Update on the seat belts:
they work just great and fit well. The retractable lap belts however do want to retract and sometimes with a bump in the road they suck you further into the seat and don't let go. This is a minor annoyance and may be able to overcome it with technique. But if this would really bother you I suggest save your money and just get plain lap belts that you manually adjust. Or spend more money and get shoulder belts.
Sunday I pulled out of storage two old but little used 8R19.5 tires I collected at a swap meet a number of years ago.
Monday had the tire shop remove some 225/70/19.5 tires from the other two 19.5 wheels I have and mount and balance the 8R19.5 tires. Those modern tires were a little shorter and fatter than the 8R19.5. The 8R19.5 are almost the very same dimensions as the original 7.00-18 tires.
I hadn't ever unbolted the front wheels until yesterday and found a couple stripped nuts and most of them had pulled/weak looking threads anyhow.
PICTURE 1 Stripped threads
Luckily the studs are all OK, the nuts must have been soft, perhaps not original? And likely they had been over torqued on several occasions. The shop manual does list the torque specs, and for 1/2-20 it's about 75 ftlb
PICTURE 2 Torque specs.
After putting off buying a good 1/2" drive torque wrench with the hope of finding a deal on a used one I bit the bullet and bought a new Snap-On TQFR-250 on sale last week. Now I can torque lug nut of all sizes.
Back to the nuts, what I have are 1/2-20 with 3/4" over the flats, this is a common off the hardware store shelf variety of hex nut. Curious if this was correct/original I looked in the parts manual and sure enough the originals were also 3/4" over the flats. I would have guessed they were over size or "heavy" hex nuts but apparently not.
I'll order or pick up some nuts today.
The old tires as I removed them were quite a bit out of balance judging by how they really wanted to rotate heavy side down. They were also old, quite old, and one in terrible shape. I'd known they were old but didn't know how bad they were or had gotten and to think I'd had the truck up to 70 mph...
PICTURE 3 Nasty tire
Can't wait to take it for a spin with the new balanced front tires and wheels and see how the ride is.
Next more trip prep, and then research and head scratching on the wiring harness I need to order soon.
Grigg
