Trial & Tribulations. Part I.

"Some days teach you patience, others will test it."

All good projects come with speedbumps. That's where you learn.

Sometimes it's just that you learn patience.

I am finding that I can regurgitate a lot of info pretty darn accurately. Kurt is rather impressed. There were many nights when I just threw a hand up and begged to talk about something else. But I did listen.

However, I needed a refresher about the 1st major snafu Kurt ran into.

As I have mentioned, and many of you know from experience, this isn't a do one thing, check it off the list and move on to the next sort of project. Most of the puzzle pieces tie together rather intricately.

The suspension was breeze, relatively speaking, according to Kurt.

He had made the 8 hour round-trip for the engine and transmission, and they sat on the pallet, waiting for their new home.

The floor had been beyond repair, and the brand new, rather pricey-for-what-it-is replacement had arrived. If anyone out there has ever attempted replacing a floor, you'll be familiar with the fun of drilling out a thousand spot-welds. Kurt was not impressed. But that was nothing, it gets "better".

Once the new floor was welded into the cab and set on the frame, Kurt quickly discovered that this puzzle piece did not fit. The tunnel was off about an inch, making it unable to accommodate the transmission. I remember him sitting there wide-eyed and a little weary considering the fact he was going to have to cut apart his new floor and re-weld that tunnel.

The transmission and tunnel were not lining up, leading Kurt to cut and re-weld the tunnel of his brand new floor.

He briefly considered just going with a different transmission. The reality of this build was setting in.

On top of that, his shifter relocation kit was apparently being delivered by the pony express, and he was getting anxious. Downtime was not part of his plan.

Kurt determined that purchasing an alternative transmission seemed a little extra, so he sucked it up and took a cut off wheel to his brand new floor. With the tunnel moved over just a touch, he was back in business.

I started with this post with "Some days teach you patience, others will test it."

Skill and knowledge are required to successfully tackle a project like this, but patience is an element that has helped Kurt to complete this in 18 months, I believe. I have started plenty of projects (much less complicated ones, mind you) and when my patience ran out, my enthusiasm often did too. It would take me a while to come back to it.

Kurt was blessed with patience. Many people benefit from that on a regular basis, lol!

And the speedbumps kept coming. As I write this, he is actually just about done with the truck, but the past week threw him multiple curveballs. He was literally looking at the finish line and nothing seemed to be going his way...

But that story will be told in a later post, and it's a good one. Stay tuned!

#truckbuild #carbonfiber #fordtruck #bumpside #projecttruck