In the meantime ...
While I am waiting for the fenders and running boards to get sand blasted ... and before I can work up enough courage to continue on messing up a perfectly good engine ...
....
The annual Mennonite consignment auction happened (where it always does ...) next to the former home of Stovebolt.com and the current home of this project (I rent back my two-bay detached garage from the folks who bought our farm). Whilst (as the Brits say) previewing the auction, I saw a Plain Community spring wagon body in the sale field. It was well used and mostly junk to them ... but it looked very similar to what Calvin was going to get (eventually ... if I live long enough ...) for a bed. So I whipped out my tape measure, got a few measurements and walked about 300 yards over to my shop where Calvin is (convenient, ja?? I always loved that sale!) and would you believe it, but it pretty much fits exactly!!
Hmmmmmmmm.
Multiple Hmmmmmmmmsss. One being that it could be a pattern for a new bed for Calvin. And provide some hardware like the tailgate latches. The other hmmmmmm being that it was even more evidence that this truck is not very far advanced from the horse-drawn technology that it replaced, and that was still in pretty widespread use when Calvin rolled off the assembly line.
So cool. I thought I might be able to pick it up.
On the day of the sale, the body was in the part of the sale that went at the very end of the day. I had finished early and my sciatica was telling me to go home. So I asked asked a friend who was there to bid on a (non-running) Farmall Super A if he would bid on it for me. He said "sure." I instructed him to go no higher than $10.
Later that evening, he called me to tell me that I owed him $2. And ... that one of my Mennonite friend had come up to him to say that if I wanted it, he had a second body at his place about to go on a burn pile but I could have it if I wanted it.
So the other day, I drove over and picked it up. The hardware on it alone was worth a bit more than the $1 I essentially paid for it.
And my friend loaded the one body I actually bought and dragged it home to his place. I got a break in my schedule to go collect the two bodies and put them over at the shop. The first shot below is part of that logistics day -- I had collected both bodies, and then headed to Walmart to grab Miss Margaret's latest purchases.
So now I have a couple of spring wagon bodies behind the shop where Calvin lives. When the time comes, I will use them as patterns to build a new body. I will use much of the hardware on them, as well.
