Well, a week of work took me almost 8 Months.
My last update, I had the rear end bolted in. It's taken me all this time to finally get it all painted, order some earlier year C4 IRS aluminum dog bones on eBay, get new poly bushings installed (I did acquire an arbor press recently that lit that fire) and re-assembled.
The aluminum arms are really a huge visual upgrade. I'm sure Chevrolet has their reasons for changing them, but I'll stick with the more attractive option.
Since that was done and I wouldn't need quite as much unrestricted access to everything, I decided to finish the longbed to shortbed conversion and chop the bed.
I measured the Jackalope's shortbed to get distances to fender bolt holes as reference points. I wanted to keep the welds on the edges, so I cut at seams and pulled the supports in.
Re-welding the spot welds did leave dots in the bed, I wish I'd have approached that differently in hindsight... i should have filled the holes completely while the supports were off the truck, smoothed them, drilled smaller holes that would accommodate a smaller tack and reduce heat, and tacked them on. If you find this thread by searching for tips to convert your bed... take the extra time to do this step. It won't take long, I just didn't sleep on the idea first.
I also accidentally made the bed pockets too large! Whoops. I guess when I finally get back to it, I need to slow down to speed up!
I did add a bit of a flourish at the end of the bed... rather than chopping the top rail flush, I extended it and added a curve back in towards the bed. I really like how it turned out, and if I dont like it later, I can easily cut it off.
NO MORE DILLYDALLYING! I'm going to be putting regular work in.