Hey Dan,
thanks for the encouragement! Here's an update:
I've been working on another timber frame job and finish after dark every day, and I'm finding metal a little cold to work on at this time of year. Progress has slowed considerably.
That said, I have made a few advancements, and I keep forgetting to bring the camera. I'll try to remember next time.
I re-did the dust bucket on the air cleaner, narrowly avoiding a welding nightmare.
I have fabricated a bracket to hold the p/s reservoir to the left hand inner fender, and will be mounting it in place soon. It's too cold to paint, so that slows me down a bit. When the metal is warm from the welding, I can throw a bit of etching primer on and that's about all I can do.
The drag link end finally arrived from Brazil and fortunately it fits the ZF steering gearbox pitman arm just fine. It also has a 17mm end, so it will hook into my stock drag link, which is good, though it does mean the weak link in the system will now be the other end of the drag link, where it joins the center arm with the puny 40 series TRE. I'm wondering if I should beef it up with something custom....
I'm not decided on what to do with the steering column. I sat in another 45-series cab the other day, and noticed that the clearance from the top of my lower thigh to the underside of the stock steering wheel was pretty much the same as what I have with my 60 column. Stock, it's a crowded seating position, and lifting my leg to push the brake pedal involves splaying my right knee to the side. I'm going to try and get a second opinion before re-doing my 60 column, given this new information.
How roomy do others out there with 45's find their cab, when it comes to operating the foot pedals?
I have marked out a hold on the underside of the cab floor to put the pto lever through, and and looking to find the right sort of rubber grommet or boot before I chop into the metal.
I have a $600 OEM parts order on its way from Japan, which includes such things as factory fog lamps and their mounting brackets, the correct vsv for my engine shut down, a speedo cable, a parking brake cable, the upper-cab section weatherstripping, and a bunch of other minor things. Kudos to Dave at Japan4x4 for his patience with my numerous e-mails and requests for unconventional parts. It was a 6 week process.
I'm going with the OME shocks and steering damper, after some thought. The yellow color of the OME shocks is a bit repellent to me, so I might re-paint them black.
And last Saturday I spent 8.5 hours on differential set-up. The front went fairly smoothly, once i realized the pinions had gotten mixed up between the two diffs, but the second was a royal PITA. I'm planning to have another go at it this coming Saturday. It's pretty tricky reading the oil paint wear patterns sometimes, and of course, I am a total neophyte at this, so it is not going quite so smoothly as I would have hoped. As always, more patience is a good thing.
I removed the vac. reservoir and put the old one (the first one I restored) back in place on the right side of the chassis. I need to get some rubber lines to connect it to the hard lines on the firewall. I also need to bend up the brake lines for both axles, and for along the firewall. I will need to figure out the flex lines for the brakes as well.
I located a decent ashtray on Ebay last week and won the auction, so that will be on its way fairly soon. Another package from $OR arrived recently too, containing such things as an OEM door handle, an after-market door latch mechanism, bolts to mount the pto winch, and the weatherstripping for the top of the windshield frame. I've got all the weatherstripping bits I need for this re-build - finally. I feel lucky to have gotten the pieces, because a lot of stuff for these old trucks is going into 'obsolete' mode right now, as production is terminated in Japan. I suggest to anyone contemplating a similar rebuild to mine to start shopping as soon as they can or face the prospect of being SOL for getting the stuff.
Any progress with your rig Dan?
At least I've got the PTO winch purchased, and a heater rebuild kit, so I'm not driving myself totally crazy before I pull it into the shop and make a mess out of it. 
