Baby steps. I would love to just work on the truck for a couple days but that isn't in the cards at the time with all the "voluntold" things on my list that I have to do. So another small day of work. Really just a few things completed.
I mocked up my new gas tank and figured out where I was going to put in my bungs. I installed a 6AN stainless bung to the side of the main tank that feeds over to the extended wheel wheel gas tank feed. It used to feed from the drain port on the main tank on the bottom of the tank. Frankly, I think it is a stupid place for an extended tank port---if you rip that off, you would lose the diesel in both tanks and, although I am sure there are folks that say they have one and have never done that, I also know that in CO and Utah, my wheeling sees me scrape the back of the truck particularly negotiating big steps. So that had to go. I also did another smaller one for the Webasto diesel coolant heater feed on the other side. They are not at the bottom of the tank, but not that high either. This will prevent the Webasto from ever draining the full tank and I will only miss a little diesel in the aux tank which I can live with. Better than potentially snagging a hose...
I then plugged off everything and added air to check for leaks on the welds which seem good. Although I weld, I don't have a TIG torch and I didn't want to deal with a leak so I did take it over to my local, Pat at Longmont Welding, and he did it up. Pleased.
I then turned my attention to the Power Steering cooler. I opted for the 13" Delrale unit as it is simple, I trust Derale, and the single pass is a feed through which for my routing works great as I have the reservoir on the opposite side compared to the box. That would provide a perfect place on the back of the front cross member to mount it. There are a lot of ways to mount this sort of thing, but I am a fan of using Rivnuts--I just find them cleaner and appropriate than most other methods.
Then I moved on to the fender. I want to clean up as many components and get them out of the way as possible and one of those is the big windshield fluid reservoir so I opted to go with the later TD5 style and mount that on my fender on the wheel wheel liner. In order to mount it there, I really need to take off the liner, which I needed to do in order to weld a patch on it from a PO's clearance of a shock tower. I still need to weld it...maybe today... but I did pull back out the riv nut tool and add a few more mounting places to mount the reservoir...
Everything needs to get done eventually, so I am finding it much easier to bite off these micro projects. Before you know it, things get done, little by little. I plan to have it in the garage all winter, so I am not too worried about it but I do want to have it completed for spring. Worse case scenario is I take some time off work to crank on it as I have so many more things to get done to get it even close to where I want it to be! And I am still waiting on my Intercooler so I haven't even started the cooling stack and it's mounting let alone it's plumbing... But overall, nothing intimidating.