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It will all be bolted together. I'm sure a lot of the originals were bolted AND welded, but I can see welds cracking from shaking around in the bed when the truck's body flexes. I heard a lot of the welded ones in Vietnam required constant re-welding from the stress cracks that formed over time.
Spent most of the day on the truck again. Changed a worn choke cable. Put on the fender gaskets and straightened out some dents in the inner fenders and running boards again. Bolted everything back together. Mounted a sugar scoop antenna base on the rear corner of the cab, even though I will be installing an MX-2799 on the top of the armor, the sugar scoop will be there as an additional base for future use. Bolted the RT-524 base and mounting plate to the front armor, and got it ready for install, when my drill bit broke from drilling a hole in the bed side. First thing tomorrow gotta run to the store and get a new one to continue the armor install.
Pic below shows the front armor with the bulkhead opening to load the crew into the box. One of the pics I have of RLW shows an opening similar to this, because it was taken at an angle I can't be sure of it's shape, but there were a couple other gun trucks with this bulkhead opening shape, so I'll use some creative license and use it here.
These steel pieces are heavy - not too heavy, the largest ones for the sides are 200 lbs each. However, because they are so dense and awkward to move around, it's hard to not drop one on your foot. They use up an entire spray can of primer for each piece just priming them. I'm gonna have $25 worth of primer used up on just these pieces.
Hope you guys are liking the progress....
Spent most of the day on the truck again. Changed a worn choke cable. Put on the fender gaskets and straightened out some dents in the inner fenders and running boards again. Bolted everything back together. Mounted a sugar scoop antenna base on the rear corner of the cab, even though I will be installing an MX-2799 on the top of the armor, the sugar scoop will be there as an additional base for future use. Bolted the RT-524 base and mounting plate to the front armor, and got it ready for install, when my drill bit broke from drilling a hole in the bed side. First thing tomorrow gotta run to the store and get a new one to continue the armor install.
Pic below shows the front armor with the bulkhead opening to load the crew into the box. One of the pics I have of RLW shows an opening similar to this, because it was taken at an angle I can't be sure of it's shape, but there were a couple other gun trucks with this bulkhead opening shape, so I'll use some creative license and use it here.
These steel pieces are heavy - not too heavy, the largest ones for the sides are 200 lbs each. However, because they are so dense and awkward to move around, it's hard to not drop one on your foot. They use up an entire spray can of primer for each piece just priming them. I'm gonna have $25 worth of primer used up on just these pieces.
Hope you guys are liking the progress....
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