Hey all,
I've had a '54 3600 for a couple years which has been an on-again-off-again project as I have the motivation. Well. I've had the front up on jack stands to do the steering arms and realized the parking brake cable wasn't holding as well as when I'd parked it. Lo and behold the pivot rod under the parking brake pedal has torn out of the sill-side. I knew there was some (maybe a lot) of soft metal in that corner, but the stress of the parking brake being set over several months finally ripped it apart.
So, before driving it, I guess I'm doing the bodywork, too. I'd been hoping to drive it as-is and do the bodywork in a couple years, but that option is out the window now. Before I tear into it too much, I have the Factory Assembly Manual and have been trying to decipher how to read the cab measurements and how best to brace up the critical points before I start cutting into it. My impression from doing some fairly thorough digging and prodding at the sheet metal is I can likely leave the A-pillar in place (though I think it needs to be tweaked at the bottom... viewing from the top, the two hinge mounts aren't quite in the same plane). The sills BETWEEN the A and B-pillars are solid enough I don't think I need to mess with them outside of whatever blending needs to be done to get the parking brake mount fixed. I also suspect the driver side front cab mount, but until I get the cab off the truck, I can't say for sure. It has a decided "lean" to that side though which I've measured various points of the chassis and /believe/ it's the cab, not the chassis that's leaning.
I'm a complete newbie at this... the closest thing I've done to this type of bodywork was stripping paint off a peeling trunk lid and repriming and painting it from spray cans. So.... I've got a lot to learn. My inspiration thus far has come from Fitzee's Fabrication channel on YouTube, and while there's certainly something to be said for a professional making it "look easy", I think it also "looks doable" given the tools I have available.
The complicating circumstances:
1) A previous owner has filleted the fenders to the cab where the toe panel, inner cowl, cowl, and fender have all rusted (nearly) apart. With Lead. I don't care for lead at all, and doing my investigative prodding, I melted out well over 1/4" of lead in a large portion of the fender, never mind the fillet. I refuse to create any more lead dust that absolutely necessary, so my current thought is to cut out the cowl above the lead and remove it attached to the fender and hopefully source some new (old) fenders.
2) On that note, I've heard the repro fenders are really poorly made, anyone have a lead on some '54 solid-ish fenders? I've got one other email out to an ad for a '54 front clip, but not heard back yet.
Here's some pictures of the carnage... Enjoy
