[MDPotter]

I'll have a better update this week sometime. Saturday we worked on the rear brakes and we finished rebuilding one side and then were ready to do the other side when we remembered that I'm missing one wheel cylinder link. Back when I first bought the truck, there was a slight grinding noise in the rear driver side drum so we took it apart and found that link fell out of the cylinder and just sliding around on the inside of the drum and it was pretty much ruined. Fast forward to a few months ago when I bought new cylinders, springs, shoes, etc. and none of it came with new links as we found out Saturday. I called all the local parts stores and no one had one, eventually ordered it online. A small $5 part turned into $15 with shipping and held us up from finishing the brakes.

Once I accepted the fact that I wouldn't be able to put the rear end back together, we moved onto the fuel tank. I got a universal 16 gallon tank from Tanks Inc and I'm regretting not going for the Boyds. I didn't want to spend another $300 for the Boyds tank, but $300 didn't seem like much once we actually started looking at installing it. I had to trim about 1/2" off the bottom flange of the frame to get it in and we will probably use unistrut to run from the rear crossmember to the next forward crossmember so the tank has something to butt up against. The straps that came with the kit will be what actually holds it up. I had to modify the sender for the tank, still have to assemble the pump, and the filler is too short to get above the bed floor. The Boyds tank has those nice flanges on both sides for a positive attachment to the frame rails and it comes with the sender and pump pre-installed. I took it with a grain of salt since it is a universal kit so that's the price you pay to save some money. Just a bit of advice for others considering either of these tanks.

I'll take more pictures once I have the wheel cylinder link and the tank assembled.