Thanks for the detailed response. Looking forward to more of the MosesBurb adventures
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Yeah, me too!!
I didn't get much time to work on it this weekend, but I did manage to get out on Sunday and got a couple things done. The upper shock mounts I installed have created a couple head scratchers so far. The biggest being the shock length. The shocks I had on the front were too long with the stock mounting and too short with the new shock mounting. I swapped the rears to the front and they looked good at first, but it didn't take long to realize they were too long. Great, buy some new parts to replace new parts. I bought some shorter shocks for it, but the newer design of the RS9000s are larger in diameter than the ones that I bought way back when. This creates a problem with the lower shock mount on the driver side. With the older design RS9000 shocks and the relocated upper mount, the draglink would just miss the bottom of the shock in right turn conditions. WIth the thicker body of the new RS9000 shock it was no longer a miss, but a full-on hit. After some playing around with angles and dimensions, I ended up lengthening the lower mount about 1/2" for clearance. No big deal, but it turned a twenty minute shock change into a three hour ordeal once I got done with it.
This shows the difference in body girth:
This shows the final mounting, but I forgot to take a pic of the lower bracket: (the strange color is the bright sun bouncing off of the orange truck, reflecting off of a nearly white house into the wheel well area)
Once upon a time, when I first built this thing, I ran hoses off of each vent nipple up to the underhood area. (front diff, trans, t/case, rear diff, fuel tank)
While they were run up there, I had never finished the install. I had bought the vent caps back then but never installed them. I had some grandiose plans of how I was going to mount them, but I figured if I kept waiting to do that, I would never get them done. That being the case, I used a few zip-ties and got the job done in a lees-than-grandiose style:
Somewhere in the passing years, one of the caps got pilfered for another project, so I still need one to finish it--but hey, it's much closer.
Yet another problem that the upper shock mounts created was I had to remove the grid heater solenoids for cold starting. Not really a problem at all when the thermometer doesn't see the south side of 95, but there is a possible adventure in the near future that just might require the use of them. That being the case, they need to go back in. I really like the original mounting location and bracket, but the bracket was not going to work. I figured out that I could put them back in the same vicinity, but a new bracket is in order. So after dinner I got back out there and whipped up this little gem:
The pic isn't so good, but I was in a rush to get it done before my family duties came to call. I mounted it up and was able to reuse the wiring and cables from the original mounting configuration.
It fits good, is very stout and doesn't grab your eye where it is at.
I did take some time and crawl around with a grease gun and I also installed some zip-ties here and there for good measure.
So, not a whole lot of progress, but with each little thing here and there, my to-do list is steadily shrinking.
. I am real glad to have it drivable--so is the boy. Speaking him, he can be a big help when I need another body out there or grabbing that tool that is just out of reach or over on top of the vise or.... He really likes helping and I think it won't be long and I'll be able to give him his own projects to tackle. 
get that kind of weather in the dezert...........
We got by a bit easier here in the east valley. It hailed, but only pea-sized stuff. Not big enough to do any damage, fortunately.
? I thought that there were body guys out there that could do paintless repairs. Just smooth out the dents somehow. Might be worth looking into.
