[argonaut]

Spent most of the Independence Day celebrating by working on two, great American made pickups!

I got both frame rails painted. So now its on to the cross-members and brackets. They should go pretty quickly. I need to pick up some more paint.

I did layout the new holes for the power steering gearbox, and welded up the three for the old box. I also noticed that the three stock gearbox holes are mirrored on the right side frame rail. Weird, as I don't think I've ever seen a right hand drive pickup... I had already painted the right rail so I didn't bother welding up those holes. Its kind of bugging me now though so I might have to weld them up and touch up the paint.

I made a template for the new gearbox and matched the new steering centerline with the old one. Then I slide the template along the centerline until I was at the one spot where I could keep all bolts in the frame. The placement will be fine with the stock 4x4 gearbox and I'm hoping there won't be any issues using a 2wd gearbox later when I go to crossover steering. I didn't have any 2wd gearboxes lying around to check with.





In between spraying coats of paint I started tearing useless junk off the donor 73 K20 pickup so that I can get the body off soon.I removed a lot of crazy wiring from the diesel swap, the dual battery upgrade, etc. Apparently this previous owner didn't share my penchant for clean design. I need to get the body off asap so that I can get at the 73 frame, remove the leaf spring hangers, and get them laid out on the 66 frame. I really want to get the 66 chassis rolling around again by the end of the month!