Just been driving the snot out of the truck. Power steering box with no pump hooked up takes getting used to but its not bad anymore. I wont be sad, though, with the LS in and power steering again.
This month is crazy with work travel so not sure how much progress will be made but I'll keep at it. Have to repair my two modern vehicles too (alternator on a v8 4runner is time consuming, have to make a splash shield for it for the winter too to keep the entire engine bay from rusting away, and general maintenance on the Honda daily driver.)