Painted the firewall and the rest of the frame. Headlights are mounted and will probably be wired this week. Wood's going in this week. We're aiming to be street legal in 2 weeks.
Today's project was cab wood. It's not done and I didn't take any good pictures but here's the license plate mounted. Should have the cab wood done tomorrow? God damn this truck looks TUFF.
You can put it in Low Gear and Pull the house off the foundation. Years ago a neighbor had a 31 Tow truck with two transmissions.
Most of the roof wood is in - we didn't do the top bows yet but they'll go in tomorrow. The doors now shut solid and stay shut. Unfortunately the visor is giving us fits... that will be a separate project. Something might be terribly wrong with the transmission. It hasn't really felt right this whole time and today the shifter suddenly rotated 90 degrees. After it went back the shifter feels very sloppy and I couldn't get it into any gears other than 2nd and reverse... will pull the shift tower tomorrow and take a look. Almost forgot... the alternator went in... nice, easy install that uses the stock Ford wiring.
Really diggin the progress on the truck and glad you are posting. Hope this isn't too personal but how is the house going? Comfortable yet?
The house is going alright. Took me a while to get caught up on years of deferred maintenance but the additions are finally bug and weather proof and the yard is mostly under control and most of the doors shut right. The city is not keen on me building a shop here so I don't know if that's ever gonna pan out. The truck was running great today. It's even quit smoking. I took the shift tower off this morning and checked things out. I got the whole thing super hot with a heat gun and flooded it with ATF then brake cleaner and washed a ton of gunk and goop out and now it shifts super easily. What I found out about the weird shifting is that it doesn't seem to be quite an H pattern. To get into 4th you just yank it down from center but to get into third you have to push it hard to the right and up for it engage, otherwise it wants to grab first. Because the shift tower was so gunked up and not wanting to move freely, I thought I was at the limit of motion and was trying to put it into first instead of third... something like this. So with that fixed I've got shifting figured out. I also drained the gear oil again and refilled with a 50/50 blend of 80-140 gear oil and Lucas oil stabilizer which has really quieted down the transmission and made shifting much smoother. Next time I do this I might use a little more of the Lucas product but I think this is pretty good, and I like how the Lucas clings to the gears as opposed to the 600W oil Bratton's sells. The top bows are pretty much ready to go in but the bolts supplied in the hardware kit were too short. I took the truck out intending to take it to the hardware store but got distracted driving, ended up buying a pizza and going back to the shop empty handed after about a 40 minute drive... so we'll do that next week. This thing is a blast... really a full body workout to drive. The steering box is toast and it definitely needs wheel bearings in the rear but we're getting there.
Shifter broke loose telling you it needed service. I have a feeling the steering is complaining it wants some love too! I am not sure of how the rear bearings are lubed, but you might get lucky and find that grease and lube makes a world of difference back there too. I've found the infrared temp guns will show which are normal, which are hot pretty quick and easy after a few minute drive.
Something awful happened to the steering box and all the studs are bent downward & the sector housing casting looks warped. I don't know if it's rebuildable but I don't want to try to take it apart without having at least another core on hand. It won't hold oil and won't take adjustment. As for the rear wheel bearings, I can't find any way to get grease into them without pulling the drums. I'm afraid once I pull the drums I'll get a bunch of loose rollers falling out and then won't be able to put it back together. The bearings are hard to come by so that would also render the truck immobile. For now it's not going to leave the parking lot again until I source some bearings.
Check behind the rear backing plate. There may be a zerk fitting there to grease the rear wheel bearings. This is similar to my 40 Sedan
Sorry to hear that the steering box took a shot, but that may be why it was set aside and is now still around. \ Since the big chassis stuff isn't as popular, you might find that while rare, they aren't terribly valuable. Here's hoping you are able to source one.
It turned out there was one on the hub but I didn't notice it due to gunk build up until another AAer told me! Had to replace both zerks but got her full of grease now. Luckily, the steering box is the same as the car, and I am good friends with a local guru that has a bunch of parts. I think I will be able to find a serviceable replacement quickly enough. I got to drive the truck all friggin day today. I used it to get lunch, grab parts, and a little bit just for the hell of it. It's doing great... an absolute blast to have it out on the road. The starter went out, but it has stopped stalling/lugging so, so far I've just been able to park on hills and bump start it. I dropped the starter off at a local auto electric shop today and should have that back in service this week. If we have time between customer vehicles this week, we will get the windshield, hood and maybe the bed installed. The hood needs some straightening and repairs to the hinges, so it will be a bit of a project.
This platform frame is really really nice - no serious rust, just powdery surface stuff- tight rivets, nothing bent or warped except a little bump on the rear but that's just character for this truck... Tracked down all the mounting hardware- u bolts, sill plates, etc. Got some sill boards, will cut them to length once bolted in. Paint prep starts tomorrow. Correct would be body color (yellow) but I think that's too much yellow so it will be flat black like the chassis.
As far as we got today. Decided to let the painted part dry before we prepped the other half so as not to put a bunch of dust in the paint.
Bed is just about ready to go on the truck. (We flipped it and painted it but I forgot to take a picture) And just for fun I spent a little time on the old paint to see if it wanted to come back. I think it'll look pretty spiffy after a good spa day.
Yesterday was eventful. We worked on the cab panel alignment some, got the U bolts installed for the bed, and added a horn so those pesky modern cars know to get the hell out of my way. I also addressed the rear main leak by taking the filler cap apart and re-bending the tabs that keep it stood off from the filler neck. This reduces crankcase pressure and seems to have stopped the flow of oil from the rear main. I wanted to see if one of those mini compressors that come in cheap air horn kits could run the vintage fire truck horn I got for it (or at least charge an air tank to do it), but that horn is in storage, so I decided to go ahead and mount the plastic horns that came in the kit. The bright red plastic was kinda ugly so I painted them. They are completely invisible from the outside but much less annoying to see when the hood is up. I kept running into a fuel starvation issue caused by rust chunks washing down and getting lodged in the filter inlet. Although I've tried everything to clean the tank out I think this will continue to be an issue for a while, so I switched from 5/16" to 3/8" fuel line and this has allowed the chunks to actually make it into the filter instead of clogging the line. Another trip to get lunch. I am getting pretty good at driving this truck and the tires are rounding out so I managed to drive back to the shop with the cups just sitting on the floorboard without spilling despite having to go through several red lights. The Chamber of Commerce randomly showed up and took turns posing for pictures beside the truck and on the running boards. No idea what that was about. I want to get the cab really squared up and stable before I reinstall the windshield, so that's why the wait on that. That is a pretty time consuming process and we have been crazy busy at the shop, so just plinking away at the little stuff. I wasn't planning on adding blinkers to this thing but I overestimated my fellow drivers' knowledge of hand signals (or ability to look up from their phones to see them) so now I'm considering it. Also, it has quit smoking completely and is no longer verging on overheating. Even after a ~40 minute drive it is holding temp at about 175 degrees (measured at the head) which is fantastic.
Now that it's not overheating, you might want to drain it and refill. The gunk is probably all pushed around to clear spots.
I used a battery charger to remove rust from a fuel tank. I filled the tank with a soapy water solution, hooked the negative clamp to the tank , dropped a strip of clean metal down into the tank . The metal strip was setting on plastic to insulate it from the tank . I hooked the positive clamp to it . I put it on 6 volt , turned it on and left it alone for several hours. The rust will travel through the soapy water and stick to the clean metal. You will have to change out the metal strip or grind off the rust and reuse the metal strip . It’s a form of electro plating .
The fuel tank I used the battery charger on was for a 1936 W30 IH tractor. Which is a large tank . When it was cleaned out I could see shiny metal in places and daylight in a few . I had to put sealer in it . That was over 30 years ago. I ran the tractor for a couple years at steam and gas engine shows then parked it .
Cool idea to use the tank itself as an electrolysis tank... hadn't considered that. If we end up pulling the tank that is what I will do. Today I hooked up an electric fuel pump and just had it circulate 1 gallon of fuel through the tank for hours, with a big filter & the outlet on the pump leading back into the tank. Eventually the filter stopped clogging. I took it on another long drive today after that but didn't do any other real work on it. It did great, but I'm sure more driving will shake loose more junk. Hopefully next week we will figure out the cab alignment. I'm not sure what I'm missing. I did take the time to chip the broken layer out of the windshield so I'll have some glass in front of my face when we do mount it, but I don't want to hang it until the cab is fully squared up and stabilized.
The car muffler felt a little too quiet so I did a bit of exhaust work this morning... probably will get a cherry bomb but here's what an AA sounds like straight piped. Also went through the distributor again and got the timing bang on. The Nu-Rex wrench that comes with the automatic timing gizmo keeps leaving me a little advanced which causes it to misfire under load and idle fast. I just did it the way I learned to do it and got it bang on.
I can see it now. A sign that says Chamber Of Commerce Approved on one side, Loud Pipes Save Lives on the other.
My friend George agrees my steering box is smoked. He gave me a good (rebuilt) steering box that someone destroyed the steering shaft in trying to remove the steering wheel, and a bad one with a good column on it since my column is cracked around where the adjustment levers come out. I was going to take the good steering shaft out of my truck but I figure the worm gear on it is probably shot since it's got so much slop and won't take adjustment, so first I'm gonna try to fix the threads on the end of this one so I don't have to press the gears on and off.
The Jalopy Journal
