The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Completed Journals 1951 Chevy COE Car Hauler on a P30 Chassis

After posting the last chapter in this seemingly endless novel I went back through my equally endless seeming file of pictures and saw somethings that I did early on that I think deserve a mention. One was mounting the fuel tank. The original motorhome had two tanks one 80 gal. that went across the rear of the coach and a 30 gal. that sat about midship on the passenger side. With being a roll back the large tank was out but even with just the little tank I should have at a minimum a range of about 300 miles, and I felt that would be sufficient. My plan was to reinstall it pretty much where it was originally at but all the supports for it went away when I was cutting the coach apart. But when I was building the rear deck, I laid out where it was going to set and welded some predrilled pieces of tube steel between the frame rails and the 2 X 6 perimeter of the deck. When done with all the welding in that area and before I installed the wood above it, I rolled it under the bed and raised it into place with the bridge crane and bolted it up. I had ordered a locking gas door for the side of the truck that was actually for a Jeep CJ, and it fit right over the fill spout and worked well.

Another thing was moving the steering box. Originally it sat about half in and half out of the front of the left fender and I didn't think that was a good look. So, after taking some measurements I figured I could cut the mount lose from the frame and move it back about 6" weld it back on and it would clear the fender. Then I just needed to shorten the Pitmen Arm and get the geometry for the steering linkage to work, and it would all be good. After Santa brought me a nice new chrome steering column for Christmas, I hooked everything up and it all work as I had hoped. As a bonus the angles were right, so it didn't bind when the cab tilted.

The last thing for this post was the master cylinder. I was going to use the original one off the motorhome and it needed to line up with the brake pedal box. I built a bracket off the frame out of angle iron and bolted it in. Again, the rotation of the cab tilting wasn't enough to affect it. When it tilts the brake pedal go's down but not far enough to bind or start compressing the master cylinder. Once the master cylinder was in place and confirmed it would work, I ran new lines to tie it all together and added an extension to the rear axal that I moved back.

And by the way I did get some more painting done. The hood is ready to install and some dash pieces.