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FLOOR & INNER PANELS PICS

FLOOR & INNER PANELS PICS CON'T

continuous progress. Thanks for posting letting us travel with you on your journey. Keep up the good work.

Amazing.

BED CORNERS

The area where the bed sides met the new rear cab panel needed a transition of some sort. I wanted a nice simple curved transition but there were a few things that needed to be considered. First, the bed side and the cab rear panel are curved. Second, the bed side has a bead rolled in this area.

So I went to the local steel scrap yard and found a sturdy pipe that I used to make a fancy (read: cheap) buck on which to roll the sheets. Once the sheets were rolled and cut then I ran them thru the english wheel to get the contours to match. One side was convex and the opposite side was concave so that was a little tricky to match.

After the rolled and contoured sections were fitting properly then I matched the front edge of the panel bead on each one. My goal was to make the rolled panel tangent to each interfacing surface. I then welded them into place. A small amount a filler will smooth out the welded areas.

Next the transitions needed a cap. Once again I made a simple wood buck to make the upper portion of the cap and a wood buck for the lower portion. I then welded these pieces into place.

BED CORNERS PICS

BED CORNERS PICS CON'T

Nicely done! The transition looks great!

BENCH SEAT

The bench seat that came with the truck was in bad shape but the bones of the seat were in pretty good shape. The seat mounting frame was also in good shape except for a few small rust places. The seat was from a truck and did not fit the mounts of the panel truck but that really didn't matter since I was going to convert it back into a truck. The seat springs would have been a huge job to repair so I settled on just using parts of the seat structure as req'd and fabbing a solid foam seat to mount into the stock seat frame.

I stripped the old seat down and made a template of both of their footprints. I then used angle to replicate the perimeter of the both the back and bottom. On the seat back, I welded on the lower tabs that slip into the seat frame (salvaged from the old seat) and the upper c-clip (also salvaged) that mounts it to the seat frame tube at the top. Then I fabbed a seat back out of ¾ inch plywood to mount within the framework .

I did basically the same thing on the lower seat cushion except on the lower cushion I ended up cutting out the centers and installing some elastic strapping/webbing to make it more comfortable. I then covered the two panels with foam and some cotton batting and then installed a stock seat cover.

To get the seat mounted in the truck, I bought a generic/universal seat slider and adapted it to fit the the floor mounts. I then used some 2x2 square tubing split length-wise and welded to the bottom of the seat frame to provide a mount for the frame to the universal sliders and to set the seat angle so it would be comfortable.

Once I had it all mounted and tested it out, it became quite evident that I needed to also cut out the center of the seat back like I did the bottom and put in some webbing to soften the seat back a little. I guess my lack of experience on upholstery bit me on this. So I removed the seat cover on the back and did the deed and bought a new cover to go on it. I'll just use the old cover somewhere down the road (shifter boot, etc).

Later I sent the seat frame off to get powdercoated gloss black and I sat them in the shop corner so they don't get trashed during the rest of the build.

BENCH SEAT PICS

BENCH SEAT PICS CON'T

BENCH SEAT PICS CON'T

BENCH SEAT PICS CON'T

BODY BACK ON FRAME

With most of the heavy metal work to the body complete, it was time to mate the body back onto the frame. Rolled the frame out the front door, jacked up the frame, rolled the frame back under and it is starting to look a little more like a truck.

BODY BACK ON FRAME PICS

Lookin’ Good!

REAR BUMPER & CLOSEOUT

The repop bumpers (front and rear) came with the truck but rear bumper closeout that came with it was total garbage so it was trashed. The bumper brackets were not included in the purchase. Since I was going to have to fab a rear closeout panel I decided to also go ahead a tuck and bob the rear bumper a bit to fit a little better.

So I removed 3 or 4 inches in the center of the bumper and welded it back together. I also welded up the mounting holes and welded the mounting bolts to the back of the rear bumper. I fabbed up some mounting brackets (sorry, I must've not taken any pics of them) to mount the bumper to the frame.

After the frame was mounted and positioned, I made a template for the closeout. I then made a wooden buck to hammer form a lip on the closeout. I then primed and mounted the closeout.

REAR BUMPER & CLOSEOUT PICS

REAR BUMPER & CLOSEOUT PICS CON'T

Nice job on forming that closeout (I call it a splash apron).

I assume you're going to rechrome the bumper. I'd hate to see it rust where you welded it.

Nice! The only difference between your rear apron and GM's, is they made a slot for a gasket/wipe between the apron and the bumper.

GAS TANK MOUNT

I needed to relocate the gas tank so I bought a new repop Mustang gas tank to relocate between the frame rails behind the rear wheels. To do this, I had to remove the frame cross-member in this area to clear the area. I just roughly cut it out for now with a sawzall to get the tank repositioned.

To hold the tank, I fabbed a simple frame to mount the gas tank to out of square tubing. I welded threaded studs thru the tubular frame to match the tank hole pattern. I then used some flat stock to fab a matching perimeter ring to mount under the tank so that the tank flange had plenty of support.

For the threaded studs, I bought some zinc plated 5/16-18 x approx 2-1/2 or 3” long hex bolts (long enough so the unthreaded shank went thru the entire tube) and soaked them in cup of water with a few heaping spoons of citric acid to strip off the plating. It took about an hour to strip them but I left them in overnight. After I cut off the hex heads of the bare bolts and put them thru holes drilled in the top and bottom surface of the square tube on the frame and plug welded the top hole to the stud and fillet welded around the protrusion in the bottom hole.

I notched the new frame assembly and temporarily laid the the new tank frame on the truck frame until I had the rear suspension installed and could better nail down the exact positioning of the tank.

GAS TANK MOUNT PICS

I've never been a fan of the filler through the bed version. But sometimes, we don't have much choice.

BED SIDE WOOD

(The bed side wood was the first project for the fall/winter of 2021. So these next posts will bring the project up to real time.)

I wanted to install some wood strips along the bed sides to match the bed wood that was going to be used on the new bed floor. I settled on a fore/aft strip along the LH & RH bed sides and three up/down strips on the front wall (back of cab). Since the panels have some slight curvature the wood needed to be bent a bit. So I had to learn about steam bending wood. I watched several YouTube clips and read a few blogs.

From what I read (and/or watched), quarter sawn white oak was a good candidate for the steam bent bed wood. So I ordered some 1 X 6 (3/4” thick x 5-1/2”) boards....these boards were kiln dried because that was all I could find (I'll touch on this in a later post). To make the bending easier, I planed the boards down from ¾” thick to 1/2” thick.

So I laid out the board outlines that I wanted (in green cardboard) and then cutout the boards to match these patterns. I also routed a fillet radius on the inward facing edge of the boards to soften the edge.

For the two fore/aft boards along the sides, I drilled some 1/4” dia holes in the boards in the position where I wanted the fasteners to go thru for mounting to the bed side. For the three board on the cab back, there were already some weldnuts in the cab back (under the interior stiffeners) that I had to align. I used the cardboard templates to match those up and drilled these boards full size (for 5/16 dia fastener) prior to steaming. Once the boards where profiled and drilled, I soaked these in water for 2 days or so before steaming.

While to boards soaked, I built a steam box. I had some scrap ¾ plywood around so I constructed a box that would fit the longer pieces. I also bought an 1200W portable electric burner, a cheap/large stock pot and a small cooking thermometer. According to what I read, I needed steam the wood at 180-200 deg F for about an hour.

First up was the two long pieces. I rigged my steaming contraption right next to the truck bed in the shop so I could immediately form the wood after removing it from the steam box. After waiting, and waiting, and waiting it was evident that the small portable electric burner was not going to get the job done. I then moved all of it to my kitchen and used my stovetop to heat the water. That worked way better.

After an hour at 180-200 deg F, I removed the 2 long pieces and positioned them on the truck to an outline I had scribed on it (around the green patterns). I then used some large self-drilling sheet metal screws and some fender washers to attach these to the bed sides (thru the existing ¼ dia holes in the wood) pulling it to contour as I progressed. I then placed some temp cross-bracing (2x4's) to help hold the pieces firmly against the bed sides in areas between the screws. Once these pieces were dried and formed (after a day or two) I then removed the strips and re-drilled the ¼ dia holes larger to accept 5/16 dia bolts and washers. I then re-drilled the metal bed sides larger as well (¾” dia) to accept a weld bung for 5/16-18 machine screws and re-installed the strips using machine screws into the integral bungs.

I then followed the same basic procedure for the 3 smaller vertical pieces except I just used 5/16-18 machine screws in the existing 5/16+ dia holes to fasten to the existing weld nuts to hold these pieces in place to cure. There was only a very slight contour for these 3 pieces so the force needed to pull these to contour was smaller than the two long pieces on the sides.

After doing this I realized that I would need to do some modifications to my approach if I was going to bend any 3/4” thick wood on the bed floor since the wood was still pretty stiff even at the reduced thickness. I will address what I changed later when I bend the ¾” thick oak for the bed floor.

I will sand and seal all of these to get rid of the water marks and such once I get all the bed wood done so I can do it at one time.

REAR SUSPENSION (LAYOUT & MODS)

Although I plan to keep the look of this truck fairly plain (somewhat stock) on the exterior, I also want a really low truck. So updating the suspension was acceptable to me and seemed to be the easiest route to get to this endpoint. Traditionalist proceed with caution.

I keep a notebook of info on all my projects when I start them so I can refer to things later. When I first got the truck, I took a bunch of suspension dimensions to give me a starting point or baseline from which to work. I used this to figure out how much I needed to lower it to get the correct ride height and to take it to the ground and to see what needed to be modified to clear the new suspension travel. After studying it, I decided the ride height should be around 4 - 4.5” from the ground (at the lowest points). To do this, it was obvious that I would have to step notch the rear frame because a simple c-notch was not enough.

I ordered a suspension book from Amazon (I think) and set out educating myself on various systems. After reading up on it and looking at several options and pre-fab kits online....coilovers, triangulated 4 link, 4 link w/panhard, leaf springs.... I finally decided that a 4 link with a panhard bar and air bags would be the best fit for what I wanted. I then looked at several kits online but nothing seemed to fit what I was looking for or they would have to be highly modified to make them work. So fabbing (mostly) from scratch was the plan.

The first step in the process was to clear out the rear suspension area so I would have a blank canvas to start with. Once I had an idea in my head how it should look then I bought a large project panel (foam core posterboard) so I could layout the rear suspension at full scale. I took the poster board and slid it next to the existing frame and traced the outline on the board so I could locate and size the step notch. I then ordered a 6” step notch kit online (Ebay?) and four each 24”long U-weld 4 link rods so I could layout the basic components of the rear suspension.

REAR SUSPENSION (LAYOUT & MODS) PICS

STEP NOTCH

After I had the basic geometry laid out, I decided to go ahead and install the step notch kit. I figured that I had to have this done no matter what so the risk of having to modify it later was somewhat minimal. Once I had it installed then I would simply continue to add components (i.e. 4 links, air bags, shocks, panhard....).

It was the typical step notch install. Partially weld in the step notch prior to cutting out the old arched portion of the frame and then boxing in the reminder of the step notch kit. Making sure that you keep both step notches aligned fore/aft and up/down as necessary.

STEP NOTCH PICS

STEP NOTCH PICS CON'T

FRAME BOXING

The next step was to box-out the frame forward and aft of the new step notch. So I made some templates out of tape, bought some 10 Ga metal plate and welded them into the truck frame to add rigidity. Pretty straight forward.

FRAME BOXING PICS

FOUR LINK CROSS-MEMBER

After the frame was notched and boxed, it was time to further develop the rear suspension. So I laid out the 4 link geometry along with the shock and air bags. Once the 4 link geometry was nailed down and the mid-point of the suspension travel was known then I had to install a cross-member on the frame on which to mount the forward pivots on the links.

So I bought some square tubing for the cross-member and some 3/16” thk plate to fab the clevis components. Once I fabbed the cross-member with the integral clevises, I located the cross-member at mid-travel (up/down) and the correct fore/aft position and welded it to the frame. (Note: Once I get the engine located and can figure out the driveshaft travel then I will have go back and put a hoop or notch in the cross-member to clear.)

FOUR LINK CROSS-MEMBER PICS

FOUR LINK CROSS-MEMBER PICS CON'T

REAR DIFF

The next step was to build the rear differential. I bought a bare Ford 9” housing (60” width) as a starting point from Speedway Motors. I then used some 3/16 plate and started welding the bracketry onto the bare housing....going slow and being careful to not put too much heat into the axle tubes.

These brackets were laid out on my posterboard layout and will accommodate 4 of the suspension components....they will mount the aft end of the 4 links, the bottom of the shock, the bottom of the airbag and one end of the panhard bar.

I splurged and bought a relatively cheap plasma cutter (approx $400) that made cutting these plates out a whole lot easier. I used some 1/4” thick MDF board to make some patterns to use to cut them out with the new plasma cutter. It worked amazingly well for the price.

REAR DIFF PICS

REAR DIFF PICS CON'T

I haven't touched a plasma for a long time. A 15" upright bandsaw has opened up a whole new world to me!

There are several tools on my "list". A metal bandsaw is one. I have one for wood but a metal one would be nice.