So there's a nice
story about this truck but long of the short. Its a deal I couldn't
pass up. Flew to Orlando, Fl and drove it 1900 Miles back to Minnesota.
It was originally bagged by Drop Zone of Kissimmee, Fl and to say the
least they did a horrible job on it. It features a nice mono leaf rear
setup with slam Re 7's behind and under the rear axle. It has one shock!!
Yes you read it right one shock. Passenger rear and its blown from rubbing
the mount. No front shocks, no sway bar and Slam Re 6's for the front
held in with S-10 cups. A 5 gallon tank that isn't bolted down in the
bed and a DC 5000 compressor. My plans are to redo the rear. Aluminum
fuel cell with stock pump, Parallel 4-link with panhard, sleeves in
front of the axle, Bilstein shocks front and rear, get the factory sway
bar back in this thing, over body drop the bed so there is no notch
cover, mount tank and new compressors under bed, Z front frame section
and most importantly get this thing laying frame. Follow along.....
individual switches for the corners with a nice white dot on one
side to let you know which way is up.
Tank isn't bolted down. The lines
hold it in place
I can't believe it made it 1900 miles back
like this. If it wasn't mono leafed it probably would have sheared
this a long time ago.
Notice the one shock. How a shop charges
money and gives the keys back to the customer with one shock is
beyond me.
Thats a 7/16" bolt holding
a shock in place that has a 1/2" through hole. It pushed
the insert out and caused the shock to rub on the side of the
mount
Looks nice
Even
though it had one shock it was blown and not doing much good.
TIG
cut
the old notches out and welded in the new ones. the old notches
were in the wrong spot not to mention different spots from each
other. The mono leaf is also off and the axle is a half inch forward
on the passenger side vs. the driver side. We'll have it straightened
out soon enough.
bed
is over body dropped 5 inches.
We removed the old bulkhead to scratch
build a new one.
Parallel 4-link built from 1" 3/16"
DOM tubing with 3/4"-16 endlinks. All brackets and 4-link
are TIG welded and built in house
Tig welded 4-link mounts
4-link and panhard bar welded in place
Just
the start of something simple.
Rear
bed filler panel.
Hard
to tell from the pic but its converted from one piece to two piece
driveshaft.
20
Gallon fuel cell to fit in stock location.
Rear
tube work all finished up. It needs to be broken down, finished
welded, Blasted and primed and painted.
Compressor
mounts.
The
front upper cups pulled out. These appear to be a set of lower
S-10 Cups that have been hacked to pieces. As I'm redoing the
front I keep finding all sorts of treasures like this.
Freshly blasted. Now its time for prime paint
and Clear.
All primed, painted and cleared
Not a modification you see to often. We cut
the hump out of the rail and straightend the rail out. Now the
truck will lay full frame instead of the hump.
Cut the front clip off to Z the frame
modded the engine crossmember and motor mounts
TIG
Pie cut the top of the front clip.
This gives me a smoother transition from
rail to rail.
Welded in 2" higher than stock you can
see how much nicer the tops of the frame transition to each other.
Now it needs top, bottom and side plates.
Fish plates all welded up.
Tight squeeze after the Z but the clear the
steering shaft by a 1/4"
Swapping in some 2004 Mercury Mountaineer
leather seats with full power options.