Disclaimer; posts 1-30 took place over a 8 week time frame in October and November to get it done by Thanksgiving w/e.

Most of you have see my junk on here, Originally I wanted an Xtra cab but couldn't find one to my liking so I settled for a standard cab which I do fit in but I wanted more interior room even though the back of my SC was cutout for a cooler and other stuff, the week in CO is August told me that i wanted a real Xtra cab. Tim Mesic bought a 2wd Xtra cab truck that was posted on here for the FI and I bought the rest of the truck from him for the cab.

Here's progress pic's BOVADS took after he and Scott helped me put the cab on my chassis;

Stripping the old cab down;

When I put the truck together originally I had planned to do this one day so I moved the front wall of the bed back to be ready for this swap;



Funny how all the parts fit better in the cab then the bed? :rolleyes:

BOVADS, Scott and another friend of mine with a boom truck came over thursday to help lift the old cab off and get it in the back yard. Cab off to prep for 10" of gerth;

Had to close the front corners of the bed off and shot a little white on it;



Body mounts on already 2" higher to compensate for the B/L I have as seen in the other mount which I kept cos there is a place in the Xtra cab to mount to and I am using the same back portion of the cage from the old cab;



Only other thing I had to modify for the swap is the exhaust and heatshield.

BOVADS and Scott helped me get the new cab on;

Now for re-assemble;



Got this back in too, gonna re-do the A pillar tubed to go through the dash instead outside. mounted directly to the body mount too.




will get tubing this week so I can finish the cage and get the rest of the dash put back together. Also gonna build a engine cage and tie it into the bumper, shock hoops and firewall.

OK, got a few things done this w/e but I'm gonna backtrack to last monday when I moved the wiring harness' from outside the engine campartment factory locations to inside;

Factory exit holes on each side;

Tuesday I got a little inner fender work done. Because I moved the front axle forward so far in the original build teh front tires would rub the sumps behind the headlights where the battaries were. Battaries are moving to the back of the truck and the sumps were removed and replaced with;

Passenger inside;



Drivers outside

Thursday it took me two tries but I got the A pillar tubes bent and welded in. the difficulty was mainly because I wanted to keep them tight to the A pillars and still be able to weld them to the halo.

Saturday, I added support tubes from the A pillars through the original harness holes to the fenders and from teh fenders to the shock towers;

Passenger side kinda tight with the heater fan;


Passenger outside;

Little more room on the drivers side;

Next came the front bumper/core support mod. I wanted to do a small "stinger" type of desert truck kind of look. Also wanted to add a bit radiator/coolong fan clearence at the at the water pump. I tied it into the shock towers and will later add a removable cross piece over the engine;

Sunday I tried to start putting the dash back together;

Passenger side;


Driver side;


Drivers side not done yet cos I still have some wiring to do under there yet.

After the dash work, I built some mounts for the computer and the trans cooler (since I butchered the core support I had to build new mounts). I wanted to get the trans cooler in so I could hack up the grille and try to get it in there;

TaDa;

got alot done this w/e. doesn't look like much but it's time consuming tedious crap.

Built a sissy bar, WTF?;

oh wait it goes here;

More progress, again doesn't look like much but it's PITA type work to make life easier on the trail. The main reason for teh change here was that I couldn't reach teh t-case shifters with teh 5 points tightened up so I wanted all the shifters closer to me for that reason;

got the interior all assembled accept a few things left;

those few things would be;

-beverage holders up by the butchered vents
-teh left foot pad
-teh shoulder harness' installed.

I have to build some stuff in the Xtra cab area too;