The 49 Dodge truck, 5.2 magnum, 46RE, Dakota 4x4 chassis, 3:55 gears on both ends. It is my year around driver, yes, even in the salt and snow. The last 50 4x4 I had made it through 12 years of plowing snow and sat outside all the time. When it was taken out in a crash, that truck was still in great shape. This truck was on its way to the crusher when I bought it, so I have already given it new life. I'm 67. If this one goes 12+ years like the last one did, I'm probably good, that is longer then any male in my family has ever still bee n driving. I don't want to drive an appliance, and I don't care what the next guy does with it. So earlier I showed you the sheet metal of the 49, and i showed you the mocked truck. So here is the frame that came with it from MO. You see the wonderful white paint? did you notice they didn't paint the inside of the rear frame rails? They didn't paint anything on the bottom either. The drive train donor! Its pretty had to believe this 44,000 mile truck is junk by looking at it! You have to under the truck to see the entire frame is badly rotted. The couldn't even lift it on a hoist with chunks of frame falling off. Sure had a lot of good pieces on it for me though. Sure takes a lot of space to take 2 trucks apart. The frame side of the orange truck is the rusty one from the donor, with the 44,000 like 5.2 & 46RE still attached under the tarp. The pile towards the camera is the Dakota radiator support with the radiator still intact. The cab behind that frame is the donor cab. The truck bed laying beside the donor frame is the upside down 49 bed. The thing towards the camera from the 49 bed is the bed liner out of the donor bed, its my trash collection for this project. The assembled Dakota in the street side of the 49 bed is my beater winter driver, loaded with more junk from the project. The 48 is in the back ground sitting on its future frame, with the donor bed behind it. For the next 2-3 weeks, every thing here was moving around. I'll spare you all the details between, but that pile did turn into a driving, functioning, truck with glass. Almost ready for its first winter with brushed on, oil base, red oxide primer. I did the body work, traded the paint job labor (I bought the materials) for some welding labor. This picture was May, last year. This is a 4wheel drive (and it works) and the motor and trans are both on factory Dakota mounts. There is not much extra space under that hood. The truck is pulling high 18-19 MPG at 70 mph. Its not a race truck, but it does OK.
Yes, that split window is so much better then what Plymouth did with the flat glass the business coupe was stuck with. Even the curved rear window the club coupe had would have been better then the flat glass. Wish I could say it was planned, but the truth is, this widow frame was what was offered to me for the shipping costs. This it the original configuration. This is what the primed version looked like with out the glass. After I cut out the original metal Plymouth used make the flat glass fit into the curved body, the Ford split window (I think its out of a 37 Ford sedan) laid right in place. I only had to pull both top corners of the Ford sheet metal into the Plymouth roof by about an 1/8" for it to fit flush all the way around. I was not very impressed with the way the rubber laid around the tight corners of the glass and metal, but may have been the glass installer's problem (that would be me). We ended up gluing the rubber flap down around the metal part of the roof.
The Jalopy Journal
