Above 1200 Sq/FT My new garage build! 30x50 !

[Xti04]

I know Bilstein offers shocks that are longer than stock. They are specific for your lift height. The truck looks way better without the steps. A small lift would make it look really good.

I have previously used the Bilstein 5100s for a leveling of my tundra and my tacoma. The tundra amd tacoma is also a coil over shock setup where my f250 is a separate spring and shock. The level kit is just a spring spacer and a shock extender, but I would rather just get a longer shock to fit. I posed this question to my parts guy yesterday and he found a longer front shock for me. this lower eye width is the only issue, but if that is just the shock bushing sleeve poking out I can always pop it out and remove some material to get a better fit.
These are in stock too , so he offered to send both sets over and see if the longer ones will work. I spoke to another friend of mine who has offered to help make some rock rails/ steps for my truck since I finally got the running boards out of the way. That project will be further down the road, as I need to get the truck camper setup and working to my liking before I deal with any other projects.

I got my truck boxes reinstalled, and started loosely placing some of my essential gear into them yesterday morning. Straps, jumper cables, etc. I saw one of my bags of straps had a few pairs of pliers in it so I added them, and was trying to think of what else needed to go in there. I blanked out on what other tools would be good to have tools, but grabbed a small chair, my awning setup, some battery powered lights, fishing rod and the jackery. The narrow box is perfect for holding all the truck related gear, while the wider box on the drivers side will hold the jackery or battery setup, kitchen supplies and be an area for clothing or other camping supplies.
I drove the truck to work and while stopped at an EMS station, they were outfitting their new truck and needed tools. Luckily the pliers I had packed were enough to help them get a shelf installed, but also showed I need a good screwdriver set, and a few other tools that are missing.
The mattress for the tent is made up of two pieces and you can see with the bed panels pushed to the front , only 1 piece fit when I closed it all down. I used some paracord to hold the other one up out of the way. After saving the day at the EMS station I stopped at a park on the lake and tested out the camper for a bit. Popped my chair up in the shade,relaxed for a bit, and took a few minutes and installed the second roof crossbar on the tent. The wife spent a few minutes really digging into the back of the truck to help gove ideas for setting it up. She is a genius when it comes to organizing, and has a lot of great ideas for making best use of this space. We are planning a trip just to do a shakedown of what we use, what we need and how it all works together.

 

[madison069]

Trying to recall, but I don’t think I got longer shocks for my F250 and it has spring spacers to level the truck out. Maybe I should look closer at the shocks during my next inspection but I’m not noticing and issues.

 

[OutlawDrifter]

I've got a bag of tools that I move between vehicles. When in the Suburban or my Tundra it clips on to para cord loops on the molle panels with a set of carabiners.

Full range of "normal" tools...here is a shortlist: Slip join pliers, channel lock pliers, needle nose pliers, side cutters, 2lb hammer, 3/8 & 1/4 wratchets/sockets (deep and shallow well, SAE/Metric), digital multimeter, small prybar, small pick set, duct tape, tire plug kit, multi-bit screwdriver setup, ICON 1/4 drive case set, etc

It has been invaluable at work and on the road.

 

[Xti04]

I've got a bag of tools that I move between vehicles. When in the Suburban or my Tundra it clips on to para cord loops on the molle panels with a set of carabiners.

Full range of "normal" tools...here is a shortlist: Slip join pliers, channel lock pliers, needle nose pliers, side cutters, 2lb hammer, 3/8 & 1/4 wratchets/sockets (deep and shallow well, SAE/Metric), digital multimeter, small prybar, small pick set, duct tape, tire plug kit, multi-bit screwdriver setup, ICON 1/4 drive case set, etc

It has been invaluable at work and on the road.

I have a 15 in 1 Klein screwdriver I added. It was in my center console of my truck. Side cutters were in there, a tape measure, need to make some socket sets up, I snagged a nice tire plug kit not long ago thats already in truck as well. Meter and hammer are good adds as well, I need to find a solid jack too, mine wouldnt fit when I added rear seats so I need to find something that doesn't take up a ton of space. Thanks for the ideas!

 

[Cdubu52]

Glad you found shocks that worked. You are correct about the coil over set up, but for my Suburban and for my Gladiator, that are not coil overs, like your F250, Bilstein makes shocks for lifted vehicles. They make them in stages, like 0 to 1.5 inches, 1.0 to 3.0. Suitable for all lift heights so you dont have to run shock extention brackets. Not that Im a Bilstein homer, they just worked really well on my Suburban and my daughters 4 runner (which i used to do the level), and I have been shopping for the Gladiator so it was fresh on my mind. Again, glad you found something that works.

 

[Xti04]

Glad you found shocks that worked. You are correct about the coil over set up, but for my Suburban and for my Gladiator, that are not coil overs, like your F250, Bilstein makes shocks for lifted vehicles. They make them in stages, like 0 to 1.5 inches, 1.0 to 3.0. Suitable for all lift heights so you dont have to run shock extention brackets. Not that Im a Bilstein homer, they just worked really well on my Suburban and my daughters 4 runner (which i used to do the level), and I have been shopping for the Gladiator so it was fresh on my mind. Again, glad you found something that works.

After some more digging, I found a Bilstein that should work without the shock extenders. I too, am partial to Bilsteins and have never used the Rancho shocks, though I have replaced quite a few on others vehicles. My parts guy has them inbound for me, the Ranchos are on the shelf in case these Bilsteins dont work. They only offered them for a 4 or 6 inch lift, but the length seems to be really close to what I would think I need.

 

[Xti04]

We had a crazy thunderstorm come thru last night, which has been the norm for this summer. The difference I noticed with this storm as it was coming in, the amount of lightning was intense. It was all within the clouds though, not cloud to ground lightning like we normally see here. I attempted to take some pics of the amazing view I had, but believe it or not I wasnt fast enough to catch the best strikes. This was the best I could do.

The rain has also brought up the fact that I need to better seal my truck bed against water intrusion. I am going to need to lift the camper setup enough to get at all of the bed caps and make sure they are completely sealed off. I am finding small leaks but the water is showing up in the weirdest places so maybe I need to pull everything back out and handout inside while the kids hose down the exterior.

 

[madison069]

hate when it's mini things that is the problem but never crossed your mind as a problem.

 

[Xti04]

hate when it's mini things that is the problem but never crossed your mind as a problem.

Its nothing that some sealant can't fix, just irritated I didn't think of it prior to installation. I did pop open the tent today and perform some minor wiring to get the roof fan up and going. I can run the roof vent fan off a usb- c setup they included with it, so there is one less item competing for the sole 12v outlet on the Jackery.
My pup and I enjoying the space while waiting on a customer pickup this morning. I also picked up the Estwing camp axe shown the other day, need to mount it to the panel on the left.

 

[Xti04]

Last week got busy! I had an EMS expo I had to work and cater lunch for 250 people. Our hospital provided food so I had to remove the truck boxes I just put in to get it all out to the event. This year had some cool things from the training facility to check out loke the robot dog. I have gotten a few small things done around the house, starting with tree cleanup. I have left the last bits of the tornado tree I had taken down on the ground because the pieces were so big. I grabbed and axe and a wedge and started breaking it up last week and have been burning it down for a week. And I am still not through with it all.
I keep loading it up, trying to get rid of all of this wood before I start on the next major house project which will be dropping all the dead trees. I also snapped this cool night pic late last night while checking the fire before bed.
I had installed the backyard lights almost 3 years ago and they have held up ok, but as bulbs burned out, they were difficult to find and began burning out quicker than I could change them. I decided it would be cheaper to replace them all than trying to refurb them with new bulbs. The new ones I found were at costco and were much nicer. Screw in e26 base bulbs, able to connect up to 30 strands, and the cabling was beefy.
You can see just how much thicker the cable is on the new lights. I dropped the guide wires the lights are connected to and put them in service mode by movong the wires down the pole to a position where I could work from the ground instead of a ladder.
It took awhile to get them all together and sorted out, my son put the strands together since the bulbs arent installed while I worked on getting them all connected to the guide wire. Once it was all together and ready to be reconnected I struggled to get it clipped back together. The extra wire was heavy! Over a 60 foot gap you could really feel it. I perservered and got it done and in addition I added a Kasa smart switch so my wife can use the echo to turn them on and off. These things are way brighter than the old lights too, so the backyard is now very well lit.
Not much else here except some little camper mods and planning a first trip out. Hoping this current heat wave passes so I can get out and have fun without melting.

 

[Xti04]

Thos mornong I was awoken by the sounds of someone upstairs setting off a camera in our hallway. Great. My kids up at 530 playing his bass, which is fine except now I cant go back to sleep. So I went outside and stirred up the never ending fire going on 2 weeks now of burning this stuff off and getting close to being done with it all. After the kids were off to school I tried to knock out a quick project before work. I carried this monstrosity over to the shop and undoxed a new winch hitch mount. I drug my gear over to the tailgate and got after it. The old cables looked rough swollen with corrosion! I went ahead and cut back 6 inches to get nice clean copper. I melted some solder onto the ends of the anderson ends and then placed the cables and followed that with a hudraulic crimper to get a solid connection.
Once the winch was prepared I assembled the winch plate by adding the handles. With it all together I bolted the winch on and the roller fairlead on. This thing is heavy! I moved it out of the back of the truck and into the shop.
Not looking forward to moving this around much at all! it can live under the jeep until its needed for a trip. I left the wire tools out and will pick up some wire to do the truck side later today. I left a long pigtail on the winch, but of course now I am second guessing myself about it.

 

[SilverJimmy]

One of the shops that I used to service had a winch like that and they had a receiver tube bolted to the concrete in front of their lift. Used the winch to bring in dead vehicles, easier than pushing it by hand.

 

[Xti04]

One of the shops that I used to service had a winch like that and they had a receiver tube bolted to the concrete in front of their lift. Used the winch to bring in dead vehicles, easier than pushing it by hand.

Thats not a bad idea, I typically use my zero turn to tow cars in but with this bendpak lift in my way , I cant drive the mower over it.

No more progress on my stuff this morning but I did knock out a 30k maintenance on a Honda CRV before work this morning. I was checking my never ending fire this morning and saw this little dark flash of movement on the ground and thought it was a big beetle. When I bent down to pick it up, it surprised me that it was a small baby mouse.
Couldn't bring myself to kill him so I let him go, will wait until hes grown to take him out.

 

[fouckhest]

Couldn't bring myself to kill him so I let him go, will wait until hes grown to take him out.

Awe, he could have been a great pet for the boys!

 

[Xti04]

Awe, he could have been a great pet for the boys!

One thing Im not bringing into my house is a mouse! Had it been a squirrel or a baby trash panda, I would have rolled with it, but mice are a no go for me.

 

[fouckhest]

One thing Im not bringing into my house is a mouse! Had it been a squirrel or a baby trash panda, I would have rolled with it, but mice are a no go for me.

Can't fault you there! I want a trash panda, thats one of my retirement pets!

 

[Xti04]

I have known several people who had one. The first was my nursing school professor. She drove a big lifted jeep no top or doors ever on it,and said early one morning as she was leaving she saw Charlie, her raccoon, im the back seat. She reached back there to grab him and it was just a random **** back there and he tore her arms up pretty good. The other was my old window tint guy. He found a baby in a tree that fell thru his roof, and kept it. He came out one day and it was perched on his shoulders and when I reached out it ran right up my arm and sat on my shoulder and had its creepy lil raccoon hands resting on my head. They are way smarter than you think and my professors would watch how she opened cabinets with a magnet and then use the magnet to activate the latch and open it to get food.

 

[fouckhest]

Thats awesome!

A guy I grew up with had one, not sure where he got it, but she (gracie) was awesome when she was little, but then got to a certain age a turned wild/ferule, so she gave him to a guy that trained **** dogs to use for training.

We had a 5th grade (maybe) teacher and her family had raised them and I remember her saying that it is typical that they get to an age and either nature takes over or they just are fine with being domesticated.

As someone that has had multiple **** dogs (currently have a treeing walker and a plot), i'd love raise a racoon baby and a **** dog pup together, seems like a fun retirement pet project (pun intended), LOL

 

[Cdubu52]

We have a skunk that comes to eat when my wife feeds the cats next door at her dads house. Shes gotten fairly close to petting it. She wants either a baby skunk or racoon. I think shes seen one too many Reel or Tiktok video with folks that have them as pets.

 

[madison069]

We have a skunk that comes to eat when my wife feeds the cats next door at her dads house. Shes gotten fairly close to petting it. She wants either a baby skunk or racoon. I think shes seen one too many Reel or Tiktok video with folks that have them as pets.

Usually pet skunks has their glands surgically removed.

 

[Xti04]

I have all sorts of creatures here in my area, and for some reason a lot of them love my front porch. None of my neighbors have cats, yet there are 2 different cats that use my porch as a highway of sorts, crossing it most nights. The ring doorbell picks them up, and sometimes one comes across from one direction and in 20 minutes the other cat comes from the opposite direction. I also have skunks and raccoons that come up onto the front porch and then cruise on thru. Deer have been really common this year, they set off my driveway alarm as they cross my property near the road. I keep hoping to see a bear as there have been several sighted passing thru at a neighborhood down the road a bit from me.

In other non wildlife related news, I got my 1/0 wire in yesterday and built my power side harness from the battery to where the winch lands for the front. My braided wire loom did not arrive, so once it shows up, I can cover the wires for extra protection and then get them both ran up to the drivers side battery. I ordered some nice looking battery terminals to attach these big wires to. Hopefully they work out perfect for this job.