Bagged and Bodied 1990 B2200

I've seen bag on bar setups too, but they were much beefier than yours.
If that lower bar breaks, you're gonna be in the ditch. Good luck!

Honestly man when I went to Guilty by Design and Kyle told me to run it like that so I did it. If he says its going to work I believe him. He's got a shop and is building some of the baddest trucks around for a reason. He knows his shit when it come to suspension and what will or won't work.

I got the axle done today for the most part. I thought I was going to have an issue with this mish mash of parts.
My axle is new enough it has a speed sensor in the third member. The new axle I had appeared to be a prior generation of trucks axle. It looked like it used an older style of outer wheel bearing lock nut. But we tore in anyway.
When I pulled the drain plug on my old axle that was in the truck the drain plug was covered in big metal shavings. Kind of a puzzle to me where they came from since the actual ring and pinion seemed to be intact and didn't visually look beat up. The pinion had about an 1/8"-1/4" of play in all directions though so maybe the pinion bearing was coming apart and that's where the metal and howling noise was coming from?? I did learn that my axle has had the axle flanges and drums redrilled to work with the 5 lug rims. Which was a relief in the case of axle parts but whenever I need new brake drums its going to suck.

Anyway the new third member out of the donor axle appeared to be in much better shape surprisingly. That's surprising because it went through an F5 tornado in the Guilty By Design shop and was found again and sat in the back room for the last 2 years.
My axle tube all cleaned out and ready for the new third member.


The donor axle all stripped down.


I took it for a ride and its super quiet now. It was so loud before I couldn't take a phone call past 25 mph lol. With this new third member I can actually hear my engine while driving now. Kinda weird getting used to that. The truck also seems to have a lot of new found power. Although both axles are the same ratio I would be willing to bet the old axle has been binding up since the day I bought this truck and its finally spinning freely now.

The bad news from all of this is I found a bad U joint and while reassembling the axle I found out I have a bad outer left wheel bearing in my axle. It's got quite a bit of play in all directions. From the procedure in my chitons manual it looks like I'm going to need a special tool to remove the bearing and have a press to reassemble it.

Has anyone ever done this or found a good way for an average guy to do a rear outer axle bearing replacement?? ANY help or advice on this would be great.

I woke up this morning to bad relay on my compressor. Of course it had to be raining and for some reason I parked in my yard last night instead of my driveway. So I got the joy of having to try and climb under the back of a body dropped truck in the rain and wet grass. I finally got it bypassed got some air. After that I noticed my steering was getting a little rough. I checked the fluid level in my manual gear box to find that it was completely bone dry. I guess the guy who assembled this truck never refilled it. While I was doing that I noticed my rag joint was loose on the steering shaft. So after tightening that down and filling the gear box the truck steers better than it ever has.
Not a great morning but a productive morning none the less.

Well the next issue of mini truckin (November 2013) my daily is the winning truck in the ridin' around section. The day after I heard that good news my truck got hit and caved in the bed. So I needed a new bed and still need quite a few interior parts and other little odds and ends. So I figured maybe I could just find a decent parts truck locally.
I fired up the old interwebs and found a good looking parts truck locally and picked it up last night.
Now my issue is I just can't bring myself to cut this truck up. It's just to complete. It's in a lot better shape than my daily. This thing is a AC and power steering truck and they both still work. The bad thing is it has the typical cracked head. This truck is so well kept and complete it even has a wierd little velvet feeling book in it from Mazda when it was bought new that has a sewing kit, band aids, wet naps and all kinds of other stuff. This truck even still has the all of the factory aluminum trim.
Not only that but the guy gave me and entire truck load of addition parts with it. I probably have 2-3 trucks worth of extra interior parts, lights and stuff, and engine parts.
The best part is I only gave $500 for ALL of it!!!

So the question is should I use this for parts for my bagged and bodied daily or should I just use the engine out of the blue one in this truck and just drive this one??
Let me know what you guys think. Here's a few pictures.


The stuff laying in the passenger side floor board is a pair of new alpine amplifiers and a double din kenwood touch screen CD, DVD player with about every feature you could imagine all for an extra $100 lol.


Some of the extra parts it came with. It even came with another brand new carb. I've never seen one like the one I got with it. Looks kinda like a weber but its something else. Although it appears to use a weber air cleaner.

I say paint the hood and fix the motor. Then drive both.

I wish I had a need for 2 mazdas lol. I'd love to keep them both but its one or the other. The blue one is nice but no heat or AC sucks for a daily. I'd like to bag this one before I start driving it and get it all the way I want it and than just spend a weekend swapping the engine and any other parts off the other one. I'm still kind of undecided on if that's the best thing to do though.