A day and a wake up and Dad will be here. I'm just back from the Great Cheese State (WI) and the last of the really hard work is done. I loosened all the bolts securing the bed to the frame and got it lined up pretty well. Well enough to get the cross bucks in place and drill the holes for the wooden edge pieces. All the bolts lined up and a bit of wrenching and the bed is square and snug. The hard work is completed, the rest of it, Dad and I can handle together...though I suspect I'll do a lot of the underside torqueing. I'm gonna have Dad on Fetch/Carry, Paint Brigade, Parts Placement and Overall Supervision. It'll be a good day spent together capped with a ride to the corner store for a cigar and a coke. Sorta like the old days but then it was a walk to the corner store for Penny Candy and a Coke.
And here is the heat shield installed just over the hump in the exhaust. This was a rather cracked and brittle section of the original bed wood. Nothing fancy, just some light galvanized sheet metal riveted into the position this optional "accessory" would have been had it been installed when new. I suppose I oughta find a good pipe smith here local to bend up a new exhaust, that one in the picture is looking pretty frail and that old glass pack muffler is more than a bit annoying at speed.
