Power Wagon mud race truck build

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

I started on the drivers side fender today as well, I cut the ends off of it and the bottom of the fenders to make them the same size as the other side. I also spent a lot of time getting that welded strap on the side and once I got it off, I called it quits for the night. I need to clean up the end boxes and remove the backs of them by cutting the welds and trim them up to fit the new shorter bed side.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

Boy it was colder than a witches tit here today. Went out to the shop this morning since I worked from home today and turned the two oil radiators I have to heat the shop with on, read -6 outside and 37 inside the shop. Ran those two radiators all day and when I shut them off and came in the house a little while ago, it was 0 outside and 42 inside the shop.
My day job got in the way today of getting much work on the truck done, but I did get one bed box torn apart and attached to the cut down bed side. I will work on the other one tomorrow and clean up the welds.


This is what the box looked like before I started on it.

[NakeDiesel]

Slow going on this drivers bed side. Finally got the back bed box cut apart with my 5lb shorty sledge hammer and my spot weld cutter bar. I'm going to be buff by the time I get all the dents out of this truck. Also got the welds ground down on the front of the bed after I welded that box on and ground the welds off where that metal strap was boogered on. Tomorrow night I plan on welding the last box on and fixing any holes left to weld up on it and cut the ends of the boxes off.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

Managed to get a few hours out in the shop this evening and was able to finish welding up the drivers side of the bed and had time to get all the welds ground down. Now that I finished the fender, I was finally getting into the groove of welding again and making nice welds. Been too many years since I've played with my mig, it's nice having a shop where I can use it again.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

Each bed side has been shortened a total of 13" to fit my cut down frame. I'm off tomorrow, so I plan on breaking out the chop saw and starting to lay out the bed frame and getting it welded up tomorrow.
Been trying to finalize the parts list I need for the truck to get it back together and one of the things I've been wanting to do is to change my gears. I'd been tossing around either going to 5.86 or 5.38's in the rear and finally decided on 5.38's, well you can't get 5.38's for a dana 70 apparently. Dad and I've been talking about my gearing and the 3.55's are just too low with my in low range, but too high in high range, looking at my calculations, we don't think changing to 5.86's are going to make that much of a difference on my truck since it's going to be quite a bit lighter than it was. So now I'm looking at moving to 5.13's for the dana 70 and 4.88's for the dana 60. That will put both axles moving at the same speed with my different sized tires (37's in the back and 35's in the front). Then I can use 3rd gear or not depending on the pit and how the trucks are going through it.
here's a snapshot of my spreadsheet where I've been playing with my gear options.

[NakeDiesel]

Spent the majority of my day out in the shop after I ran a few errands this morning. Goal was to get the base for the bed cut and welded together and see about mounting the bed sides.
So what I ended up getting accomplished was building the base for the frame, welded it together and mounted to the frame of the truck with 4 1/2 grade 8 bolts so far. I then hung the drivers side of the bed using a couple of clamps while I got it square front and back. After that, I drilled holes every 4 inches on front and back of the tire for bolting the bedside on with 5/16 bolts. I managed to get both bed sides mounted today and started looking at the front panel that I have. I marked down 21 inches and it's right in the middle of a ton of rusted metal all across the bottom of the piece. I tried cutting it and it's so rotten it was just tearing in all directions from my saw.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]