yah having several 1, 2, and 3-foot sections laying around is pretty handy

ok shop is cleaned up so back at it: the d-side half of the engine bracket was in the way of a bunch of stuff, and I'm not doing A/C, so removed it and gained a lot of nice clearance and simplifies things nicely - the alternator still has three big bolts securing the bracket to the engine nice n solid -

...so my Sniper 2300 2bbl throttle body is rated at 580 cfm, but despite AFE telling me my air filter was rated at ~650 cfm I was still a little concerned that it was just a bit too small...so to assure myself it wasn't I made a template of the filter o.d. and flattened it out to compare it to the original filter for the engine (from an '02 Dakota), and sure enough it looks to be plenty big enough indeed - horray 👍

That filter appears to be the same one my '01 Ram (5.2) uses, Fram CA3901.

d-side uber rock bumper-slider / running board / lookout platform is tacked in place - interestingly enough it does not seem to be any heavier than the gigantic plate steel poison spyder sliders I was originally going to use - those bastids were fargin heavy. Best thing about these is the frame is the anchor and not the body panels...and I really didn't want to drill a dozen holes in the body anyway and then rely on rivet nuts to withstand the impending abuse. P-side in work. And in case anyone is wondering, the tubing I'm using is uber h.d. 1.9" drill stem - picked up about 30 sticks of it a while ago and have been using it for rock bumpers since. This stuff is incredibly strong - not 100% sure but I think it's chromoly, just shy of 3/16" thick - had to order the XHD bender from Rogue Fab - been working great.









...will have expanded metal on top for real good gription -

Nice! You're really getting after it