well, here's a write up of an update for anyone following along. I haven't had a whole lot of extra time to get hands on with Tanya for a while, and don't have many pictures to post (and no access to the pics I have from my computer here at work). The last few weeks have been dedicated to strengthening my newly founded car club, getting Tanya and Evil Ways (my Camaro) to local shows and club gtgs (along with my wife's Caddy), and tackling some major home and house projects (new flooring going in and a complete landscaping makeover for the back yard). We'll just say time has been scarce for wrenching in the shop. But Tanya has beeen serving as a daily driver with little to no complaining, and she is still a delight to drive.
I have been collecting quite a pile of parts for a few big jobs to come up soon however, so big that I am running out of places to keep them that don't require moving boxes around to get vehicles in and out of my shop. I need to get under Tanya and find out what gear ratio she has in the rear, i am suspecting to find at least 4.11s if not 4.53s or higher the way she winds out. My other 65 has a rear ratio of 3.73 so i have been gathering parts to swap the rear ends out. Another project is new wheels and tires, well....the tires are new, but I think the wheels are 20 years old if not older. I'll save the details for a surprise, but I will say that based on the collective style I have seen here there probably won't be many fans. But that's ok, she is MY truck after all.
I have also been working on getting together parts for a conversion to a disc brake front end. My conversion is based on the 73-87 front swap, with a mixture of new and old parts. Along with that conversion Tanya will go another 2" lower with lowered spindles and spacers and a c-notch in the rear (along with new shocks to replace the air shocks and match the fronts). Also I am trying to get things together to finally put some color on her, I really don't like primer gray, especially with the original color poking through everywhere. Oh, and I still have a pile of parts hanging around to pull and re-seal the engine, as well as give it a good and thurough tune up.
So hopefully, when the cold weather comes around I can finally have all of this accomplished. It's quite a bit to bite off, but bit by bit I want to get it all nailed down over the next couple months. I have tonight and tomorrow night off, so I will try to take and post some pics of what has been going on. And as you can read, I have a lot to keep me busy so I can keep posting more new pics.
