I'm back home from my summer trip and made some more progress on the truck.
1) Cut a coil from the stock Mustang II springs and installed them. Still sits a little high but i don't have all of the weight on the front yet so I will fine tune ride height later.
2) Realized the steering rack mounts were way off center. Cut them off and centered the rack, necessitating a big notch cut from the cross member to clear the u-joint on the rack-end of the steering shaft. I still need to clearance a bit more and plate it, but that'll have to happen when the motor is out. I pray that is the last rework i have to do on that part of the truck. Never again will i piece together a suspension like this.
3) Made mounts for the rear dampers and finalized the leaf springs mounts. I wasn't able to use the Ranger shackles and hangers...the frame is just too wide. Good news is that the springs settled and ride height in rear looks pretty good. Bad news is that the right side spring has settled about and inch more than the left...both brand new, so don't know what's up with that. Guess i'll buy another new spring when i get closer to driving it.
4) A set of explorer wheels with 255/75-16 tires showed up and were mounted on the rear. I'm not going to go with a tire that tall when I buy a new set, but these helped me make sure the rear suspension was set up with probably the widest possible tire.
5) My daughter is very intrigued by the history of the truck. She wiped the door with some water to see if she could read the ghost of the old lettering. We were able to read it a bit, and after some Googling, found that the truck must have been used for service or sales for Smith-Roles, a Canadian company that made equipment for farmers, like generator-driven welders, bench grinders, etc. I would love to find one of those welders and haul it around in the back of the truck.
I didn't take many pics this trip...most of the work wasn't really impressive in photos. But we got one of the door and i really like the rear 3/4 view of the truck...
