Thanks, WE b OLD, safety is always priority one, and I am planning on being around long enough to enjoy this with my grandkids. Hello J Lucas, I think I have about 3-4 months before I catch up to where I am at then thing will slow down drastically. But until then stay tuned.
Now that I have the cabs where I wanted, and the tilt frame is complete I started looking at how to access the upper cab. I didn't want the grandkids to have to crawl through the front cab and more I didn't want them to have to crawl over me to get in and out. But I wanted them to want to go to races and car shows with my wife and me.
I had been thinking about how to do steps up to the upper cab, but they just didn't look right. I thought it looked like an afterthought. Since I had to rebuild the bottom of the doors and the corners anyway why not extend them down a bit to help balance things out. I didn't want to go too far or it would defeat the purpose of the tilt cab and access to the engine if it was too low so I had to come up with a compromise and some kind of steps.
The doors required a bit of work. I had to extend the corners and then figure out how to blend the doors and the A pillar to the back of the front cab and make it look like it was designed that way. While I was doing sheet metal work I decided to fix the driver side cowl that was rusted out also. I couldn't find a patch panel for a COE so I pieced one together.
The other thing I wanted to incorporate into the rear doors was to carry the rib that runs under the windows on the front cab back through the back cab. I know that on my original drawings I had it running diagonally up to meet with the upper cab. I laid it out with tape and decided that it just didn't look right. Then I laid it out running straight back and I liked it a lot better, and it broke up the flat area of the extended door.
From here it's time to get all the ideas for the steps out of my head and on the truck to see if they work. Coming soon.
Thanks for following, COCOE (Cab Over Cab Over Engine)
