My buddy brandon asked if I'd be interested in helping him build a drawer slide and storage system for his truck. He's very mechanically inclined and I am a woodworker by trade, so I said, how bout you help me get my intercooler installed, and I'll help with your drawers/sleeping deck. A deal was made and he drove down from norcal for the weekend and we got to work.
Brandons F150 with caravan camper 12" long travel, custom bumper front and rear and sliders, and some wood up top for the build. We pulled the wood into the wood and my truck into the shop as we had snow in the forecast for Friday evening - sunday evening.
With the truck in Brandon started pulling my truck apart and I started building his drawers. Things got interesting at the very end of friday evening. The Banks kit requires some cutting at the front of the truck. Brandons rule is, I never cut or drill into someone else vehicle. Since I had a lot to do on his drawers, I called in my lady to do the cutting. She is a pretty decent metal fabricator, so I felt good letting her do it. She got the hole cut for the right side, and was three quarters through the left side when the sawzall snagged and jumped and punctured the radiator. Damn. So we quickly got online to see if anyone had one in stock. Napa said they could have one by the next morning. That night we ran into our next slow down. The truck had an additional aftermarket trans cooler that the previous owner must have put in, which is great but it was mounted in the way of the where the new intercooler would sit, so we had to fab up a new bracket to fit it between the AC cooler and the radiator. Forgot to take a pic of that.
Next day I picked up the radiator first thing in the AM. We ran all new hoses for it while we were at it. Then wrestled all the new pipes in place. My reverse shackle kit made a few things an extremely tight fit, and def added some time to the process. After we finally got it all buttoned up, We started her up and pulled it out of the garage real quick so we didnt smoke ourselves out when we started it up to try and run the last bits of old coolant out.
Once we did that we ran into the most fun problem of the weekend. We went to add the new coolant into the radiator, and it just started leaking out the drain plug. pulled the drain plug and it looked like it was missing an o-ring. we searched the box to see if we missed anything, but no luck.
There she sat for the night. Bummed we couldnt button it up. Did I mention we got some snow this weekend? Called NAPA in the morning they asked us to send them a pic, and they were like, year thats def not the right plug. They gave us a new one and replaced the coolant I was out cause it leaked, which was cool. Fast forward to today, we got the plug, go to install it, and it wouldnt go in. turns out if wasnt the wrong plug, but half of it had broken off inside the radiator before we ever even pulled it. Now I still cant get my truck running. Called NAPA again and said I wanted to return the radiator, since I'm not in a rush to have brandon help me finish the project, I decided to just spend the extra $150 bucks to get the fully aluminum Mishimoto radiator, since the plastic on this one already caused problems.
So now, Im waiting for that. Should be here by the weekend, and my bumper is supposed to ship this week as well *fingers crossed*. At least the intercooler is in.
... try making a sandwich panel out of cheap stuff like luan skins, 25psi XPS, 1x2s, and PL Premium. Sanding the foam and texturing it seems to help it bond better.