My Pete rebuild

[stevesparts]

Even that seat is to high for some of the pete guy's....LOL :)

[DKenworth]

(01-05-2019 )Nostalgic Wrote:  Got my cab floor


and new driver seat in today... I don't like how it's always reclined back so far, but my wife says it's a Peterbilt thing I just need to get used to.

Looking good! 12inch extension for shift gears would looks even better!

[Nostalgic]

I'm not gonna knock what some people find comfortable or whatever floats their boat, but I never got the sitting on the floor. I buy an air ride seat for a reason, one of them isn't sitting on the floor lol. I see guys that ride way up and pushed over the steering wheel too, and ??? but hey, if it works for them, carry on driver.

As for the shifter extensions, when I was truck shopping, if they had one, the truck was crossed off the list. Yeah, I have prejudices for vehicles lol.

Anywho, the closer I get to completion and doing some serious trailer shopping, the more I look at how tight things are. While I've had 53' vans in here, it's just too tight to do on a regular basis, and if there's snow, I can forget about jacking the hard blindside uphill to get turned around, so these oaks had to go.



I could never do in weeks what these crazy guys did in hours and in fact had a few butt puckers just watching them from the ground.



I had them leave me something to push on the small one so that I could hopefully get the root ball out without making too big of a mess. (I did get it over after dark...and I did make a mess lol)



I thought the big white oak was going to be hollow for sure, since there was a family of flying squirrels living in a knot 18 or so feet up, but it gave me a nice clean 14' x 40" log, and I should be able to get quite a few logs above the knot. Hopefully I can recoup some of the well deserved money these guys cost and get a fancier seat?

[Nostalgic]

Finally done destructing? Since there's a hole in the back of the sleeper, I'll use it for my XM antenna, a camera to view the trailer, and run a couple wires for any future uses of a strobe or ????



I replaced the factory 4x6's and while installing them, realized I still had a company driver mindset to not cut or modify anything. There's a lot of places to fit speakers, so without going crazy, I'm popping some 6 1/2"s in behind the seats. Until I started pulling panels off, I didn't realize how poorly thought out these interiors are. There's so much wasted space behind panels and storage cubbies.

[Nostalgic]

Not sure if anyone is still following along, but had a family crisis and I stopped being
even remotely productive for a while, and the interior sat like this...



I did manage to get the fridge and my poor man's cabinet installed. I had priced out the Iowa Customs fridge/storage cabinet, and while it's nice this will have to do. I'm not quite sure what the bottomless sliders from the factory were supposed to do, but I used 1 with a bottom, and one with a surface for a workstation.



So, short of running a power cord and securing the microwave and printer, the sleeper is done.



I got so used to working without seats, now that they're installed, I remember how restricting narrow cabs are, but here's hoping I can adjust?



As of now, the Knoedler seats seem to be pretty comfortable, but I need a few weeks with them to determine if it was worth trading in the dog's pillow and my milk crate.



While I'm happy with how it turned out, I wish I had been able to tackle the peeling dash... maybe I'll get a vacation some year and do it?

[Roysbigtoys]

I know I for one am still following and loving what you have been doing. I admire the expertise and craftsmanship you have put into your complete rebuild. In my opinion, you have done everything the right way and not half-a$$ed anything. Keep up the good work!

[bazdan902]

I still keep checking in when I see it on the homepage, looks like it's gonna be a nice truck, real pleasure to drive I bet once you get rolling. FYI, the platinum interiors come with mid bass speakers in the exact spot you are locating yours behind the seat... I agree there's lots of wasted space but that just means lots of room for improvement and customizing, never ending project!... I'm not sure about your truck but the sleeper HVAC control panel, in behind there is a great spot to hide amps as well as up in the headliner. Platinum cabs also have amps in headliner.

[Lostfarmboy]

This is a fun post for me to follow. I only hope my 386 can grow up to be half this nice

[Nostalgic]

(01-31-2019 )bazdan902 Wrote:  I still keep checking in when I see it on the homepage, looks like it's gonna be a nice truck, real pleasure to drive I bet once you get rolling. FYI, the platinum interiors come with mid bass speakers in the exact spot you are locating yours behind the seat... I agree there's lots of wasted space but that just means lots of room for improvement and customizing, never ending project!... I'm not sure about your truck but the sleeper HVAC control panel, in behind there is a great spot to hide amps as well as up in the headliner. Platinum cabs also have amps in headliner.

I never liked burying amps - I know, I know, once they're tuned in, you really never need to touch them, but above the headliner would haunt me since it's one of the hardest panels to take off. I agree, the HVAC cubby would have been perfect, but I have a Espar in there... The battery powered A/C sits back dead center below the bed and takes up a lot of space too. I plan to try it out this summer, but if it doesn't perform enough to justify the battery bank, it's gone and I'll high idle...

It's still tough to make adjustments on the amps, but I opted to use the closet. Unlike the previous owner, instead of running the power wires through a jagged hole and siliconing the carpet, I used a grommet and put a ANL fuse @ the battery.



My first time dealing with ground loop noise, and I still blame the cheap amps, but putting ground loop isolators on the 4 F&R channels took most of it out. I bought everything from Crutchfield's scratch-n-dent store, and despite the non existent budget, pieced together a pretty good sounding system.