So things have been going nicely with truck lots of progress.
Today I cleaned the garage out and re-installed the original 8.8, it had a bent flange and axle shaft when I got the donor Ex, and I've had a placeholder axle in there for a while. The $39 wheel dollies I bought make an amazing difference in moving this stuff around.
Got the F150 bed floor tidied up and started measureing for the removal of the extra foot (it was an eight foot bed). The crossmembers may have to be moved around a bit but I'll use most of them.
We also dismantled the fifty five year old structure from the F1 bed and took the front panel out. It was really rusty allong the bottom and was smashed outward from years of hauling, so I bought a replacement. The bed sides are good enough for use, and with a little bodywork will look good.
I actually think putting too many new pieces on an old truck like these looks a little too sharp or something, a little imperfection is good.
Also managed to remove ALL the sheet metal from the truck, fenders, running boards, bed, basically everything except the cab and doors. It's all going out to
http://www.rustbustersofatlanta.com tomorrow to be bead blasted and put in primer - black primer I hope, so when I hang it all back on the truck it looks a lot like the final colour.
On the explorer side of things, now that the front clip is off, I have full access to the headers, so I can finally fit the Torque Monsters. That'll be doubly nice since I am completely out of storage room, I've been buying a massive numbers of tools lately. I now have a MIG a TIG a 30 gallon Air compressor (thanks to my wife, it was BD / Xmas present) a 3/8 rattle gun an air ratchet die grinder, angle grinder, drill, and a stack of incidentals like vice grips etc.
All up I am running out of places to put them, a nice problem to have.
Next up after the headers is the channel of the floor, which I am a bit scared of, because it's a lot more of a hard core hot rod project than I've tackled before. I need a bit more MIG practice before that happens.
Pics to follow soon.