Saturday night was a success. Got everything done that I wanted to except weld on the bag brackets and paint the rear end (waiting until the brackets are on). Got the posi in and started removing the rusted firewall. The bed floor was actually pretty fun to take out, some of the bolts were trouble some and needed to be cut out but it wen't pretty smoothly. For anyone interested, I loosely followed
this guide which is for swapping to a wood floor but still goes over removing the steel floor.
You can see here I have the rear end sand blasted (no blast cabinet, what a mess) and the diff cover painted.
No photos of the firewall, but all the spot welds are drilled out and it's hanging in there by a thread, gonna get some more progress swapping it out on Tuesday.
I need help though, this is my first time working on a rear end so I'm looking for some insight. I got the posi unit in, bearings pressed on, I didn't change the gears, haven't checked the backlash yet but there is a lot of slop when I twist the yolk by hand (as if the driveshaft was spinning it) before it will engage the gears. Surely it can't be normal, what do I do to adjust this? Anything else in specific I should note or look for? I used the original shims from the open diff.
Still looking for a steel high hump too if anyone's got a lead!