterjet. I still need to build a bracket for the sensor and it should be
good to go. This piece was so important because my year truck uses this to sense
the speed of the vehicle and uses it for not only the ABS but also the speedo
and to calculate the auto trans shift points. Yea, its kind of important.
So that is pretty much it for updates from this weekend. Stay tuned this week to see if I indeed make my new goal, or if I fail once again.
Jason Gonderman
Online Editor
Photo Captions:
- Start of the bed cage
- A little bit further along on the bed cage
- Completed bed cage
- Completed bed cage
- Fuel Cell mockup
- Fuel Cell mockup
- New tone ring