Projects Family Affair...resurrecting an AD Chevy

Frame blown apart

Sandblasting rails

Ready to start ***embly

My dad and son bolting frame together. Each joint was put together with grade 8 bolts, lock washers, thread locker, and then, when squared, welded.



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Hell yea dude tear it up.....going to be a nice one when you are done....

 

The best thing about this build is the family nvolvement. Nice work.

 

its going to be put together in no time w/ that kind of help you have =)

 

Front crossmember and spring pockets tacked in


Me welding in spring pockets, boxing plates already installed in this pic



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you should check out the A.D truckers group tons of info.

looks like tons of fun with the whole family.

 

Nice work on putting that one back together. Years ago I had an old gent tell me that he loved the rubber floor mat in his Chevy truck because he could open both doors and hose it out with the garden hose. I'm wondering if that isn't one of the reasons for the rusted out panels in this truck and a lot of others.

 

Ours actually belonged to an old farmer. When we dug into the floor there were several layers of burlap feed sacks over an S&H Green Stamps sign which was covering all the rust damage.


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With the frame ***embled, I turned Dad loose with a paint brush and a can of Rustoleum with instructions of "it doesn't have to be pretty just rust proofed"
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My son and his friend installing rear springs.
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Home made spring compressor
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Front suspension installation
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Ready for some rollers
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I don't know why my pics sometimes don't load. Let's try again.
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Would the rust in the cab be typical for the old Chevy's?

 

tommyd- these trucks rust out the rear cab corners and the front cab corners. this amount of rust would be slightly more than typical. but that is all relative to where you live and the place the truck spent most of its time. trucks from the southwest would have very little rust unless it sat for years with the windows down. all the replacement panels can be found new or cut from existing cab.

 

With the frame painted and suspension installed it was back to the cab to get it ready to sit back on the frame.

Cab corner cut out



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Love the build. I was wondering why you cut the cab corners out at an angle? Does this help in some way? Thanks

 

I read that it helps with distortion. I don't know if it did or not. The only distortion I had was at the very back toward the bottom.


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I didn't really like the aftermarket inner cab corners so I fabricated my own. These are more complicated than they look.

Inner corner installed. You can barely see in this pic that the rust extended up under the seat and new metal has already been installed. Cab mounts were completely gone.



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Cab corner test fit. I first rehung the door, adjusted to get belt lined up, then fit the corner to the door.



Door lined up, corner welded in, and metal finished.





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This was the p***enger side as I was peeling it open

The rust was much worse on this side

Filler from a previously attempted repair



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I'll be following this thread closely since my AD has little to no floor. I have access to a rotisserie for my cab but nothing to mount it to.
I didn't even think about putting it on the garage floor to replace the cab floor. Keeping things square is obviously a biggie and this would work.
Great that the whole family is involved. My dad wasn't into cars that much but I'll also be working on my son's 55 Chevy and my sister's 35 Chevy so it's all in the family.
At 68 I suspect a few of the grankids will get involved also. They sure didn't have any problems telling me who gets to be first to go for a ride in my AD.

 

So are you getting us caught up on the build or are you actually live with these posts? If so you are making short work of this one, I am super jealous...ha!

 

Any new progress?

 

I too are doing a 53 that has been in a garage scene 1975 I was 10 yrs old I got it out last April and started on it, The stage you are in right now is where I'm at also, every time I see pic's of the rust hidden and what I'm going through it give"s me the Ibbie Gibbie's ...keep it up were almost through the ruff stuff..I hope

 

Can't wait to see the next update. It is too cool that you can work on this truck with your dad and son! Last time I restored a car with my dad was 30 years ago now and I am waiting on my sons to get just a little older and more interested.

 

Thanks guy. Sorry for the delay, I've been out of the country.
Just to be clear, most of these pics were taken over the past year. The truck is currently on the road and I've spent most of the summer getting the bugs sorted out. I'm just now taking the time to post it here.


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Right side inner cab corner installed

Right side outer cab corner installed and metal finished



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In this pic you can see how we raised the cab higher after the floor was installed to get a better working height to do the cab corners.

After the floor and cab corners were installed I rolled the cab on its back to get better access to the underside to build cab mounts as they were literally non existent.



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With the cab on its back and looking like Frankensteins monster, you can see the extent of the patching involved just to get the cab solid again.

Although front cab mounts were available, I opted to fabricate my own using 1x4 and 3/4x3/4 tubing



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