Once I packed everything away it was dark by the time I moved the cab back into the shed and put it back on the truck, so the image is a little fuzzy, I relied on my torch to illuminate it. But here is a how it looks now compared with how it looked the day it arrived.
I would like to get the gapping on the doors corrected by adding in the striker plates to the b pillars then move into the doors themselves. I will finish off the inner skins, correct the bottoms and add capping along the top.
I have one of these sitting down in the bottom shed plus a spare 351 Cleveland sitting under the house that I will use as a dummy to figure out where the engine mounts will go. I’m looking at mating it up to a T5 manual transmission.
Hey Guys. I got an early start this morning. The first thing I did was throw some undercoat over the fender.
Then I went back to work on the truck, one thing I did was fit the windscreen to see how out of shape the cab is. The right side pillar is leaning towards the left so I need to figure out how I’m going to straighten it.
I also noticed the upper frame of the cowl sagged down under the weight of the windscreen. I will need to add bracing into this area to straighten it back up.
I made up this frame for the roof last year. But I won’t be fitting it until the cab is squared up at the base.
I really wanted to get the sub rails corrected, I said last week that when I shortened it at the front, the problem is that the cross rails no longer sat at the centre. Cutting it out and moving it back would not work as the length would be too short, so I took the old set of subrails and cut the cross rail out. I then added it on to where the other one sat before it was shortened.
I will cut out the old cross rail in time, but for the moment I had a more pressing concern and that was where the petrol tank would sit. I have decided I will be using the petrol tank as a seat riser like the original. I also put the seat springs in to see how much leg room I would have.
I have a corner shed filled with various different panels, including cowls, doors, roofs, rear sedan halves, window garnish’s, and fenders. I found this and dragged it out. It came off a 1980’ van and looks like the header panel that sat under the roof.
After drilling out the spot welds, I separated the two and started t******* down the section with the swages that will cover the frame.
I will continue t******* it next week, the other thing Inwant to do is finish off the doors by screwing the inner skins to the outer shells.
Hey Guys. I found myself with a bit of spare time yesterday evening so got more work done on the p***enger door by welding a piece of half inch sqaure tubing between the plate that fastens to the upper hinge the hinge was loose and the door sagged as a result. With that fixed I got to thinking about what kind of regulators I will be running inside the doors, as well as the handles. I have this 30 Pickup Cab under the house and I thought I could use the regulators out of it, but the screws were seized in place.
Then I rembered I had another pair of 30 pickup doors and 30 coupe doors so I dragged them out and examined them.
One of the coupe doors has the handle and regulator I can use and the pickup door has the handle, the tounges and springs are in both and they work, so I will strip them out.
The pickup door handle also has a lock in it, which happens to be on the same side as the drivers door on the truck which is a bonus. So I have the handles for both truck doors and the p***enger side regulator. I still need the regulator on the drivers side, so I will see if the one on the 30 pickup is locked up, if I can’t get it to loosen up, I will cut the whole thing out and soak it in white vinegar.
I have set myself the goal of getting the doors properly hung swinging and latched by the end of the year including the gl***. I also want the whole cab squared up and without the doors completed and working, I will not know where the rear cab will sit in relation to the rest of it. I’m going to need to find some original gl*** for both doors. That won’t be easy, Ford Australia made less than 2000 of these truck and of those, some were running frames that had homemade cabs built for them and others were half door versions like this one.
So once I have removed the handles and regulators from the Model A doors, I will begin the task of adapting them to the inner skins I fabricated, then fastening the whole unit to the outer doors.
Hey Guys. I got the regulator out of the coupe door, but had no luck removing the handles. The only way I could remove them would be to cut them out. I will look for a correct set of truck handles further down the track.
From there I made a cardboard pattern from the 30 pickup door that I then used to tap and drill the holes on both door skins. The regulator is fastened to the p***enger side door skin.
Which left me figuring out where I could get a regulator for the drivers side door. I had several s**** ones lying around that I dragged out and examined. These two are the closest ones that resemble the coupe regulator. I will soak them in white vinagar to try and remove the rust and make a good one out of the pair.
I also found the latch and handle ***embly for the p***enger side door, this is heavily damaged so I will also soak this in the white vinagar.
Have you tried the citric acid rust removal method? Technical - Rust remover recipe (cheap and easy) | The H.A.M.B.
H good does the vinegar do at removing rust? I use mol***es and it does an excellent job even on the inside of the Houdaille shocks. I remove the fill plug and work the solution inside, leave them soak for a week then pressure wash before dis***embly.
This is an interesting watch. He compares white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, mol***es, evaporust, muristic acid, and water.
The Jalopy Journal
