Hot Rods 32 pick up build thread! Drive it to torque fest 2013 mission!

Thank you! Yeah I wasn't sure, so we started with 3" and it looked perfect so we just kept it there.

 

Nice build. I wonder how that cable clutch mechanism is working out for you. I had thought about doing something like that myself. Looks good.

 

I sure will use the 5 window roof! I have it hanging from the ceiling right above where I was workin on my truck, it might show up in some pictures! Haha but yeah I wanted to build my truck first, next I have a real clean 32 sedan to build for the wife and kids to cruise, after that will be the 5 window. I have put together 3 or 4 hot rods before this truck, but I def wanted to sharpen my metal fab skills before jumping into the long term keeper of a 32 fiver! So hopefully next winter ill start in on fixing the roof. As for those rusty rails I just put them in my friends frame jig, straightened them out a little and welded in cross members so I plan to use them probably under my 5 Window? Not sure though. Those rails were surprisingly pretty nice and straight. They just need a good sand blast and some skim coating to fill all the pits!! Anyways I will def keep you in the loop when I start using the parts I got from you! Oh and maybe I'll see you again at btt50's!! Thanks!!

 

It works ***ies! Super smooth and soft to push! I greased the hell out of the cable too just for good mesure. But I'm tellin ya it feels like a motorsickle clutch, I could reach down and opperate it by hand. Plus it was so easy to install, I just used brake line style tabs with the rubber brake line clips to hold the cable in place. Also it's really adjustable so the travel and pedal hight can be changed super easy! I'll prolly use the cable any other time I do pedals thy are under the floor.

 

Side view of trailer hitch mount ad has tank mount.



Receiver welded in and the chain loops I made. This will all be coverd up by the license plate. I plan to have the plate hinged so that when I need to hook up a trailer, I just flip the plate up. Fancy shmansy I know! Haha



Gas tank mounted with the box off or a better view.



Cut and fit the a pillar garnish to hide all the cut and paste work of matching up the A pillars after the chop!



Made a glove box liner out if steel! Believe me it's nice to be able to put tools and all kids of heavy stuff in it! The cardboard ones don't last and don't fit!!





Cleaned up an old Arvin heater and mounted it threw the firewall. Also mounted the ebrake handle! The cool thing about the ebrake is that it was the original one that came in my 1930 model A coupe. I have been slowly using every bit an piece off that car that I didn't use when I built it.







More to come later....


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Thanks! I'm already driving it! It was a crazy scramble to get it done an drive to torque fest this year I didn't have time to do a build thread till now! The last 2-3 months were nuts, I work a full time job, and was working from 7-4pm then out in the shop till 1-2am every day. Plus on weekends working from 9am till 4-5 in the morning on the truck. Getting 4 hours of sleep was the norm during the build. Felt real good to drive it down to Iowa and just sit and do nothing other than drive! Hahaha orher than the huge snow storm we drove threw to get there! anyways! sleeping for 12-14 hours after we got to the hotel and checked in was the highlight of torque fest! Feel free to stop and say what's up of you see me at any shows! Thanks!


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So I realized the gas tank and trailer hitch photos and explanation didn't load and got cut off so ill explain.
So I new I wanted to have a hitch for a trailer, after all its a truck. Plus I'm not a huge fan of a gas tank in the bed, I wanted all the box I could get to be able to haul parts and use the truck as a swap hauler. So instead of using a stock 32 gas tank, which is only 10 gallons as stock. I decided to use a 53-54 Chevy car tank because they are flat, square and 16 gallon! Plus my friends work a national Chevy here in St. Paul so they are cheap! So I made a trailer hitch/. Gas tank mount off the back frame horns under the box. It all worked out great!





Anyways back to the order of the build

I found a 35 ford tailgate on Craigslist locally. I was super stoked to get it cause the 32 gate I had was pretty ruff, plus they are plain, and the 35 gate has the FORD logo stamped and they bolt right up!



The story on the pickup box is a funny story. I had looked for an original 32 box for about 4 years. First I bought a 33-34 box because it was super cherry and I was gonna shorten it to work and try to make it look like a 32 box. One day out if no where I got a call from ***us that he had scored a 32 box from a farm equipment auction here locally, and that he would sell it! So I finally had the box I needed. So the box was cheep, but real ruff it needed quite a bit if patching and banging. Anyways then a couple months later I get a call from a fellow club member Beau, he had came across an add here on the Hamb for a nice 32 pick up box for sale here in Minnesota and thought I might wanna check I out! Hell yes! I tell ya I am great fully in debt to many friends for all the help finding parts for this truck! This is why I love Hot rodding! So thank you Beau, and Jeff (***us)!! You guys rule!! There are also plentyof other thanks to be given but ill get to those people as I go along further with the build. Anyways back to the box and tailgate!

After the tailgate was mounted an the box was found to be square, I was able to patch it up. Of course it needed the box floor needed to be patched, and the box I ended up using, had sat upside down an the p***enger side bed rail was super rotten out! Anyways I stood the box up and began the patching!!







Unfortunately I guess I don't have pictures of all the patching that was done to the box. My friend Jamie is a ruler and did a HELL of a good job patching the whole p*** side of bed rail. He had to make a new top and the square rolled edge the whole way and it came out perfect!!

So as you can tell from the picture above and this photo I used about 60' of 3/4" square tubing to strengthen the box floor, and to replace all the rotten wood that was under the box floor skin. I called it a skin because its thin sheet metal and not thick enough alone to hold motors, haul a motor cycle, or load parts on to. So that's why I braced it. Also I had a hell of a time removing all the old screws that went threw the floor, threw the wood and into the box subrails. Once I got them all out I used a tap to clean the threads, then I put all new hardware in to keep the floor strong and rattle free!



After all that I wire wheel'd stripped all the old paint and rust, then painted the box with rustoluem rust reformer. Came out pretty dang good!



More to come...





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I don't know how many times I walked around you truck at the show. I tried not to look too much like a creeper...

 

I love your clutch and brake, frame cross members, and dash arrangement, all very cool.

 

Thanks! We had a blast at the show, I was just glad to be able to do nothing and not scrambling anymore! Haha

 

Got the ch***is all finished welded and ready to tear it down for paint!



Here's a better look at the pedal set up and clutch cable.



Now it's time to do all the finish work on the sheet metal to get it ready for paint!!
Put the cab on my handy motorcycle lift. Worked perfect, plus then I could put it all the way up an sit in a chair and work on the door bottoms, ect..



So I'm not huge on doing body work, and here metal work. As I mentioned earlier my friend Jamie helped me out BIGTIME! Here he his having a good old time with body work, and poring bondo all over the ****py spots. He is also a wizard at pounding out dents! Over all we got the cab pretty straight, but I never intended on having it straight as an arrow. After all its a truck, I want I daily drive it, and haul parts to swap meets ect..











Finally the bondo marathon is over and the cab is in primer! Nows about the time that I realized I am running out if time, and I better start loosing sleep and staying at this build 24-7!! I have a wounded wife let me tell ya! I owe her big time, she understood an said don't sweat it ill handle the kids and house stuff, get the truck done so we can drive it to torque fest!! Thank you Honey!!



Here are all the bits and pieces all finally in primer. Damn I hate sanding!! Took a lot of sanding, primer, sanding, primer, then finally highbuild primer to hide all the pits, pin holes, and sand scratches. Then of course, more sanding!



Alright! Finally time to put the final coat of paint on!! I decided after all the bondo dust everywhere, and primer everywhere, that I would put up a poly paint booth. It worked out great!





Got all the little parts painted!



Here's the cab in paint!! I went with a satin Midnight blue! It looks great!



Here's the box, and tailgate in the back ground! Can ya tell we skipped the body work on tailgate!? Yep it's a truck, I couldn't justify all the work getting that tailgate straight. All it would of taken is one time of sliding a motor in the back to undo all that work!







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Ok here the grille shell! Went with a white insert!! Looks great!



More shots of the cab and box painted



Painted the firewall white to continue the blue and white theme



Ahh the magic of a build thread! Bam! The ch***is is painted black and back together! On a side note unfortunately I didn't have much time at this point, as I said earlier I was short on time and hurrying to get it all back together an on the road! I decided to add double convoluted air bags in the back. I put them in to use as helpers for when I haul heavy junk. I just ran air hose off of each one to be able to air them up individually to level to box. There's nothin worse than loading a truck up and have it squat and bottom out in the rear from the extra weight!





I wanted to paint the motor the stock color, and just run a Rochester 2g. I wanted it to look like the motor was pulled from a donor, and just put in this truck to make it a simple driver. I found that a 1958 283 truck motor was a grey color. Apparently they only painted the truck motors grey for a few years. Also you might be able to see the air bags out back in this picture too.



Another picture of the pedals, and clutch cable set up. Also got the master in, and brake lines ran!! Getting close!



Firewall on! I used a 32 heavy axle that ***us dropped and drilled! Looks killer! Also I painted the axle blue and the insert of the axle white.



Ch***is all done and ready for the cab and box! At this point it was the first week of April and I only had 3 weeks to go until torque fest! Holy **** I was stressed out and calling sick to work and flying on no sleep!



Thankfully my neighbor came over, my friend Jamie helped, even the wife was nice enough to come out and help! Damn it was stressful handling all these painted parts around each other! But it all went back together just fine!





Got the heater painted and installed. I didn't take photos, but I cut slits in the top of the dash rail and made little flaps facing the Windsheild for defrost vents. To make the hot air blow up to the Windsheild and threw the vents I used sheet metal strip to fill the bottom of the dash rail. The original dash rail is 2 pieces if sheet metal about 2" apart, so I just filled that across the bottom and used a piece of exhaust pipe for the heater hose inlet. Sorry if that all doesn't make sense I wish I had taken pictures but I was a little delirious from lack of sleep! Haha but you can see in the picture below the outlet from the heater and the hose going to the bottom of the dash rail.



Dash is in! Gauges all in, and everything looks great!!



Back in a few for the final pictures!




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Love the grey engine!

 

That truck looks so nice

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Welp it's been a couple days so I should get back to the build thread!

 

Here's the column in, and you can kinda see that I got the floor boards in and carpeted. Again I was on a tight timeline, I believe I had 6 days before we had to leave for Iowa at this point!





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Dude, I know you!!!

I loved the truck at Torque Fest and and had a great time chatting with you and your wife.

I'm glad you made it to VTF and thanks for doing a build thread - even if it is after-the-fact.

The truck turned out great, but I really wanna see what you do with that 5-window!!!

.

 

Got the grille and radiator sort of on so I can do the upper and lower rad hoses.



This shot was taken around 4 am on Friday night, the wife was nice enough to come help a little, it pretty dang tricky to try and get the Windsheild frame in all by your self so I was lucky she could come help!





Rebuilt a Rochester 2g. I love these carbs for how simple they are and easy to tune. I'm not going for big horse power, just a stock lookin Motor that will get decent gas mileage and look good while doing it! Ha.



Here's where I was getting super close! All the wiring was done, hood top on, now just had to fire it, check fir leaks, set the timing, air idle mixture and go drive it!! If this was my first build I'd have been a lot more skeptical of getting a fresh build done and drive it 5 hours away within 3 days, but **** Sbc, 4 speed Saginaw, ford 9"! Pretty tried and true recipe.



Here it is!! This was taken right after the first drive! Which was on Sunday april 28th on the eve. We were set to leave on may 2nd which was that coming Thursday! Believe it or not there was not any problems noises rattles, not one leak either! I think I did a great job! I had decided to take the hood top off for the first few days of driving it. Just to make sure that if their was any leaks or problems I could see where they were coming from and get at everything to fix it easier! But of course because I was prepared and planned ahead a little it all was just fine! My mind set is always expect problems, hope for the best.



Somehow my friend Justin Wainner managed to fit me into his busy schedule and throw down some killer pin stripes on Tuesday night!





I never had a hot rod that Justin didn't stripe! So I couldn't call it done or ready to go with out his finishing touch! If anyone in Minnesota would like some pin stripping work done pm me I can get you in touch with him! He is one of the best around for traditional hot rod styling!



So up until Tuesday night I was driving around with a piece if plywood, and an old couch cushion for a seat. As with my model A coupe I had the best upholster do my seat! S***ch ***** (Jennie Bloedorn) I gotta say she is by for the best!! She came through big time! Not only is this seat top notch and exactly how I pictured it to look in my mind, but she matched the blue PERFECTLY! Also I had screwed up by using too thick of foam for the seat back that I had supplied her to upholster, she was soooo nice and took the time to trim it back and reworked it and used thinner foam, so I had some extra leg room! literally in the last hour before we had to leave! Anyone who has one of these trucks knows that they are crammed! But now it's perfect an actually comfortable for me to drive! Then again I am only 5'7" tall! Haha.

With out the help of some really really good friends I would have been screwed and would have never made the dead line on driving this truck down to torque fest! I can't even begin to thank them all enough!!













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Where is the adjustment? At the clutch pedal clevis? It's a little hard to tell from the photo.

 

Finally! The truck is done, packed and ready to go to torque fest! Somehow I made it. I like having deadlines to stay focused and busy building, but damn this one was close. I sure was happy to have driven the truck for 3 full days before we left and had no problems at all! So here we are my wife Marisa and I ready to leave, yes it's a cheesie picture, but may 2nd the day we left for the drive down to Iowa is our 4th wedding anniversary! My mom was there to watch the kids for us while we were gone and she insisted on taking a picture! Haha maybe she knew that she might not see us again knowing that we were about to hit the road in a 32 pickup truck, driving 5-6 hours south into a huge snow storm! Haha we had to leave about 4-5 hours later than we wanted because 2 hours south they had gotten 18" of snow and had to close the roads! Of course right in the path of where we had to drive!



Here are some pictures I took about an hour south, you can see their was a good amount of snow on the ground, an it was still snowing and raining, so the drive was pretty white knuckle and interesting! Gotta say after all that work getting my truck done to drive down there no amount of snow or rain was gonna stop us!!





1/2" of ice every where! A friend of mine said that's a "cold rod" now! Haha sorry I know I know bad joke.









Once we made it about 1/2 hour from Dubuque Iowa where the show was this year the weather wasn't so bad, it was just a light rain and above freezing do that was a relief! The worst part of the drive was about 2 hours straight of driving their was about 5" of snow on the back roads that had not been plowed, every time is get up over 40 mph the truck would start fish tailing! So I had to drive slow, and it was 1-2am at that point. Then when we hit the open fields the wind would blow so hard we almost go into the ditch along with avoiding the deep snow drifts! Haha but **** that's all part of the fun, it was a little hairy then, but now it's a good story to tell!!

So here is the truck finally at the show! We had a blast there! Got to talk to John wells for a quick minute, he looked pretty busy this year! I Spose it was all a little foreign being at a new location. I sure like it being 1-1 1/2 closer of a drive! The size if the fair grounds seamed just right, it Wasent too packed, or too empty. It's nice to be able to roll into a show a little late and not have to sweat weather or not you can find a spot. Anyways that's my 32 pick up truck build story, it all worked out great, I couldn't be happier with the look, confert and how it drives. Sorry I didn't have more pictures of the end part of the build, just ran out if time. Thank you to every one who helped out on this project, and of course to my amazingly tolerant wife Marisa!




By mid July I should be starting my 32 sedan build. Also this winter maybe this fall I plan to start saving this 32 5 window body I have and start in that one! Keep yer eyes peeled for those threads! Thanks for reading all my ramblings!


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HEY I know you too! Hahaha thank you for real! It was rad as hell to meet you! I had followed your build thread, and had been emailing links to it to different friends even! By far one of the best 32's built in the last 5-10 years in my opinion if not longer! I hope to get after my 5 window, but its gonna take some patience to get the body decent! But i have some great feinds woth know how, so i know itll come out decent. hopefully i can start on it this fall. Hey I saw you cruise by in the coupe and that nailhead sounds mean!! Was great to see that ear to ear smile! I couldn't imagine how antsy you musta been waiting to drive that car! Hope to see you around again soon! Thanks for checkin out my truck!!

 

There is a threaded ferrel on the end of the cable to run the clutch throw out arm in And out, also I have a tab welded to the frame with a bolt to set the pedal hight and act as a stop.

 

That's a great looking finished product!
It's nice when everything works without glitches.

 

Obviously, no Trailer Queen here! Good job.

 

Love your truck!!! When you took that wood out of your bed did you have to take that inner sheet out or did you just slide that tubing down in there through the crossbraces i like how it turned out.

 

Great build. Congratulations on making your deadline. Maybe I missed it, but did you mention how long it took you from start to finish? I saw that you've been collecting parts for 3 - 4 years, but just curious how long the build took.

I have a Model A pickup I'm building but it's going slow. In 2011 a buddy and I built a Gr***roots Challenge car in 6-months (OT but still cool IMO). We worked almost every night toward the end, sometimes without sleep but we got it done. For some reason I can't gather the energy to work like that on this project.

Aaron

 

Ha! Thanks a lot guys! It's a blast to drive. Been daily driving it since the day we got back from TF haven't even had to mess with much on it seams to be set up and tuned pretty good. I do plan on having the heads rebuilt the motor lets out some smoke when down shifting or engine braking.

 

I built the ch***is in July of last summer to have the truck a roller for the Roy Varga shoot that was at my house. Then took a break to finish out the car show season, and I started back in on the truck in December. So all in all I'd say it was a 5-6 month build. How ever in the middle of all the fab and patch panel work I got real burned out, so I took a t coupester body i have and built a ch***is for that , and did all the suspension and some body work. So I'll say it was 5 months. I've found that if I don't stay after a project real hard full time, as in every day it gets easy to loose interest and slack off on it. I usually try to just start on one build and go at that until its done. But every one is different!

 

Hex no!! Just went and got some groceries a with it last night!


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sweet truck!