brakes and brackets

We came home Saturday evening from hunting so we could work on our truck on Sunday.  We got the back section of the brakes bent, but ran out of brake line to connect from the rear to the master cylinder (and valves in between).
Then, we worked (mostly Brian) on customizing the brackets for the battery box (which used to be a fuel tank).  They used to stick up several inches over the frame rail, now they are flush and look a zillion times better!

This is the only 'before' pic I could easily find with the battery box - you can see how far the brackets stuck up before:

Next weekend, finish the brake lines, then maybe start on the fuel lines?  We will see!

Floored

I am just floored..... because we have floors!  Haha :)

Last weekend, we finished the floor pans and the seat pan.  Such an exciting hurdle to clear.

Prepping the drivers side of the seat pan for welding.  We drilled holes for rosette welds along any area of the perimeter or supporting structure on all the panels.  Here Brian is working around the access hole for the master cylinder:

Seat pan welded on and the pockets for the seat attachments look great with the trim (scavenged from a Suburban the same year as our Suburban since the seat we are using is the 3rd row seat)

Finally everything installed and ready for primer:

Next step, epoxy primer!

Then, the cab was unbolted from it's mounts and slid back.... we were hoping to tip the cab to do the finializing on the underside, but when we went to tip it, it started to rack.... so we left it just lifted up and we took out the driveline instead to work underneath it.  It wasn't fun for Brian to do the final welding overhead, but it got done.

So, after the final welds were complete and the rust taken care of, the underside got a coat of epoxy primer, then body seam sealer on all the joints, then two good coats of rubberized undercoating!

We sealed the seams on the topside too - and will paint over it soon after we get a couple more things finalized on the interior.

Now, we are going to work on the front brake lines since the cab is out of the way!

Stretching the roof

Since we decided to use the roof from the 37 because it was sturdier built (over the door area was boxed in steel vs. the 36 was originally wood, so was just a shell), we had to stretch it a bit to fit unfortunately.  It was just about a half inch too short!  We cut a section from the 36 roof to fit and it worked out pretty well.  Doors fit good now and we have a pretty even reveal, yay!