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’40 Chev Truck Restomod update — April 12, 2019
Not too much to report for this week’s tour home, mostly I got the winter tires changed over to the summer’s on the daily drivers. That, and we got a room painted in the house! Super exciting, I know… Our oldest is serving in the Canadian military ( Armored ) and will be home for Easter, so Momma wanted to paint his bedroom before he arrives!
I did however get some good work done on the truck. I added a top support to the battery tray as it was a little too wobbly for my liking. Not that the tray was weak, it had more to do with the flex in the firewall. By adding the top support I think I accomplished 2 things; the first is that I was not happy with the plastic clip that held down the battery, it seemed out of place. And the second was to stiffen up the whole thing by adding in an addition point of contact.
I know I have mentioned the fuel tank before and thought I was mostly done with it. After spending 2 more days working on it I am on the fence whether a prebuilt one would have been a better choice. This was cheaper, and I got a custom tank that fits the truck perfectly in the space I want it to be, but darn what a load of work! Thinking about it now though, it just occurred to me that the fab work I was doing was mainly for the mounting bracket, which I would have had to do for a store bought tank as well…
Lastly, I got the Lokar shifter mounted. Nothing too difficult there but it was one of those things that were on the to-do list so I can check that off.
A cool tool that I have learned about recently that you may or may not have heard about is a rivet-nut. This is a handy alternative to fighting with small nuts or welding a nut to the backside of whatever you are trying to bolt to. It works pretty much the same as a standard rivet, except that the rivet-nut rivets itself to the metal rather than holding 2 pieces of metal together. Maybe it is just me, but I had never heard of them before and thought it worth mentioning. They work especially well with sheet metal and you can even add a support backer same as with a standard rivet.
If you are interested in more info, go to google images and search: “rivet nut”
Sorry, no pictures this time.
Anyways, that is all for now.
Later,
Steve