Recently, a friend of mine has been prompting me to post up a little bit of the transformation process my truck has gone through in the past 6 years that I have owned it. It's still not done, it probably never will be.
This is what I started with, more or less:
That is the earliest pic that I can find of the thing, its still about 5 or 6 months after I got it. it was rotted really bad, the driver side floor was about gone, and so was about half of the passenger side, there were no cab corners left and the radiator support was pretty much gone along with the fenders, doors, and the factory bed, which I tore off and scrapped as soon as I got it. It had no brakes either, but it ran pretty well for having 234,000 miles on the clock and not being ran in 5 years. It was pretty bare bones as far as options, it had a vinyl bench seat, AM/FM radio, power steering, 3.45 gears, an FM145, 1350 T case, 225/75/15 tires and the tow package, supposedly...
Now jump forward 6 years and this is how it sits:
It took quite a bit of work to get here, I swapped the cab sometime in 2005, the rust was just too bad to fix. It now sports a Skyjacker 6" class II lift, Belltech 6400 shackles, Explorer 4 door leafs, and 33 inch Cooper Discoverer LT tires mounted on Cragar wheels. I swapped out the stock 3.45 gears for 4.10 geared axles, I'm still running the Dana 28 at this time but it's going to be thrown on the scrap heap as soon as I can find some gears for the Dana 35 I have for it. The rear axle houses a lockright locker. I added York onboard air, a 130 amp Taurus alternator, and another battery. The FM145 died along the way and it was replaced with an M5OD. The original motor still ran strong, but at 279,000 miles it was smoking and eating quite a bit of oil but strangely had no lifter tick, I installed a lower mileage 89TM 2.9 around thanksgiving of last year, along with an Explorer radiator. I just recently converted it to MAF and I am very happy with the result. Both of the bumpers along with the bed were custom made and welded by a friend of mine, who also happens to be a member on this site. The factory radio was replaced by a sony headunit, sending power to Pioneer and JVC spealers, along with a Cadence Q3000 and Cadence Mallet.
Most of the things I did to it, I learned about right here, I learned lots along the way too. Some of you may remember how ignorant I was when I started posting here around June of 2004. I thank you all for your patience and all the info I have learned.
this truck has been my DD for the past 3 years and it goes great, it just turned 284,000 miles yesterday, There is still more to be done but overall I'm pretty happy with the results. I doubt I'll ever get rid of it, too many memories and too much time invested now. I'm going to post up some more pictures as I find them.
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