Easter long weekend coming up here, and I’ve taken today off too to make it an extra long one.
Rolled the dice and took a chance, ordered a UMI rear shock tower brace and a rear body mount repair kit from Dixie Restoration. I say took a chance, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough room for the brace with all the other stuff I’ve got going on in that area. The fallback plan if it didn’t fit was that it would find it’s way onto Olds Cool, but it didn’t need to come to that.
It was a little frustrating at first because it didn’t seem to want to fit. Which was baffling because the trunk floor in The Juggernaut is raised 2” to accommodate the air line fittings in the rear bags. Should’ve been more than enough room. That was until I realized that I was trying to fit it in upside down and backwards.
Dumbass!
Once I realized that and turned it around, it went up straight into place just as pretty as you please. And doesn’t interfere one bit with anything else in the area. I’m definitely not a gambler, but this was a win.
I did drop the positive battery cable down to give me a little room to work (which in hindsight wasn’t really necessary), but this too may work out in my favour. Last night I ordered a couple of 1 1/4” (diameter of the UMI brace) roll bar mounting clamps off the jungle website to route the battery cable along the brace rather than along the trunk floor:
So we’ll see how these work out once they arrive.
The other piece in the Dixie order was a rear body mount repair kit. It’s actually Goodmark brand, and includes parts to repair or replace all 4 rear body mounts. I’m really only interested in the two for the passenger side. I had done a crude repair and replacement of them due to rot many moons ago when these weren’t even conceived of yet, and I was in my 20’s and had only the most basic of tools to work with. This will get addressed when the body goes onto the rotisserie, chalk it up to another DIRTT project.
Otherwise, I’ve mainly just been picking away at the mystery fabrication project. It’s coming along nicely, Monday night they went into black epoxy for the first time:
You’ll have to stay tuned to find out what in the hell exactly these are, and where they’ll be going. It shouldn’t be too much longer now.
D.