[Praxiss454]

Been a while since I have update this thread. Didn't do a ton to the truck over the winter. Now that the days are a bit longer and the weather is nicer, I've made a bit more progress.

Found a guy w/ a spare steering box, so I swapped that out to try to clean up the slop in my steering. Also installed a new rag joint at that time. It feels tighter but the true test will be when I get it out on the road.

Right now the valve cover is off and I'm cleaning it up to re-paint. The rest of the engine is kind of a mess w/ grease and I don't see myself pulling it to clean it properly, so it is going to look funny w/ a couple of clean pieces and a couple of dirty pieces. Will post an update when it's done. Using this opportunity to also replace the grommets on the PCV and breather tube, which, in combination w/ replacing the valve cover gasket, should greatly reduce the messiness in the engine.

Speaking of, does anyone know what color the sealed oil filler cap is supposed to be? I gather that because I have a breather tube running to the air filter, I should not use a vented oil cap.

Once this is done, I should have things buttoned up from a running "good enough" perspective, in that it should start, run, steer, and stop well. In the near future I need to decide on what I'm going to do for the bed. Leaning toward getting a kit, but I almost don't want to do that until I either replace the left fender, or at least figure out how to pull out the big dent that looks like it was caused by backing into something hard and having the bumper push forward.

The other big thing I need to do from a driving stand point is probably replace the passenger side door entirely, and while it's off do some sheet metal repair on the frame around the door. Looks like the truck was moderately t-boned on that side at one point, it's not too bad but enough that there's a slight buckle in the kick plate.