The Stovebolt Site Forums Welcome! Welcome Centre Do It Yourself (DITY) Gallery 1954 Chevy 3608 Flatbed - "The Joys of Sharing Garage Space" *

Hi all,

I'm (soon to be) the new owner of a 1954 3608 flatbed. I had negotiated the sale and exchanged cash for it last weekend but then the lady I'm buying it from couldn't find the title so I took my cash back and we held off until she gets a replacement. So hopefully NEXT week unless this COVID nonsense kicks into another gear.

I'm relatively new to vintage trucks, but have a small fleet of vintage motorcycles, so major conceptual things like 6v electrical, questionable brakes, never-ending searches for unobtanium parts, etc are not new territory to me. My buddy has a '50 Dodge B1 and a '52 Hudson Hornet and have helped him with a few maintenance items on those, too.

Things I know it needs:

Brakes - plan on doing all WC, MC, and lines
Rear Glass
Driver vent glass
Driver door latch won't "latch" when closing door. Can trigger it by messing around with something in the door (i can feel it with my fingers but can't see it, so I know it's fixable, but I don't know what it is)
Bed floor needs replacing, probably the strips too, but hoping I can sandblast + powdercoat the originals
Stake sides need to be refinished, but wood is solid

It's got a clacky lifter or two, but otherwise the engine runs like a dream. Charges, and doesn't appear to be leaking anything seriously. My plan is to keep this one pretty original. No V8 swaps or lowering it, or anything as it still needs to do work. It'll haul supplies for home improvement projects, firewood here and there, and probably hit a few local cruise nights. Plan is to secure mount points in the bed for my motorcycle chocks as well so I can haul a motorcycle or two if needed.

This forum looks like a huge wealth of information on these trucks. Glad to be here!

Welcome to Stovebolt.com, BLSully

I am partial to 1954 Chevrolet 3XXX trucks, and, I am especially partial to "My plan is to keep this one pretty original".

Let us know what you are doing with your truck.

Tim

Welcome to the BOLT, hope your deal works out .

Thanks for the welcome all. I'll be documenting my progress with it soon hopefully. I talked to the seller yesterday and she confirmed the checks in the mail for the replacement title, and I live pretty close to the state's central DMV. I've had titles in <1wk before for other cars, so barring any COVID-factor, it shouldn't be long before I can start getting dirty.

The real battle is going to be sharing garage space with the motorcycles while I work on the Chevy Wife and I typically park the daily drivers in the driveway during the summer months to let the bikes have free range of the garage but that'll get cramped with a dually in there!

Finally uploaded the video I took of it once I got it idling. I did this work "for" the seller as I really wasn't interested in buying a truck that didn't run, so I was willing to put in some time to hear it run before making an offer. First time I went out there we had no spark (and I didn't have any tools with me), so this was try #2. Fired right up on starting fluid once we solved the spark issue (seems related to a knob under the dash I don't have a picture of yet... looked like a variable resistor). Subsequently fired up on it's own with no trouble at all.

First idle video

Hi all,

I finally picked up the truck I was in the process of buying when I started posting on this site. Got it home and started cleaning it up. Mice had set up a small urban settlement under the seat unfortunately, so I spent a good portion of the day trying to get as much evidence of mice as I could out of the cab.

The truck drives surprisingly well. There's definitely some high priority maintenance items and once I got it home and started poking at it more deeply, I found more shoddy bodywork than I'd like to have, but all in all, I'm happy with it.

High priority things:
1) Brakes - They work, but there's definitely a leaking WC or two. At $35/each, it's cheap insurance to just do them all.
2) Steering - Truck wanders a fair bit. Not sure yet if it's steering box adjustment, kingpins, tierods, or some combination. Again, tierods and kingpin rebuild are cheap. Will probably just do it all so I know it's done
3) Suspension - The dealer-installed helper springs have several broken leaves. I don't plan on ever carrying a load heavy enough to even engage those springs, so I'll be removing those. One of the front springs has a broken leaf and someone safety-wired some bar stock in there to take up the space. While I don't relish buying all new leaves for each corner of the truck, that's the safest way to go.
4) Electrical - None of the lights work. I see voltage fluctuation when the light switch is moved, so I get to go chasing wiring. Wiring harness is not original, but doesn't look like a rats nest either. Hopefully shouldn't be a big deal.

Wants:
Top speed of ~45mph will not stay attractive once it drives straight and stops well. Looking at the 14 bolt C&C swap.
Rebuild the bed. All the bed supports are VERY rotted, the wood is disintegrating. Probably will drive it as is for now and focus on the maintenance items that actually matter to make it safe to drive.

Will document things as I come to them

Question: See attached wheel picture - Are these split rims? I don't see any seams/etc. Not really sure what I'm looking at. If they're 1-piece wheels, maybe they're not factory? Tires are Power King 16-6.50LT. Thankfully in good shape with no dryrotting or cracks

First job this past weekend... clean out the cab. It reeked (and still kind of does) of mouse. Took out the seat to find years worth of nests and droppings. Got the PPE on and started disinfecting. I hate dealing with rodents. We've thankfully had beautiful weather over the weekend so I left the windows down during the day and let the breeze air out the cab. It's still not 'fresh', but at least you can breathe in there now without feeling like you're going to die.

Second job: Disassemble the stake sides to refinish the boards. Believe I'll probably re-assemble them with new stakes. The horizontal boards are in good shape other than the peeling finish, but the stakes are very worn, likely from being wet and getting wallowed out in the stake holes. I think those would last longer if the there were sleeves in the stake pockets. Not much surface area for them to distribute pressure. When I rebuild the bed I believe I'll upgrade the rails. Would like to keep the rounded steel "frame" as it fits the era of the truck, but unsure of how to find if that "beaded" shape is still available... mine has some rust through. Been googling, but not coming up with the right terms.

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

That's pretty typical rust. I'm kind of surprised they found enough clean metal to make the lead stick.
Patch panels are available to fix that mess, but it won't be easy, as the panels need to be tweaked to fit correctly (the worst being the inner cowl panel and the inner-to-outer cowl panel.)
You can browse thru my photos (link in my signature - starting at the top of page 3 and extending into page 2) to see where I did the same type of repairs. I replaced both front cab mounts, floor, inner, outer, and inner-to-outer cowl panels.
Good Luck

klhansen-
Those are great pics! Thanks! I saved a bunch off to my reference folder so I have something to look at. Part of my trepidation on this job is using accurate reference points and the order of how to tackle the fixes. I've read the welding tips and tricks thread, and while I'm ALSO a newbie at welding, I understand the reasoning for the planishing, etc in principle. Putting it into practice is something else entirely, but I will give it my best. Outside of jobs I just couldn't reasonably acquire the tools to do, I intend on doing all the work on this truck myself (and with friends where I need extra hands). The suspension has already been rebuilt front and rear, and I'm working on plans for how best to restore the flatbed.

I found WICruiser's thread where he's doing very similar work this spring and got in contact with him. He's within reasonable driving distance of me so maybe we'll do some tech days together and I can learn a few things. I've spent the weekend between family Easter events tearing the rest of the front clip off the truck. Just have the hood left to do. Also getting the interior out. Happily, many parts seem to be in great shape. Grill is solid except for a small area where the rust through of the fender started eating the grill. Easily fixed with some home-made sheet metal patches. Rest of the cab seems quite solid. I took the windshield and headliner out and there's no signs I see of rot in the upper cab at all. Did find more mouse nests over the headliner *sigh*.

As much as I didn't want to tear this deep into the truck yet (my intent was to fix it up mechanically and then enjoy it for a couple summers and then do the bodywork), I'm happy I'm getting into it and will have the truck as close to 100% as I'm capable of making it. Just means another summer with it stuck in the garage rather than out noodling around the countryside

I see you have the old tried and true license plate patch on the firewall. LOL!

One other tip, as far as getting things in the right place. Get a Factory Assembly Manual. It has some pages with dimensions of the cab, called weld checking dimensions.

Good luck with your project. I wish I had someone nearby working on one as well. That will help both you and WICruiser.

Hey, been a busy few days and haven't had time to check back in.

I did buy reprints of the FSM and FAM back when I first bought the truck. And I was lucky enough to find a good condition original 54 manual at the Jefferson Swap Meet last weekend! (Original manual has WAY better pics than the the reprint) The cab dimensions pages have taken me some time to grok... I think I understand how to read most of it anyway. What do people use as a 0 ref line on the vertical axis since the FAM seems to use some abstract point below the cab? My initial thought is to use the floor (decent condition and straight) on mine and adjust the numbers for the 0 ref-line-to-floor dimension. Thoughts?

The cab is completely stripped and detached from the frame as of this past weekend. Went and picked up an engine hoist from my buddy and am going to lift the cab off and take to a chemical dipper so I don't have to work through the layers of bondo and paint. I may not like what I find underneath, but c'est la vie. I'm determined to make this both an educational project, and a nice driver in the end. Perfection is the goal, but not the final expectation.

Question related to the attached photo: While disassembling the cab, I noticed the steering shaft is not centered in it's hole in the cab. ALSO when I detached the column bracket at the dashboard, it definitely moved a bit (as if the bracket was mildly forcing it into place. I know this truck has been in some sort of front-driver side collision (bumper is tweaked and there's evidence of massaging the driver side windshield pillar. Is there a common dimension that gets tweaked on these trucks? Again, I'll measure the chassis and cab as best I can to compare with the FAM, but I'm assuming there's a common weak link when these trucks got hit. OR... maybe not likely, but worth asking... is it common for the steering column to not be perfectly lined up with the cab?

The steering column on my 1954 3604 is centered. I suspect the problem lies in the cab mounts. You'll be able to see once you get the cab off.

I never did figure out what the misalignment issue was while taking the cab off. My "helper" during that phase was my wife, and I was pushing my luck getting her to agree to be my extra hands lifting the cab off off the frame with an engine hoist.

I've gotten the cab back from the chemical dippers, and ordered patch panels this morning. Looking at the bottom of the cab, I don't see anything obviously bent... the body mounts are all straight, etc. Time to measure the frame I guess and compare to the FAM dimensions.

Any recommendations for the following problem areas? Thankfully my floor is very solid, only a bit of pitting on the surface. Rockers are "mostly fine"... I ordered new ones, but tempted to try and just fix the pinholes rather than cut out the entire rocker and risk changing the overall alignment of the door openings. I believe I'm going to try to do the inner/outer cab corners first as that seems like the easiest for a beginner to tackle. My intent is to butt joint everything and use as little filler as possible. I don't want this to be layer upon layer of bondo like what got stripped OFF it.

I am a newbie too. Rockers are not a newbie task. Corners maybe, but I would start in areas which will jot be seen.

I would repair rather than replace the rockers if th only bad area is the holes shown along the bottom edge. the rockers are a major structural connection between the door hinge and latch posts so control the door opening both from a fore/aft perspective and a parrallel vertical opening perspective.

The rear cab corner actually looks decent.

The fornt inner and outer cowl panels can be a real challenge and you will need to replace the outer edge of the floor also.

The rockers being a major structural concern is one reason I don't want to go whole hog and replace the entire section of metal. The rockers on this cab are definitely pitted on the back side, but it's mostly solid metal. Just the pitting in that bottom crease where sand/moisture got trapped over the running board rubber. The other major spot it's rusted, that sorta matters more, is where it extends in front of the driver door hinge pillar and holds the parking brake rod. I'm hoping I can take the new patch panel and chop it up to fix those two areas, leaving the majority of the original rocker in place.

I know the driver cab corner doesn't look awful, but it really bothers me that they lap jointed it. It had acres of bondo in that corner and just looked terrible. Since I've got the cab stripped, I'm going to replace it all anyway. My intent is to keep this truck til I die, so I might as well do it as right as I can now.

The classicparts.com order I placed yesterday included an entire new toe plate, for which I only need the outer few inches of for both sides. Figure I'll cut up the center of it to make little patches for the floor, etc where I just need some good metal and can form it myself.