If the bolt holes line up, we can always work it out, with ol blue's upcoming little projects......

 

Awesome looking truck!!

 

Thanks Andy, but that grill is on the front of Ka'Bluey right now. (Ubereal2's truck)

I stopped by the upholsterer's place to show the dad how his kid did on the bodywork. (pretty good, actually) Apparently, he still feels bad, because he said he'll throw in a headliner to match my new seat in a couple weeks. He wants to wait until he orders some material so he won't have to pay separate shipping for mine. I can hardly wait!

 

That's a fine lookn' truck you got there earthquake.

 

This is my favorite thread on this whole site!! Lots of good stuff here!

 

It's been a while since I posted in this thread because, well, my truck has been so dependable and well behaved, I haven't needed to do anything to it.

NOW, ...the other day I tried to drag a truck around front so I could work on it. When I put the body on the 4x4 frame, the front pinion was wiped out, so the 4x4 didn't actually work. After getting stuck on wet grass, I unhooked the chain to the other truck, pulled my truck around front and ripped the front axle apart.

My truck now has working four wheel drive! I had the matched gear set sitting on my shelf for about a year, so I finally put it in. I'll get some pictures of the old unit today, but the pinion was SMOOTH. No teeth what-so-ever!

As a side note, if you have aluminum wheels that require the counter-sunk shoulder lug nuts and you haven't checked them in a while, go out and put a wrench on them. I was horrified to find out all my lug nuts were loose!

 

looks sweet! Such a cool transformation. What do you think you spent if you don't mind me asking. Looks like you pulled it off at an amazing price.

 

With all the wheeling and dealing and calling in favors and working off some parts at my friend's place. I'll go out on a limb and say I have around $2,500 in it minus my labor. So, ......$10K??!! But seriously, there's LOTS of hours in it.

Here's the front pinion I took out of it. Can you see why the front axle wouldn't drive?



The spiders and ring gear got a little chewed from the shrapnel.

 

Holy! Never seen a pinion go like that!

 

It's a new one on me and I've been doing this for 30+ years now. It's actually smooth. Like someone took some sand paper to it. No sharp edges or anything.

 

We call all those hours "sweat equity" in the housing business!!!

Must feel good to sit back and see that job for the price!

Yeah...never seen anything that smoked either! It almost looks like the from input shaft of a manual transmission.