Well I've been slacking on updating the thread so ya'll will just have to bear with me and step back in time to about last November. I had just gotten back from the motorcycle race and got to work on the next set of mods to the truck.
Here is a better picture of the new back window. It worked perfectly! I should have replaced the old one a long time ago.
I slapped back on the grill after a fresh coat of rustoleum. I fiberglassed the cracks and filled in the dodge lettering. So far it has held up without cracking.
After that I set my sights on the old bed frame. I had intended to go back through it again and I had a bunch of ideas. First things first I took out the main side boards, added some supports and then covered them in fleece.
Before
During
I started building top supports with cutouts for some doors but I didn't get time to cover them.
I threw them together as best as I could, put them on top of the boxes and bolted it all down. Eventually I will pull it apart again and finish it up. Everytime I seem to work on the truck last minute before I leave on a trip and this was not an exception. I got the boxes 80% done though and the new setup worked pretty well. Somewhere in there I made up a whole new set of curtains with velcro sewed on to hold them in place. The new curtains worked great but the very back curtain needs a bit of perfecting.
After that was all tossed in the truck I threw a mattress in the back and headed up to nashville to pick up a friend. We ran up north to Kentucky to check out Mammoth cave. There is a nice state park up there so we parked off in the woods and planned to take a tour in the morning. In the morning we woke up to a nice little campsite off a dirt road. Not a bad place to camp.
The cave tour was very cool. We ended up taking a couple different tours and staying an extra night because we enjoyed the first tour so much.
We ended up going back to the same spot in the woods to camp again. It worked just fine. We had a movie to watch on the laptop, some beer, food, and a nice crisp night air. It was very nice.
The next day after our second cave tour we headed out to Maker's Mark to take a tour there too.
The Maker's mark tour was really cool! They gave us a couple samples of some of their brews and I have to say if you get a chance to try some I would definetly recommend the maker's mark 46. After that we headed back out to Nashville and caught a little live music.
Fun Fun.
All too soon though it had to end and she had to fly back to Cali. But it was a great weekend and one I will remember fondly.
After that trip I found an acceptance letter to the local college's nursing school sitting in the mailbox. Ever since then I have been pretty busy with class but I have found time to fix a thing or two. My grandmother offered me her car to drive to class so the truck has been getting some attention to the steering. So far I have added a new u-joint to the steering shaft, replaced the tie rods, replaced the kingpin springs and bushings, and pulled the seat to start upholstery. At some point I will take apart the system in the bed to finish upholstering all that and I just got some taller rear blocks to level out the truck a bit more so those have to go on sometime. A month or so back my bike's engine developed a pretty loud knock so it is on the bench right now too.
I'll take some more pictures next week and get an up to date post up. So far all the fixes to the steering have made an amazing difference.