Thanks Jim, I couldn't be happier with them. I might eventually do an H4 conversion as well.

 

I might have missed it, can you post up more about where you got the lights?

 

These should be the exact lights I purchased. I bought them through amazon. I am very pleased with them.

 

Well it's been a while since I posted. The truck actually ran into some issues. I was doing some mild off roading on the farm, when I flexed the rear end through a ditch I lost one of my lift blocks. Anyway, long story short this is what happened:


It turns out that the reason for the failure was the leaf spring retaining plate. My stock one was heavily rusted and actually had holes in it from all the corrosion. The strength of the plate was so compromised that the plate bent and allowed the U-bolts to loosen up. Once the U-bolts were loose enough the 2" lift block fell out and all hell broke loose. It sheared the leaf pack bolt causing the spring pack to separate. Also, when the axle shifted back it pulled the drive shaft off the slip yoke, but luckily didn't break it. It also destroyed one of my new nitrogen shocks.



I was able to get the truck back together thanks to a couple good buddies and a Hi-Lift jack. I drove it home in front wheel drive and decided to rebuild the whole rear suspension.

The next week I ordered all new Skyjacker FR54 springs (so I didn't have to use a stacked lift block) and new M95 Monotube nitrogen shocks from Summit Racing. I also bought some new leaf spring retaining plates that are made of 3/8" steel plate and some new Spicer U-joints from Jeff's Bronco Graveyard.







Ultimately I'm glad the whole thing happened because it gave me the opportunity to build the truck better and stronger. The new springs ride much better than the old ones with the lift block. The also sit about 2 inches higher than the old springs with the lift block. I really like the new stance. It was perfectly level before, now it's got a little bit of rake.

In this picture there is about 500lbs of stuff in the bed, so unloaded it's slightly higher.


Currently I'm doing a little bit of body work. The bed is going to look about the same as it did before. I did notice that truck has had several patch panels in it's life (poorly graphed by the way) It explains why there was so much Bondo on the bed. I was planning on replacing the bed anyway, so this will all just be temporary.

 

Jeez, bet you're glad it all happened BEFORE you got a new bed on there! Good job getting it back together. Guess that's a good selling point for the upgraded rear leaf springs.

 

I would have been sick if this happened to a clean straight bed. I will absolutely not use lift blocks again either. I'm glad I did it the right way this time. On a side note, I'm very pleased with the skyjacker springs. I wish I did an entire skyjacker lift. At the time I didn't think it would be worth spending 3 times as much to go Skyjacker over Rough Country, but it is.

 

Awesome build. That picture of the rear axle made me cringe.

 

Thank you!

Yeah, I wasn't too pleased with the whole situation. At least nothing major broke and the truck is now better than ever. So no harm, no foul.

 

Well, I got the body work done on the bed. It turned out okay, but not great. I didn't spend much time making it perfect. I'm going to replace the bed once I find a good straight one, so there was no point making it perfect. I just want it to look better than it did. It actually might look better than it did before the incident (wasn't perfect to begin with) so ultimately I'm happy with it.

Not a great picture of the work, but you get the idea.

 

Hey man you got any more pics of this?

 

Pictures of what? The truck, or the body work I did to the bed? I don't really have any more picture of what I did to the bed. Here are some recent pictures of the truck.







My personal favorite photo of my truck:

 

Been a while since I posted anything related to my truck. The 79 is getting some engine upgrades!!!
I've been fighting valvetrain issues for a while now. Once the engine heated up I would get valve ticking. I've narrowed it down to the lifters. Even when the lifters were brand new they seemed off. My uncle primed them himself (He has built many many engines) and said from the start that the lifters didn't feel right. Against my better judgement we put them in the engine anyway. They were QualCast lifters (sent to me by Tim Meyer with the rest of my engine parts) I'm not familiar with the company so I've decided to put in some Comp Cams lifters to match the Comp XE256 cam that I'm running. While I'm in the engine I've decided to replace my rockers with some Scorpion roller rockers. They were expensive, but damn they are pretty!

New Comp lifters:


My beautiful new Scorpion roller rockers. I went with a pedestal mount so that I wouldn't need to re-machine the heads.


To aid in priming the lifters, I've currently got the lifters soaking in some new oil.


I got all my parts from Summit Racing. Summit is a fantastic company and I've used them several times. Their customer service is great. Shipping is very fast and is also free for all orders over $99 (which my orders always are). While ordering parts I came across this banner and had to buy it! It's roughly 6ftx3ft. Now I have to find a place in the shop to hang it.

 

Last shot of the truck before it goes back under the knife:

 

Always nice to see new parts.

Summit Racing is great. I consider myself lucky to live 5 minutes from one of the 3 locations! They have helped me a bunch over the years.

 

I love the stance of your truck, the stock, no frills body, the height and wider tires on the Alcoas looks just right. My '79 is going to look quite similar when im done the 4x4 conversion