Thank you all for the words of wisdom.
I have the cheap flux core harbor freight welder and I'm learning. I'm just hesitant to use it on body work. I'm going to give lmc a ring Monday and order all the pieces I need and replace whats needed.
I want the body to be right before I paint.
I already know I need to have the transmission gone through as the little 3 mile trip I drove it the other day it didn't want to shift into 3rd. I also disintegrated the front drive shaft and blew out the spedo port on the transfer so I want to focus my big money deals on the drive train.
Ok, so you're probably now wondering how that happened. Basically I didn't take the advice of the guy I got it from and flat towed it with the rear drive shaft still connected. I made it the 100 miles from where I picked it up from to the farm with no issues. I knew I would have to drive it around the next couple days moving trucks and loading for the trip back to Texas and I forgot about the drive shaft again. We made it almost to the Louisiana Texas border when the wife called me and said something tan just flew out from under the truck. When I pulled into the welcome center I promptly looked under the 1009 and to my surprise I was short a front drive shaft. Looked at the transfer selector and I guess the smooth roads of Louisiana jarred it into 4 low, and even with the front hubs unlocked it was able to have enough force to shear off the u-joint on the diff and then rip off the rear u-joint. Well, pulled the rear drive shaft and made it the rest of the way back to Bryan, TX then flat towed it with the mini van another 90 miles to Temple. We put it on a car carrier bringing it back to Louisiana.
A side note, I've got to make a trip to said guy to give him some more parts for the 818 I gave him.
I'm going to look at getting replacement foam and covers also for the seats, add a tach, high idle, change the alternators for my inverter. Going to replace gen 1 with a 70 amp 24v, and replace gen 2 with a 250 amp 12v. I have a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter that is going to go in it so I need a bigger alternator, and house batteries. I also don't want to convert it to 12v as I like the option of being able to slave off it needed. The truck already had the glow plug resistor bank bypassed so I'm going to put a 24-12v converter / equalizer on the 24v bank in case I need a slave I will still have glowplugs. That is subject to change as the battery setup is going to change from stock to a typical setup you would see in a rv, house / starting banks. Since I'm converting all the lights to leds I can keep the amp draw down and be able to keep the 24v bank equalized with the equalizer and have gen 2 dedicated to the house bank.
Going to make the 1009 a daily driver, and put my ham radios in it. Going to put a rv air conditioner on the fiberglass shell. I toyed around with getting the a/c kit but the rv air conditioner will allow me to cool it with the engine off. Makes it nice when doing events and field day not having the engine running all the time.
I'm giving myself 6 months to complete body work and paint. I feel as if that is a realistic target and should have no issue obtaining. Today was spent pondering on what direction with the wife and I sitting at the truck going over options. Doing it myself provides us with two things, lower overall cost involved, and keeping me busy, plus the pride in knowing you accomplished something meaningful.
That pretty much raps up the overall plans for this 1009. I've been reluctant on posting about it but I guess it would have gotten to the point where I would have needed some obscure part and people would wonder why I need a cucv part.
I already know I'm going to be looking for a few 1009 parts, but I'm going to wait before I really dive into needing those as it's mainly an antenna bracket, bumpers, and blackout lights. Stuff that can wait till later, body work now to stop the rust.