No luck repairing that little HAM radio so far. Still ongoing.
Used FORscan to re-calibrate for the new circumfrance of these 36.5" tires. Riding around with a laptop like Fast & Furious.
Applied these fake CF stickers to my shifter:
Not as sold on these ones. Partially my fault probably (more on that in a bit). These are thick and I thought it might work because I've tried and failed several times at just wrapping this thing. But to be fair, as I probably mentioned before, I'm the worst vinyl wrapper ever so... Anyway, After I stuck everything down, I realized I didn't check the position of the shift lever all the way back, so of course the thing didn't allow me to get into second and first, though now that I think about it, why would I ever need to because we have 'M'. Anyway, I ripped it back up and tried to reposition it. So now the very front of it, where the bend is most extreme, is starting to peel up. I'll be taking it off shortly.
Then installed some smoked sequential blinkers in the front and rear of the side mirrors. The fronts, where those faded orange reflectors are, can also be switchback marker lights.
View attachment IMG_7629_Trim.mp4
So, story time. Install should have been simple and straight forward. You have to drill a little hole to run the wires for the front side lights, but the blinkers get signal from the rear ones. Seems like they were made to be paired (even though I bought them seperate) and there are already pins and connectors in place. Only knock was I had to file down the corners of the rear side blinkers to fit properly. Not a big deal, I read this in a review as well. Also, I did not wire the markers to function as such, because I didn't feel like running the wires inside at the time. So for now, I just tapped the puddle lamp so they only light up white when the puddle lamps are on. I'm probably going to leave it like this as they are pretty underwhelming behind that smoked lens compared to the Morimoto DRL's.
Anyway, I don't know who can relate, but I seem to be going through one of those rough patches where everything I touch I break and everything seems to be going wrong. Not the first time I've felt like this, won't be the last. So yeah, with this job I definitely did more harm than good. The smoked lenses look great on the black truck and the sequential amber blinkers look good as well. However, as I pried the passenger side mirror off the entire glass just shattered. A combination of everything being brittle on this old truck and my heavy hands. Then as I pried the driver side off, I basically broke the entire motor assembly. Oof. So a new piece of glass and motor set me back about a hundred bucks. Doing all of this work right before we were set to take a road trip, so I drove out of town with a shattered passenger mirror and the other side rigged together with zip ties.
THEN, we take our 4 hour trip out of town and as soon as we arrive, my wife goes "What is THAT?", as she points out the beautful CV grease all over the back of the passenger side wheel well. Yep and that's the side with the brand new OEM axle. FML. Inner boot had a huge gash in it. Not sure at all what cause it. Did a poor job of band aiding it back up to get us through our trip.
Anyway, came home today and took apart my old axle with the intention of rebuilding it off of the truck. Was straight forward, but as I'm rushing and doing a poor job of everything, I neglected to index the race and cage and shaft (if some prefer). Don't be like me. Inside joint looks like this for the curious:
So this week looks like after work as parts arrive: Tuesday hopefully new boot kits come in and I can rebuild this guy. It's been the same boot failed both times and I have yet to identify why. I can believe that the old one was just dried out and ready as it totally disconnected at the small clamp. But the new one had a very long straight gash inside the biggest fin. Maybe like 2 inches or so. I'm considering using the outside boot to rebuild the inner joint as it's longer with more fins. Thoughts on this? Wednesday, maybe put the axle in. Thursday, the driver side mirror motor. Friday, passenger side mirror. And these are just Raptor related BS I'm working through. Not the mention the bajillion other things seemingly going to ****. When it rains it pours gents. I've made it a point to steer clear of my engine build project while I'm messing everything I touch up.
