Glad to see your getting back at it! I've finally got some time to work on mine. Lets see the progress!

 

I guess not.......
Good to here your back at it!

 

Here's what everyone's been waiting for... pics!

1st off I made this. Something I've been contemplating for a long time but never got the motivation to do til recently. It's a cradle for the fuel tank. I just hope I don't have to re-work it too much as I brain farted & didn't think about mounting strap locations when I threw it together. Hopefully we'll see soon enough. If Santa brings what's on my list I can get this fuel tank finalized & plumbed!




Next it was onto the rear brake lines & trying to wrap that up. I think I'm trying to finalize as much as I can on the back end & move forward from there. Still not 100% sure on a "game plan" yet though, and my ADD makes it so I work on random stuff as I see it.

Soft lines & stainless tabs to secure them was 1st







Next came the feed line. I modified the stock bracket for the brake line here. I cut about an inch off the end & just drilled a hole for the -3 bulkhead fitting.




I had bent up the hard line from the front back to that stock tab years ago. Remind me never to bend hard lines until I have the brackets figured out!!! With the slight change in location of the fitting connection I had to re-bend the stainless hard line to make it work. It was long so I had to add a bunch of misc. bends in an effort to "shorten" it. This worked out in the end as it tucked the hard line up within the cavity of the frame rail a bit more, which should protect it from the shock body that is right next to it. You can see the hole for the shock mounting bolt in the upper right of the pic.



While I was messing with this hard line I bolted up the edel clamps to hold it to the frame. This coupler nut is a little trick I stole from a buddy. It will function as a stand off for another edel clamp. I've still got 2/0 batter cable, 1/2" fuel feed hose and 5/16" fuel return hose to run down the frame rail here & clamp down


In doing the edel clamps here I decided to bolt down the e-brake cable bracket I had set up the last time I was working on the truck in May. I had it off to paint the holes & never bolted it in at that point. It is now bolted down & the cables are snapped into place in the drilled out body mount tower.

Next on the addenda is to weld this tab on the axle for the tee/bulkhead and then make up the hard lines. You can also see the little aluminum spacer I mad for the axle breather tube since the stock brake block/spacer thing got removed.

 

Hey man, any progress is progress. Looking good. Gotta love AN fittings for brakes and such. Makes life soo much easier. I used the little coupler nuts to stand the edel clamps for my fuel lines off the frame, but i never thought about using them to stack multiple lines...that's a good idea!

 

Got the tab welded last night. Hope to bend up the hard lines today.

Welding the tab was slightly interesting...

What to do (or possibly what not to do) when the ground cable is about 18" too short to reach the truck on the side yard. Sure I could have moved all sorts of crap in the garage & rolled the welder a bit, but I was being lazy. That's the ground cable from a battery, from a lamborghini actually. It was the biggest gauge thing I could find with ends already on it to clamp to.

 

See my thread for shop safety

haha jk

On a side note, has anyone thought about using Swagelok type fittings for brake lines (stainless steel, not brass)? We use these for everything tube related at work and they are very quick and easy to install, especially compared to flaring a brake line. Just a thought, not sure if I'd go with them, just because of the price. But it would be alot cleaner and easier.

 

Chase,

Glad to hear things are going well! I know the difficulties of being cramped for space too - I built a small 12x12 shed over the summer and it took me several long weekends (like 4), and the wife was slowly losing patience as the project took much longer than anticipated. Luckily, it got the mowers, lawn equipment, pressure washer, etc all out of the garage so I could have more space, which was instantly filled up by other random crap.

My solution was to throw everything away - Not literally, but I've filled up the big wheelie trash bin twice, and the recycling bin once, just from random crap from the shop that I was keeping that I have no real need for. (Old spare headlights from a friends dodge that was sold two years ago, shock absorbers from a motorcycle I never owned but somehow had parts for, etc).

Back on topic - It's good you're slowly making progress - and we'll all eagerly devour the pictures when you post them up. Just by watching how you're doing this makes me jealous that you're as good at fabricating as you are!

 

Nice to see some forward progress! I hope you keep the momentum going and finish this bad boy!

 

X2 little buddy, x2

 

1st off - thanks for the continued encouragement to keep on it guys!

See my thread for the swagelock
Seriously though, buried somewhere in here is what I did, or rather will do as this beast just sits. BUT, I got a deal on the valves for buying 5 at once and since I needed 2 at the time I did it (1 for this & 1 for the supercab which sold), thinking I'd sell the remainder to buddies. Well none of it sold as I never did anything about it. They just sit here (which leads to below), so if you're interested I'd be glad to pass on the deal I got! I'd have to look it up but I think the valves were $20 each vs. the $50 each I was seeing everywhere else.



I need to do a purge like you describe as it would clean up my life (garage) and cheer up my wife! I am just such a hoarder I have a hard time letting go, even when it is the shock for a motorcycle I never owned!!! I'm getting better at it, but stuff related to this truck won't eave til it's done. Either will stuff for other projects, even if the projects aren't being touched for years
Heck, I have 99% of the parts to make a SWEET prerunner sitting in storage. ALL of the parts from the supercab are here & waiting until I can convince the wife to let me buy another hunk of metal & build. Not sure it'll ever happen, but until it's shut down officially (like my ranger, which is going up for sale after years of sitting), I'm holding on to hope!

 

So I just went out to the truck on lunch & put a couple coats of paint on the tab on the axle.

I also made the mistake of starting to try & look a little bit at the under hood wiring as my thought was to look at running the battery cables next while I wait it out til Christmas & see if Santa brings me some pushloc hose & fittings for the fuel lines...

It is a bit of a shock, although I guess it really shouldn't be after 8 + YEARS of sitting since I tore the truck apart, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what much of the wiring is. I did label a few things, which is barely legible now, but much of it I guess I figured I'd remember. I mean I did have a goal of having this thing back up & running within a year
I guess it's time to pull out the wiring diagrams and also dig out all those links I saved on how/what to wire on the cummins, but I can only assume I have a lot of time playing with spaghetti coming up.
The original plan was to re-wire the entire truck and I have a painless wiring universal kit sitting here. The more recent thought after dealing with a bunch of wiring on my alfa (3+ years ago now!) was to keep much of the stock wiring & clean up runs for the headlights & other stuff where needed while installing new wiring for power seats, door locks, etc. and then a new fuse block to carry it all.
Who knows where I will end up...

 

Man Im glad to see you back on this thing again! And I understand about the ADD. Many days I go to the shop with a plan, sometimes even start on that plan, Then something catches my eye and Im off on a tangent...

 

Last night I spent a small amount of time on the truck, but that means 1 step closer. I actually stayed focused too! Easier to do when I'm only messing with it for a 1/2 hour or less...

Rear hard lines are in and tightened down & rubber hose has been added to a couple potential rub points on the braided soft line.

After I took these pics I zip tied the axle breather to the brake line coming down from the frame.

Tonight I hope to get the limit straps & bump stops on & then look at the battery quick connect lines & a couple other things to get the rear end closer to being wrapped up.

 

Got a little side tracked again last night, but progress is progress so I'll take it.

I messed with cleaning up one little hole on the fuel tank fill plate that I never finished. With the tank sitting in the elements in raw aluminum it has oxidized a fair bit. The top is the worst part as that is where the dust collects. The plan this morning was to sand & paint it, but it's cold & grey outside vs. sunny & warm like yesterday, so that will have to wait a bit.

After the tank I got at messing with some anderson clamps I had bought for quick connect power at the front & rear of the truck. My winch & also a set of jumper cables have these anderson clamps on them, so I'm wiring the truck for that. With the anderson clamps, I thought different colors meant different patterns or shapes, ie: red will fit with red, and blue and grey are shaped differently so they can't connect to red, etc. Apparently the color codes are different between different manufacturers, so my eBay red ones don't clip into the red ones I already had. Nothing a little grinding on the clip couldn't take care of. Plus I finally found a use for the dremel that typically sits in the tool box untouched... I had a small burr for the thing & used that to slot the clips. You can see on the bottom clip in the pic where I had marked a black line - that is what needed to be cut off.

 

Such an AWESOME Build, not sure how I've missed it until now, but I just spent all week reading it, I love your attention to detail, great job