Those tailgate letters look great, they really finish it off! I got 3 new bumpers, front & rear for my 69, and rear for my 83. I haven't had time to do any truck work lately though, I've been working on my sons deck which I just finally finished (actually I finished the deck a long time ago but been working on the ramp for months, and now it ALL finally finished).

 

Looks good Dave, until I see pollen die down some, I'm not gonna wash anything.
Wired up some puddle light mirrors on the sport Trac and started figuring out what I need to get to do a hydroboost swap on the f250. That booster is leaky, only good for a core. Not sure on the master, need to bleed it and check it. Had the hydroboost stuff for years, just cleaning up and finally doing something with it. Never been much crazy on how the brakes feel on the f250, I'm gonna try replacing the rabs module on the frame first with a ford NOS one I got off eBay.

 

Thanks guys the letters does finish off the back nicely.
I hear you on washing and pollen but I had the time, it was warm enough to do the letters and the truck needed a wash any way. Washing just the tail gate would look strange.
I don't need a light to know I step in a puddle my leaky shoe will let me know
It does look good.
Dave ----

 

I should wash and wax the 09 GM and the truck. Wax to protect the clear coat. The blue Merc is sort of yellow...

 

May keep me from stepping in dog crap at 5am

 

sorry progress on the bike has slowed to a halt as i been working alot lately ntm the pollen outside... yesterday i pulled a 12 hr shift at work which makes wanting to work on the bike on my off days that much more difficult from being beat...

i still need to drain the tank and get that sealed.. but havent yet...

but since i had to weld something for dad today i decided to fix something on one of the bikes stands thats been bothering me...

Decided to build the bike stand leg back up to shape. It was ground flat from someone leaning the bike over too far in turns. So i ground it flatter to get to some good material. But discovered when i started welding what i thought was solid bar was actually a hollow tube. Did get it welded back up. Then ground it back into shape so itll look like its supposed to.



i had to grind it down a little more to get to some good non rusted material.. little did i know the tube was hollow..



sorry for the pics being so dark.. i couldnt get the camera to focus right because of the sun... but this was after i built it up with welds..





rough ground it down into shape..





and the finish grounding that smoothed it back out..

 

Looks good
Some times it is best to step back from working on a project because if your hart is not into it that part of the job done will be sub par.

I hear you on long work days and not wanting to do anything on off days.
14 hours days outside in the heat and I didn't even want to do the need yard work when off.
That is why it took 4 years to rebuild my truck, that and if to hot or cold I would not or could not work on it.
Dave ----

 

So I have spent this week working on the rear bumper of my 83 Flareside.


The rear bumper that was on this truck when I got it was a step bumper that would go on a Styleside, too wide and too low for a Flareside.

The new bumper I ordered was for a 73-79 Flareside and cost $115 - quite a bit cheaper than the bumper listed for 80-85 Flareside, but the dimensions were the same (61 inches wide, 4-3/4 inches high). I can only assume the difference is in the placement / size of the bolt holes.

Even though the place I ordered it from said it was for 73-79, it came in a box that said "48-72 rear bumper"

I wasn't concerned about non-stock mounting locations, because I was fabricating my own mounts. I had these old Styleside bumper brackets off my 1969 F100 and decided I could just modify them.

I had to flip the brackets upside down and redrill one of the holes to make it fit. It stuck out much too far however.

I trimmed the nose of the bracket to clear the rear spring perch and trimmed off the excess.

Here you can see one side prepared compared to the original.

I got 2 pieces of 3/16 flat plate (4x12) which fit perfectly over the bumper bolt holes. I drilled out the mounting points (wow, what a difference a drill press makes. It took 15 minutes to drill one hole to 1/2 size using a regular drill, but once I borrowed my father-in-law's drill press, I was cutting new holes in 30 seconds each).

Fits perfect

To connect the 3/6 flat plate to the modified 69 bumper brackets, I decided to cut up the old spare tire brace. This one is pretty rusty and Dave had given me a much better one that was leftover from his truck.

I went to town on the old one.

After cutting & drilled them to bolt on, test fit looks good!

Good fit!

I clamped the bumper into place with the flat plate bolted on so that I could tack weld the brackets to the flat plate. It does look like it is drooping too low, but keep in mind the bed is currently held up about 1/2 above it's normal position, and that by drilling all the bumper bracket holes 1 size too big it gives me about 1 inch of adjustment up & down.

After finish welding & painting the brackets they are ready to go on the truck.

I rattle canned the new bumper with VHT "Ford Argent Silver" wheel paint and mounted it, looks great to me!

 

Looks great Now to paint the FORD on the tailgate the same color

 

spirits wanting to work on it. But the bodys more like "i dont think so lol". Everyone on the cap team (group i work with) are all worn out. Everyones tired. I didnt even want to get up to go to work today. And fought sleep at lunch today too. Ended up failing at that.

 

John, bumper looks really good.
I will have to measure the bolt spacing on mine & yours to see what is different with them.

On the 69 bumper brackets that you used and cut up can you get them aftermarket?
If not its a shame you did them in. Might have been able to sell them and get the right ones as there is a member in the 80-86 area that makes them now.
He also makes the Lic. plate mounting bracket, the radio speaker repair plate, the grille guard (kit forum you weld), and he is working on stripe kits for flare sides if you do 2 tone paint like I did.

Shawn, there is nothing wrong with a little nap at lunch time. Its your time to do as you wish no?
When I worked at the hospital up north there were a few guys in the other shops that would nap after they ate.
We had 45 min for lunch, 15 to eat and 30 to nap in my shop we could not do that as we were kind of on call during lunch.
Dave ----

 

Hey Dave, the bumper brackets for styleside trucks like mine are a dime a dozen. I put them on craigslist 2 years ago for $5 and still had no takers. lol. I don't know if I told you this, but my buddy and I have a 1970 parts truck that we went in half on, it has the original style bumper on it. So if anyone does happen to need or want brackets like that, I have a set there that I could get. I know about the guy who makes flareside bumper brackets for the 80-86, he is in the facebook group I joined. I don't know how much he sells them for, and since I wasn't sure if they would work with the 73-79 bumper I didn't even ask. One thing I was thinking of, the older ones use SAE hardware and the 80-86 have all metric bolts, so it could be something as simple as the bolt holes being a slightly different size, one made for 1/2 bolts and the other made for 14mm bolts?

I went ahead and did the front bumper as well. I took the silver painted bumper off the parts truck, to use on my Flareside. I noticed something I had missed up until now, this bumper used to be chrome. I could see it anywhere the paint had been scratched, as well as underneath the bolt heads. I toyed with the idea of removing the paint, but I realized something. No one would paint over a chrome bumper if it was in good shape, so I have to assume that there was rust or pitting on something that made the previous owner decide that paint was better. So I just went with it, cleaned it up, sprayed some primer on any spots that needed it, then I rattle-canned it with more of the VHT "Ford Argent Silver" wheel paint. Installed on the truck, looks good. Once I do the grill, I think it will match and look well together.

 

OK on the brackets so you did good there. Was worried you couldn't get but you have just the opposite can't give them away LOL.

Front bumper looks good but think it will need to come off when you swap the noses / radiator support around.
Dave ----

 

except when you might not wake back up to go back to work... that nap can get costly... lol

 

So 3 weeks ago, Tuesday March 31 to be exact I dropped my Sportsman 800 off to Lejeune motorsports for them to figure out the stall/stutter at 3400 rpms that it had. A week goes by with no update... finally on thursday April 9th they call me, they told me 2-3 days tops. So when they called me they didn't do any diagnose work just some story about trying to set the TPS since I had replaced that and set it with a volt meter myself. So they were going to start diagnosing and let me know. I call the following Thursday and they hadn't touched it but were getting to it that afternoon and would call Friday... no call friday. So I was setting there just after 9 Saturday morning and picked it up, after having to wait for 30+ minutes for the service manager to come talk to me.... my theory is they decided to start working on it while I waited, since I could hear it reving up as I waited.

Anyways I checked a few things and cleaned/dielectric greased a couple sensor plugs and now it seems to be running pretty decent. I have a few parts on order for it since the codes it has point to one of the plugs I cleaned and greased, and it's a known fail point for the Polaris four wheelers.