For those of you that don't know, Tice is a good friend and fellow wheeler (and one of the biggest red necks I know

)....
It appears that I was vapor locking when I was taking the FJ40 down to NAPA. Tice recommended I pickup a mechanical fuel pump and get rid of the electric. I installed the new mech fuel pump last night leaving the electric pump in-line (I pulled the connection in the fuse block so it won't run). The mech pump seems to pull through the electric pump just fine. I'll test it out today.
Power steering ROCKS! Got NAPA to make me a high pressure line (after some convincing). Then Tice hooked me up with a fitting for the return line. I can pretty much turn the wheel with one finger now. It was a chore trying to keep it straight driving down the road, much less turning. Now I can kick back with one hand on the wheel and relax.
I was out testing it and it worked great..... Then, some popping noises, and no power steering.

The belt popped off. It happened right outside Monty's, so Tice helped me get it back on. Fired it back up and it still wasn't giving me power steering.

Tice suggested that I back up turning the wheel and try it again. I backed up turning right, there was a bit of a pop then I had PS again. Long story short, I found that any time I tried to turn left the steering would bind until I turned right again. I found that the linkage right at the input of the Saginaw box was rubbing on the front cross member. I took the box off to try and clearance the cross member and found that one of the u-joint caps in the steering linkage had backed out causing the steering linkage to shift. Fixed that and put it back together. Same problem.

When I looked at it again I found some cracked welds on the steering box mounting plate. It had pulled away from the frame at the bottom. I won't tell you that these welds were done by Tice.

Although I can't say much since his welds looked better than mine when he came over to help me fix it.

We used a big c-clamp to pull the plate back to the frame and re-welded it. Problem solved. I think I'll order a new mounting plate and redo everything to be on the safe side.
I'm picking up a reamer from Dave this afternoon to make my drag links tie-rod end fit into the hole in the tie-rod. Right now there's about 4 threads holding it in. That should finish up the steering (barring an alignment). The only other thing I can think of that needs to be done before wheeling it is replacing the front shackles. I got new poly bushings, so I install those at the same time. I've been too busy working so no pics at the moment. I'll try and snap some today.