Still tinkering away with it. Got some f350 cab and chassis ebrake cables, at least that seemed to be what was on it as far as what the brackets looked like on the old ones. Connected those to the GM ebrake adjuster piece that i cut off and made work with the new cables. Then used a piece of rod from the other side of the adjuster to reach to the cable coming from the brake pedal.
Was able to put new brake line fittings on the ends of the hard lines on the axle to connect them to the GM rear brake line T. I ended up shortening up the shock mounts on the axle so they didn't hang so low. Went with Bilstein 33-230382 shocks, they are the 170/60 valving. Figured the softer valving would be fine with the airbags having 25lbs in them.
Got the brakes all bled, spent what seemed like a couple hours bleeding the hydroboost setup. Will wait to see if that was succesful or not when it pulls out of the garage. I used the method of engine not running, turn it from lock to lock, back to lock five times, then pump the brakes three times...do all that about a hundred times it seems.
Wheels took me forever to settle on. I liked the weld super singles that were on it. But, new ones are only in a 20 or bigger, and I didn't want to go that big. Plus they are about 1800 a piece now! Also, am over having polished wheels, they looked good on this truck, but were so much work to keep them up with the shit they put on the roads here in the winter. Could drive it ten miles down the road and would have to spend hours polishing them to get them back in shape. So a non polished wheel was a priority, and my other stipulation was no fake bolts, I have never liked the fake beadlock look. That took out the majority of the wheels out there. I do like the spoked AEV wheel, but its only for 8x6.5, and I wasn't going to run spacers/adapters. I wanted to run 17s but couldn't really find anything I liked. Also wasn't sure if a black wheel would look right on the truck without blacking out all the chrome thats on it. So I ended up going with an 18x9 Ultra Butcher with the bronze face and black lip. Wrapped it with a 285/75 Trail grappler. Picked up some black splined lug nuts and two sockets for them so I could leave one in the truck and one in the toolbox.
Never done it before, but figured I'd try beads to balance them. I went with ceramic airsoft bbs. Decided on 8oz per wheel. Which ended up being about 1.5 paint can cap fulls per tire. These wheels didn't have the markings on them for runout balancing, and turns out the tires didn't have the red dot to correlate with it anyway. So yellow dot to the valve stem it is.
Also the hub caps that came with the wheels where friggin yuge. They stuck out far enough you'd bash your shins walking by. So I opted to go without, had to paint inside the hub bore though, but that was easy enough. I think I like it without the caps anyway.
Tires measured 34 3/8" mounted on the front of the truck, right about where nitto's website said they'd be.
Wheels ended up being a lighter bronze then I anticipated, they actually match fairly well in person, the camera makes them look pretty dark in most pictures. Maybe it will be better once its outside. Got the hood back on, had to loosen up the core support bolts and shift it over about a quater of an inch to get fender to hood gaps lined up. Used a donaldson B085046, which is an 8.5" dia version of the BHAF all the dodge guys like to run. Still a little big for where its at, but I smushed it a bit to make it fit.
