**Every time I think something is going to be easy, it always goes the other way**

Ahhh yet another week into the build! It was a great week. Rich and I got quite a lot done on the truck this week. We continued to make progress that we started last week. This week we really accomplished a lot, the truck is definitely looking good.

To start the week, as we always do, we roughly planned out the week – once again we set our goals within reach. We had hoped to close out the deconstruction phase and into ordering parts by the end of the week, </Spoiler Alert \> I can tell you that we didn’t get that far…

Rich, and I jumped into the work this week; raring to go! Because we set our goal to get everything off the truck this week we knew that we would have to make the most of the time we had – so we started at the front of the truck and took off the hood. We decided to do the hood because we were going to be working in the engine bay and it would just be in our way if we didn’t remove it. So that is what we did.

We didn’t encounter any issues with the hood; we did take good care to make sure that all of the lines were correct (body gaps). The lines weren’t perfect, so we loosened a few blots and were able to get the gaps within a reasonable amount of uniformity. Once the hood was lined up correctly we retightened the bolts and marked the hood where the hood hinge should be when we put the hood back on. This way there is no guessing where it is supposed to be and the body gaps will be right where they are supposed to be.

Once the hood was off we had more room to tackle the engine. We carefully took off different parts of the engine. The radiator came out first without any issues except for the coolant that leaked all over the floor. All of the accessories were taken off the engine; next we were going to tackle the headers. Those were not much fun. Rich started taking off the left side he was able to get to all of the eight blots holding it onto the engine. Those eight bolts weren’t easy, but he was able to get them out, now for my side (the right side) that was going to be a different story. I was able to take out one bolt before we decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to save the header – so we just cut it off. Even cutting off the last pipe wasn’t an easy task. But we got them off.

After we tackled the engine bay we moved to the rear of the truck to begin the process of taking the bed off the frame. The bed was being held to the frame by six carriage bolts. Only the thing was, two of the six were inaccessible due to the exhaust system – so we shifted our attention to extricating the exhaust system. Taking out the tail pipes looked straight forward **every time I think something is going to be easy it always goes the other way** but it wasn’t. We were hoping we could just unbolt the pipes from the straps and pull them out the back – it didn’t go down this way. We had to cut the pipes off of the headers. Once the headers were cut off there was more movement. We had to finagle the pipes out by twisting and turning – like you would cram a square shape into a circle hole; we got them out. After the pipes were out of the way, I was able to get at the two bolts that were inaccessible due to the exhaust pipes.

The bed is free from the frame, and it was heavy. It’s a good thing I asked a few buddies from work to come give us a hand moving the bed off the frame – except it didn’t go down that way. Rich and I decided (it was probably me insisting we try) we were going to take the bed off the frame by ourselves. This took some thinking – we devised a plan to hook the tailgate end (the tail gate has already been taken off) on some tie-down straps – hooked to the hoist. In theory it should work, depending on if we were able to lift the bed and move it by ourselves. Moving the bed took some time. I had to set the bed down on a sawhorse every three feet. It was heavy!

Now it is really starting to look like we are making some amazing progress.

This week we really did accomplish a lot, and I had a lot to write about so I decided to split it into two different posts. So, the next post will be more deconstruction

Until next time -