Mod Day Babies

The kids come out to these. This is mostly because: wives.

I do like hanging out with the little guy. It's just not necessarily the most conducive environment to safety.

 This first pic has nothing to do with mod day. It was on my phone from yesterday. It is the second time that I've been parked near a Lotus. It is as close as I'll ever get to such a vehicle.

 First up was Steve. He was just looking to get a tab welded to his bumper to relocate his antenna to the front from the rear hatch position. He also lacked such a tab.

 It should have been a quick job. It wasn't terribly long, but the quality of my initial welds was not the greatest. So I had to do some grinding and trying again. This was after fashioning something from a scrap piece of angle. Ultimately, I think it came out decent. It wasn't anything worth boasting about though; so, there aren't any closeups.

 Linda rode her bike while Steve drove the little guy in the Runner. It made for a pretty cool family convoy. If they had comms operable between the two vehicles, it would have been perfect. I am going to try to plant that idea into Steve's head like Inception. It will be a dream within a dream...within a dream.

 The main reason was for the two little guys to play while the Dad's worked. In reality, I worked, Steve watched, and Linda played referee between the occasionally wrestling bouts that my son kept initiating.

 Ideally Dave would have been here by this time, but it takes him a while to materialize these days.

 Maybe an hour after Steve's family left, Dave decided to turn up. But he brought nuggets for me; so, I won't talk too much trash.

 I thought he was going to bring his skids and sliders for install. He didn't feel like picking them up from his job where he had them sent. Instead he brought a couple of smaller tasks.

 One was an idea he got from Cruzer following their recent wheel and tire swap. The Nissan caps are originally all silver. I helped him pry apart the Nissan logo from the cap and then I painted them with textured paint before reapplying the logo bezel.

 This is how they came out.

 I also cut down a mat to size to fit in his tailgate area. And then the Stanley Job Box that I had up for grabs seemed to be a good fit for the space; so, we worked out an agreement.

 This little one approves fo the work.

 I had an extra club decal lying around. Dave had called dibs a while back on wanting to get any spares I might still have. We got that on there today too.

I didn't really get much done on my truck today.

I tried to knock out a few things yesterday while the Mrs. was still home to primarily watch the little guy. He slept pretty much entirely through Dave's visit, which helped with the productivity factor. I kept stopping to make sure J wasn't being overwhelming during Steve's visit.

Yesterday, I dropped the engine skid on my truck to access the front differential fill port. I finally succeeded in topping it off after initially discovering that the axle seal had developed an apparent leak during our Outer Banks family trip. There still was a good amount of oil in there which gives me some comfort in having opted to wheel the truck in July without having secured service. (I tried taking back to the folks that originally worked on it since I had no such apparent leaks prior to their having worked on the differential to install the locker.)

In taking the skid down, one of the smaller 1/4-20 bolts I had used to secure the front portion of the skid snapped. You may recall that I previously had to replace the weld nuts that had sheared free in the stock location and utilized modified T-nuts welded to the underside of the cross member. Well, now that is going to be a problem.

There are two additional bolt holes that I am supposed to drill in the underside of the lower control arm bracket where the plate rests against. I just need the time to drill some new holes. (I attempted this  yesterday, but my bits were a bit dull and it was taking FOREVER). I got new bits today at HD when I went to get grinding and cutoff wheels in anticipation of Steves antenna tab project.

While the skid was down, I re-painted it as it got a fair amount of love at Southington and significant portions of the initial paint job had given way to rust.I would like to mount it back, but I need to be in position to drill two holes since I'm down to only one reliable bolt in the front now. I also took the time to repaint the radiator skid, the undersides of the sliders, and to touch up portions of the front stinger where the coiled winch cable had chipped away the coating.

A few maintenance items got checked off. I still need to install the new inverter. (The original one is giving a fault code and there appears to be no way to reset). I also need to replace the legacy switching wiring for the new rock lights. It was a bit temperamental when I first installed the rock lights. Now they aren't powering on at all. I should have just used the new kit to start with, but I was concerned the battery leads would not be long enough to reach the terminal posts without needing to introduce new splices. Hopefully this time, it is a real lesson learned.

That's probably it for now. The little guy is doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing at this stage: being a handful. But he was considerate enough to allow me to write as much as I have.

All the best.

-will