I remember my first truck, An 86 with a 300, did it the same way, Dad helped a lil bit, slowly as I could afford it, piece by piece. He may not know it now, but the ones you do your self are so much more meaningful. You gain lots of experiance and sweat equity.
Looks like you got a great start, have fun!

 

I'm doing the same thing with mine now. In the 7 months I've owned Betsy( it just felt right to name it) I've only brought it to the mechanic once, a couple weeks ago for a new radius arm bracket and I can honestly say a felt like a let the truck down not doing it myself, it feels so much better doing everything myself, like the starter and soon the leaf spring shackle.

 

Just something simple today - replaced this broken hose that looks like a rat ate it:



With a nice new one

 

Yep RATS!!!!!!!!!!!! Prolly going to find a few more of those, they also like to munch on electrical wires also. That truck must have sat a while in a barn or garage.

One peice at a time

 

congrats, I just want to say thank you for taking the time with your son to teach him all of these things, he will always remember this moment in his life and the truck will mean so much more to him. Since I got my truck last summer my father and friends and I have done a lot of work to it without ever having to send it to a shop (knock on wood). I love my truck and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world and I'm always looking for another project on it. Best of luck to you and your son

 

Well - I posted in another thread asking, "WTF is this" ...



Which I found out was called a 4wd Shift Linkage.

We got it off today with the thought that we'd go get a new one and pop that bad boy on and have the 4WD working. Weeeelllll



There's the whole thing off. I'm having a bear of a time getting the darn shifter/handle out of the linkage. As in ... it ain't moving. And something tells me those rubber boots probably didn't come from the factory zip-tied down. Just a hunch.

Then I find out that to just "pop over" and get one from the dealer is going to hit me for about 350 bucks.

After I picked my jaw off the floor, I did some google searching - anyone have any experience with partsgeek.com? They've got one for 128 bucks.

Until I can track one down, maybe even from pull-a-part, we've got a nice hole in the floor



The screws holding down the shifter-boot were so rusted and covered with gunk that I had to drill them out. I kind of see A LOT of that in the future of this vehicle.