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Front Sheetmetal, Brake Hose and On the Wheels

I've been looking forward to this day for a while now. Earlier this week I mounted the brackets for the front brake hose (and of course it hit the inner fenderwell that I had just completed so I had to massage them)...but that cleared the way for getting the front sheetmetal back on the truck and getting the front wheels mounted. Getting the truck on the wheels was my winter project goal.

I went ahead and mounted the front headlight assemblies while I was reassembling the frontend metal. The panels will all need some tweaking but I wanted to get the frontend back on so I could check and make sure all my suspension measurements were good. Plus I need to wait until I have the new grill to work with before adjusting to the old grill...but the old one should do for now.

Once the sheetmetal and bumper were back on (sans the hood) I mounted the front wheels and lowered the truck off the front and rear wooden risers to sit directly on the floor so I could see how everything looked and sat. Everything looked really good to me. I lowered the truck to the lowest setting to see if it all worked together (no scraping or binding) and it all looked to function properly. This lower setting will just be a static setting at car shows (hopefully) so no need to check the steering because I know it won't work.

I then manually raised it to the designed ride height via the temp air hoses that I mounted previously. At ride height the front edge of the runningboard is about 5 inches off the ground and the back edge of the runningboard is about 6 inches off of the ground.... which is what I was aiming to get.

I now need to place it back up on the wooden blocks and continue to check all it out from underneath it. I also need to dial in the rear pinion angle with the 4 link as well as take some measurements on some of the frame crossmember fab that I have to do to clear the driveshaft travel. Also on tap is to start figuring out the exhaust routing as well as the air bag pumps and tank location. Maybe I can chip away at those as we head into spring.