blueberry.taco build and adventures

That bumper holder is pretty genius.

 

Is that bolted to your jack? I was thinking the plate that normally resides there was just a pin resting in a hole.

 

depends on the jack. this HF one has a bolt-on cup.

 

Major milestone!

Truck made its maiden voyage with the new rear suspension.
It successfully backed its way down, turned around and backed up the driveway again for more front end work.
Alignment is pretty bad right now, I'll try to get that done this coming weekend.
After that it's getting pretty close to seeing some road time.

It was nice seeing the blue in the sunlight for the first time in a looong time.
Although keen eye would notice a slight reduction of voodoo blue on the front end. Which probably isn’t a bad thing.

GMRS and weboost antenna mounted, we'll see how I like the giant weboost thing right there....



my dog was clearly not impressed...

 

I've never been a fan of large antennas on front bumpers usually seen on the Australian trucks, but to each their own.

 

I'd prefer to place it anywhere else but the future plans of having a cabover camper limits me to pretty much only the front bumper as a reasonable option

 

Awesome build! Which camper are you considering?

 

I actually already have an order placed for a four wheel camper fleet.
unfortunately wait times are over a year so I still have a while to wait.

 

got more wiring done, switchpros sure does make things easy.
reran the compressor wiring to go to the fuse block on the powertray, hook up the light bar and thought i was clever hooking the backlighting to the compressor enable.



Ran a 10gauge wire to feed an in-cab power distribution unit, a pair of 14 gauge wires that are currently not allotted for anything but for future proofing, a front camera cable/harness, a GMRS antenna cable, and a Weboost antenna cable all through the stock safety feature harness grommet on the pass side firewall.
What a pain! the stock harness is wrapped in a gooey sticky caulk-like mess of goop inside the grommet and passing all these wires including the RCA connector for the camera was quite miserable, even with the added access I gained by removing the SLEE compressor mount tray and the airbox.
But the peace of mind from not adding any additional holes for water to get in, and not tearing the stock grommet and maintaining full sealing was worth it.

once into the cab, i routed the front camera and GMRS stuff up and around the glovebox, following the existing harness in the dash structure.
I plan on having the in-cab power distribution live in the "back seat" area so I'll be running wires up and down under the pass side door sill.
I put everything back together again for now but I know for sure I'll be taking it apart just like this a couple more times, should be much faster next time now that I know how things come apart.

 

I really appreciate the labeling and cleanliness of the wiring.

 

This simple little jumper took weeks to put together due to an online dealership who went out of business after I placed the order but didn’t notify me, and hung up on me most of the time after trying to call them, and then a 2nd dealership who never called to let me know the housing came in.
But it’s done now and I have factory bed lights that work!



Add this to another the list of those “I should have made it a long time ago” tools. Vice mounted and powered mini press brake. Worked beautifully for making tidy bends on 1/8” 304 bar stock today.


Fancy new press brake let me bend up a nice little bracket to hold up my front camera and air chuck


and alignment time! which means super close to first drive time!

 

Oh man that’s brilliant. I just squeeze the metal in the vice and hammer it to make bends, or cut and weld, but this is much more eloquent.

 

yea, i used to do that, and then up until this I just used and angle and a round bar and sandwiched but it was always a pain lining up everything while tightening the vice. Usually required a forehead or a knee to make work but no longer!
oh here's a pic of that concept


to be honest I should have just bought this eastwood thing when I was first shown it by a friend but of course i didnt and didn't want to wait around for it to show up if i ordered it now.
homemade works just fine!
https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-6-inch-vise-press-brake.html

 

first test drive to the carwash!

 

oh yea, I made little brackets to temporarily keep the stock fog lights until i upgrade them

 

changed the preload on the front springs to get closer to the design ride height spec'd by OME/ARB


and pulled the entire backseat area out to prep for more storage space plus a dog platform, added some sound deadener stuff while it's accessible.

 

Are you getting the back panel from a utility package, or going all custom? I'll guess the latter.

 

mixture of both. I'm getting the utility back panel for the top half, but will be cutting all the spot welds on the lower cubby sheet metal structure so that area will all end up custom

 

truck got to do some truck stuff for once.

 

Bead of silicone around the snorkel to fender gap to keep crap from getting stuck in that seam (like all the aluminum chips/dust flying around the garage this weekend)