I'll keep you in mind, Doc, if I decide to do away with either (not likely though!).
I discovered a couple of things while tinkering with The Beast this morning.
Since the rack items were still fresh on my mind, I decided to see what was under the hood since that's an area I had not checked out before the purchase.
Found a storage tray that I didn't expect to see. From what I've read elsewhere on the forum, I'm guessing that it was another optional item the previous owner (po) added?
The spring shackles weren't in there when I opened it up. I just laid them down in there before deciding to take the picture. The seller passed them along to me, so I think that I will hold on to them in case I decided to remove the lift kit he installed. He said it was a 2" lift kit, but looking at these compared to the ones on the rear springs now, I measure these at a tad over 1" shorter than the ones installed. So maybe he only thought he got a 2" lift?
View attachment 8927
My second "discovery" was when I pulled the spark arrestor. When picking the unit up from the seller, I asked if he had been cleaning it or if it had been removed. He said he didn't know anything about it. Sheesh...............
It was actually not TOTALLY carboned up, but I sprayed it down with cleaner until it was totally clean. The screen shape looks different than the pictures of those I've seen on this forum. For now I will re-install it since I run this machine in a REALLY dry, drought-stricken area where we had a bad range fire about four years ago. If there's any chance that it will prevent a spark then I guess I can live with this relatively minor chore. I'm looking forward to getting The Beast back out after getting the RTV Forum-recommended maintenance tasks performed to see if there's any performance improvement.