Housekeeping

Not too much to add visually to the truck. The effort was actually on cleaning up the look of the truck. Although it was a long weekend, a portion of it was spent traveling up to Philly to visit the wife and attend a wedding. Prior to leaving, I did start mocking up the 2nd attempt at a swing out tire carrier. I cut off the stock bumper from the frame and re-installed the shroud to the frame rails. Now I just have four bolts to remove to get back to the frame and continue mocking up the new bumper.

When I got back home from Philly, I took the time to clean up the running of wiring for the camp lights. I relocated the rear set of camp lights down to a lower point on the headache rack. All of the wiring for the lights now runs down below the chassis and is run along the frame rails. This greatly cleaned up the roof line of the truck as I was able to get rid of all the unistrut I was using to create channels to protect the wiring from getting crimped/pinched against the roof rack while transporting ladders.

Speaking of the rack, I'm now moving away from it being full-time installed. I'll look to deploy it on an as-needed basis. My next little mini-project will be to create a small little storage compartment beneath one of the tool boxes for me to store the rails and brackets there until I need to re-install the rack. If memory serves, it doesn't take an inordinate amount of time to install. The trickiest part initially was figuring out the spacing. Now that I've installed it and it has proven reliable (**recall that I fabbed up a rooftop cargo basket weighing about 70 lbs and used it to carry my spare when wheeling in Utah**) the biggest obstacle of figuring out the positioning has already been overcome. I marked the positions on the inner part of the door jambs. I have a ladder that I need to transport back home from the jobsite. Once that's done, I'll take down the rack and hopefully have my little storage pocket created at that point.

On a final note; is anyone that reads this a participant in rally car racing?

I might start taking road trips to take part in this in 2013.