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Stealing my intro from the original Welcome to the forum thread...

I've had mustangs and vintage Volkswagens that I've built and sold over the years but never pulled the trigger on a "farm truck". I grew up as a kid around the 80's and 90's street rod scene and always had an affinity for the 30's to 50's trucks but never really considered owning one; I finally caved in and picked up my first pre-war vehicle. It's a relatively stock 1940 Chevy pickup that was supposedly restored sometime in the 70's.

FYI...I've been working on the truck for a couple of months prior to posting this build thread so there will be a time lapse of sorts going on

Starting point of all this silliness begins here:
First attached pic is how we found it, sitting in a guys shed of sorts. Truck ran and drove but it clearly had some issues. Ended up driving the truck home that day but took a bypass that avoided the mountain road.

Took the better part of the day but the truck made it home. Initial findings, brakes worked great, original 216ci straight six smoked or leaked enough oil to rival the exxon valdez, 3spd bull nose trans was an experience and the wiring was sketchy as hell.... but it started, steered and stopped all the way home.

Plans for the truck are to keep a fairly stock appearance with some slight alterations.

Paint:
Black body, black fenders and black solids... I have a theme going on here and wow has paint gotten expensive

Suspension: stock straight axle with disk brakes, stock leaf springs front/rear with a couple of leaves pulled , 10 bolt rear axle.

At this point I've ordered and received the disk brakes from MP that bolt to the original 1940 drum hubs. Picked up a crusty 8.2 10 bolt from a 71 lemans. Will be running 15x5 and 15x7 wheel vintiques series 12 smoothies on 205/75R15 front and 235/75R15

Drivetrain: This is where things get a little squirrelly, so far I've picked up a TH400 auto trans and a 396 big block Chevy.


The deconstruction has proven interesting

Truck is super solid and somewhat clean but I'm finding that the fenders have had some heavy bondo sculpting. Anyway It's a great starting point for what I want to do with it.

When I looked at the truck, I ran a magnet over it and couldn't find any bondo in the body. I missed parts of the fenders or my magnet was to strong.

Two worst visible parts on the body are the dent in the lower grill area and some minor rust bubbling in the driver side front quarter. Make note of the word visible for future reference

Pic of the TH400 that I picked up for the truck, rebuilt with a shift kit in it...talk about overkill, it lived behind a 283 in a model A . Tags say that it's originally out of a 69 truck. And the BBC that I picked up from a neighbor down the street

Some of the deconstruction pics... a lot of the truck is coming apart reasonably well

The rad shell is one part of the truck that I didn't run my magnet over.... which leads to finding some issues with the metal and of course a healthy dose of bondo. That means the shell has to come completely apart in order to do a decent repair.... Not the best picture...backside of the rad shell. Got some of the dents hammered out

Still ripping into the truck... finding some good and some bad as we get deeper into it. Last time the truck was painted the sill panels weren't removed...they simply painted over them in place and the rear window flange is a little soft in the lower right corner

Grill shell surface rust got treated with rust mort and the panels had some dents removed then straightened before getting a skim coat of bondo... now primed and ready for paint at this point.

Front fenders aren't to bad..no rust or accident damage but as a farm truck it accumulated a lot of small dents over the years. A lot of the dents hammered out and after another skim coat of bondo they look pretty good. Well at least one of them does... still have one left to finish

prior to sanding ..lots of sanding

The rear fenders are a different story... dents and accident damage of some kind. Oddly both rear fenders are damaged in a similar location and manner. Straight edges in a curve is not an ideal shape

Doesn't look to bad sitting there... maybe I should have left well enough alone

First splashes of paint made it onto a couple of parts... which means the grill shell can go back together once some of the more visible pieces are color sanded. Due to the fact that it's a low buck project... i painted the grill rather than spend $1000 cdn to have it redone. In the end the black actually goes with my over all style that I have in mind for the truck.

Started ripping into the crusty rear that I picked up for the truck. To be clear, I live in a location that doesn't have a lot of access to old parts and shipping can/usually does cost more than the part. So while it's not ideal for a couple of reasons; I ended up grabbing an 8.2 rear for the truck out of a 71 lemans. Being from a Lemans it was a coil over car so lots of grinding on bracketry that is no longer required

Have a few parts on the way to hopefully help it out:
Moser engineering diff cover
Summit Racing Axles
Richmond gears 3.73 R/P
Yukon Dura Grip
and a Richmond Complete Ring and Pinion Installation Kit

Also snagged new and complete drum brakes from craigslist

Grill shell is coming together

Got some degreasing done after cutting off the brackets and melting out the old bushings. Then threw some por15 at the rear and eventually dropped it off at the local 4x4 shop to have teh r/p and diff setup

Changed up the look of the engine to better suit my style, which is heading towards early to mid 60's hot rod... blacked out the intake/heads and ditched the modern valve covers for some basic chrome.

Rear shocks were mounted to an awkwardly mounted plate, outside of the ugly welds the plate didn't line up well with the frame; causing the shock body to rub the frame. I took the cutting wheel/grinder to it and will be running a bar across the frame to mount new shocks

Based on the condition of the frame, I've decided to leave the body on the frame and not do a complete frame off. Mostly b/c I'm lazy and the body sits nicely as it is. Got the rear frame section cleaned up and threw some por-15 at it. Followed that up by coating it with some ghetto tremclad ...Good enough for a farm truck

Cleaned up the gas tank well and dosed it with some por-15...this was in beautiful shape and a pleasant surprise

The weather had been ok for actual paint so another couple of items got sprayed.

Next up was was engine/trans removal day...Found some plans here on stovebolt.com for an engine stand... turned out pretty well and works a treat

Began working on the front of the truck...got the frame and the leaf springs cleaned up, took the springs apart and removed a leaf from each side. Dropped the beam and painted it while I was at it and the front rims got some paint love.

Spent a morning getting the engine test fit into the truck and then made some adjustments to the firewall. Happily the steering box and engine have no interference issues that I can see...might need fender well headers of some type but I'd rather deal with that than attempting to redesign the steering

Continuation post of pics above... I was truly shocked that I didn't have more clearance issues with the engine

Got the engine and the mounts mocked up (CPP mounts). I ended up having plate steel bent on the top at 90 to slide under the top frame rail and bolted through the top, the bottom edge will be welded to the frame.

Original rear got pulled, cleaned up the leaf springs, mocked up the 8.2 and removed two of the old crossmembers...not a lot of progress but some

Took the engine mounts to a local fab shop for final welding....
Front fender got primed...it's now in paint but I didn't snap any pics. Engine's finally sitting on bolted mounts... truck dropped roughly 1.5inches with the engines weight on the chassis

Connected the trans to the engine and placement looks like it won't cause too many fitment issues. Final cross member fitment will be 3" up from the bottom of the frame rail....the tail shaft angle sits 2.75 degrees downward

Got the rear back from the local 4x4 shop after having the R/P and diff installed. I've had them set up gears before and never had an issue. Somewhat limited options when it comes to diffs for the 8.2 so I ended up with the Yukon unit.

Tires mounted and it's finally a roller again

Took the month of July off to work on the truck... hoping to get the body in paint before summer ends. Got the rear shocks fully mounted @ a 10degree angle but man they look really straight up in photos

Then spent some time putting the dash back together

The time lapse pretty well comes to an end at this point... currently working on the firewall and fixing the front lower quarters...quarters mostly due to some poorly done repairs and glorious rust

So... turns out I'm the grand winner in the bondo lottery.

Much like the fenders, lots of dents and an abuse of bondo to shape and flatten out the surface...

Silver lining...you’re going to get very good at hammer and dollying.

I feel your pain. My fenders looked like someone took a bat to them as well. Then, threw golf balls at them.

Lots of good looking work so far! I have a couple of comments on your choice of powertrain. Getting the big block engine shoehorned into that narrow frame is going to be a challenge. Please DO NOT buy into the myth that the frame rails need to be boxed- - - -they were designed to flex, and attempts to make them rigid will result in a spider web of cracks in very short order unless you do some pretty creative elliptical cuts on your boxing plates. Several years of trying to build dirt track race cars like bridge girders taught me that there's no such thing as a "rigid" frame.

Shift kits were probably designed by somebody who had a warehouse full of rear axles to sell. Getting that firm shift happens at the expense of everything else behind the transmission- - - -U joints, driveshafts, spider gears, carrier housings (more about that later) and axle shafts. Upshifts aren't much of a problem, as long as you blast off down the drag strip, shift up through all the gears, and shut down. On the street, a kickdown from 3rd to 2nd. for instance results in a momentary lockup of the drivetrain while the transmission tries to engage two ratios at once. The orfice in the valve body separator plate that gets drilled out to quicken the shift also means that the clutch it controls applies too quickly on a downshift. The resulting lockup eventually turns the spider gear pivot pin hole into a slot about 1/2" long before the shaft breaks and sends pieces of spider gears into the ring & pinion! Instant wheel lockup!
Good luck!
Jerry

Thanks!

The big block actually didn't pose to many issues during mockup (or as many as I expected)...the only remaining issue is the header fit. I ended up purchasing a set of Patriot tri 5 fenderwell headers based on some quick measurements and noticing a couple of other trucks running them.

Frame is only boxed where the motor mount plates are located...not a huge believer in the fully boxed frame. Actually had this discussion with my Dad, as he fully boxed his model A. I get the model A frame (somewhat) but I wasn't convinced that a 1/2 ton truck requires it.

Made some more progress with the metal work... having a heat wave the last couple of days sort of slows things down

Body work is easy.... when you get rid of the sheet metal

Progress of sorts

More of the same...fill some holes and drill some holes

Was going to run two 2 5/8 gauges offset to the left in the overhead panel... but the curvature of the panel made it impossible for the gauges to appear optically "straight". So moving the gauges into the middle of the panel alleviates that issue

Got the first gauge done...and then there were two.

And because I'm a child at heart... couldn't resist seeing what the mounted headers look like. Result....awesome ridiculousness

Been a while since I've done any updates...so it's the good, the bad and the ugly update

Finally made a decision on what to do with the running boards... spray on bed liner makes them useable without worrying about scratches and rock chips.