One thing that has bothered me since I got the truck was the frayed battery cables, which you can't really see in the pic below (battery on left side), but I wanted to put a "before" engine pic in here sooner than later.
So when the battery wouldn't crank, it gave me a good excuse to go ahead and get new cables, which can be seen installed below (I told you these pics weren't exciting, but you kept reading anyways). You'd be surprised how long it can take 2 guys (Dave Higgins helped) to figure out a way to get one grounding bolt threaded in its home, conveniently tucked deep in the engine of course... but it finally worked!
Of course, the problem with the battery still exists, and it'll be replaced soon. But, for the time being, and in order to get it turned around in the garage, we had to jump-start it (which initially caused a nice and fun mini-explosion... a little too much gas? Oops! good times). I wanted to get it turned around so that I could have enough room to sand the other side. My next step to take can clearly be seen below, more sanding. Not sure if I'm going to sand the tailgate though, as it will definitely be replaced.
Still feeling motivated and since we were already numb from the cold night, we pushed on to try to get the Catalytic converter off. It's basically clogged and not working anyways, so it was time to come off. As you can see below we didn't quite get there. Muffler came off without too much trouble, but the Cat was much more stubborn in its connection to the exhaust (to the right). We may have to cut... that should be fun.
