I had one more day off before its back to the grind, so I had some time to work on the truck again. It has been a very productive two weeks! After enjoying the shop for a while, I was banished to the unfinished half of the garage. No bother, NC weather is crazy this time of year with 70s one day and snow the next (literally). The next order of business was to start piecing the truck back together. First up, the nose. This really starts to give you an idea of how low the truck will be, and this is before the engine is in! My favorite static truck is gringoloco's, and I know he has all sorts of fancy suspension components but I'm hoping to get somewhere near the stance of his truck. This will just be a cruiser so it doesn't have to handle much better than a 50 year old truck. Presently, I am about 2" higher than his truck and should be within 1" once the motor is in. Not too bad for a lot of labor and a little money. Like his truck, mine will also require clearancing on the inner fenders. I have 2" of suspension travel available before I crash into the fenders. Luckily that is easily fixable with relocated hood hinges and a little more cutting and grinding, however, I will save that for a later date.
Next up was the hood. Everything fit back together like it was before without no readjustment, which was nice. The only thing that needed some tweaking for a better fit was the driver door, but that was an issue when I got the truck. At this point, reassembly had progressed as far as I could go. The bed still needs to be modified for the raised floor, so to gain some motivation a mockup was necessary. This is close to the final ride height, but still needs some tweaking once the motor is in. I don't like a 2" rake (if you do a 1 to 1 drop front to rear), but I also don't like the level look (2" more drop in rear than front). I'm somewhere in the middle and will fine tune that with blocks once the truck is fully assembled again.
With my newfound inspiration it was time to dig into the bed floor raise. For now, this just consisted of a brainstorming session and some cutting on the front bed panel. Without the bedsides, you can see where the bed floor will sit. This is 4" higher due to the rear frame raise and an additional 1" higher relative to the body drop, thus a 5" shallower bed is required. Now, I learned my lesson on my last truck that you don't want to go exactly as far as necessary because you may need some adjustment in the bed positioning. You box yourself in when the floor is raised exactly as much as theoretically determined, therefore, I will raise it an additional 1/2" to give me some room for adjustment. My plan is to section this out of the middle of the recessed region in the bedsides and front panel and then weld the pieces back together. This will give the bed a factory appearance just shallower, but wow I didn't realize how shallow it would be until I saw it sectioned! Oh well, I will still be able to make my casual trips to the hardware store and throw some lumber or other odds and ends in the bed. I have never loaded up a truck to max capacity anyway.
Now that I have my plan in place for the bed, it's time to fully execute. Some time in the next few weeks I will update with the details on that process.