It was time to begin working on the cab. First, I had to remove all of the seats, the center console and the power inverter in order to remove the carpeting and access the cab mounting bolts. The first step was to remove the passenger seat to allow more room for working in the cab. Next, I disconnected and removed the 1000 watt power inverter mounted on the side wall in the back of the cab.
Once the inverter was out of the way, I could get to the mounting bolts that support the rear bench seat. Before I started here, I slid under the truck and sprayed a generous amount of penetrating lubricant on the studs before trying to break them free. Again, the air ratchet came in handy as I zipped the bolts out and slid the upper and lower seat sections out of the cab. Next I began to remove the bolts anchoring the captains chairs to the floor. These came out much easier than I anticipated. The drivers side chair was removed and both seats were set aside for the scrap yard.
The last hurdle was the custom oak console that I designed and created several years prior, back in 1995. It replaced the basic plastic console from Ford. The console used the same mountings as the original and once the bolts were free, there were a lot of wires to disconnect. In the cases where there were full cables routed in under the cab such as the four gauge power cable and the lightbar cables, these were simply cut to facilitate removal of the console. The last step of the process was to remove the carpeting, trim panels, headliner and sound proofing.
The dash was left in place as there was no reason for it to be removed. As the carpet was removed, I found that the floorboard of the cab on the driver’s side had split open some time ago. The cab was just sitting on the frame with only one bolt holding it in place. In the back, both body bolts looked secure in the cab. However, the frame mounts had completely rusted away. A hard turn and the cab might have come off of the truck. 250,000 miles had definitely taken their toll on the her.