December 2018 - Front sheetmetal is installed for good! And actually, I tightened down all of the body mounts while I was at it. Fenders, inner fenders, cowl, and the grille are all bolted up, aligned as best I could get them and mounted for good. I guess I will just have to get lucky that the hood aligns well with everything mounted. It feels good that most everything is mounted and bolted down. For the longest time, I would putt around the property afraid parts would just be falling off and scattered throughout the property. :dustin:
I couldnt use the original hood latch support because its real estate is now occupied by the intercooler and I didnt want the grille to be the only support for the hood latch so I made a bracket to run under the intercooler and bolt to the bottom of the core support. I cut the original bracket to follow along side of the intercooler. The new support bracket has threaded holes in it to bolt throught the original bracket and into the new support bracket. The hood latch and the inner grille can now still bolt up just like factory and will have more than enough support.
New 1/4" bracket in place
Bolts through the original bracket and into the threaded holes of the new bracket
Bottom view where it bolts to the bottom of the core support
So after starting and running the engine a few times lately, I noticed something that I dont remember noticing before. The throttle linkage/pedal was sticking just slightly. Ive read that some have had some "bucking" issues with the throttle linkage when missing the bottom return spring. There was a clear mounting location on the linkage for the lower return spring but I couldnt hardly even make up at spot to hook the other end of the spring on towards the front of the injection pump just to get by. This was probably good because it forced me to come up with a much more permanent solution to the issue. The only place I could come up with to test it was to hook it onto one of the bolt heads of the pump. This gave me a proximity of where to put the new mounting hole for the other end of the spring.
Based on some searches, this is the lower spring mount from 94-96 pumps. It attaches to a stud/pin on the linkage(which mine is missing) and then to a bracket with a similar stud/pin that bolts to I would assume either a pump mounting bolt or another point on the bottom/front of the injection pump.
This is the lower throttle linkage return spring style that the 97 & 98 pumps used. Apparently this style is hard to find and very expensive. Although I havent looked too hard, I have found both styles to be pretty hard to find.
This is the solution that I came up with. I really just needed a small hole somewhere around where that bolt head was that I test mounted the spring to. I cut a simple bracket on the waterjet and problem solved. My spring isnt quite as heavy looking as the factory springs, but if it becomes an issue or seems to still stick, Ill replace it with a heavier one.
I cut several different variations of it in case the original design didnt quite work but it turned out just fine on the first one.
The distance is just enough to keep tension on the spring for a consistent pedal feel hopefully....
