Bought a 34 Panel. Its all stock with mechanical brakes. @lumpy 63 calls it an ice cream truck, but i think its more of a sherbet truck... but anyway.... Plan for now is to just lower it with Juice brakes. Maybe down the road put a 39 trans behind the 21 stud... or do a 39 trans and a sbc.... or I bought a jeep t5 with a kato kings adapter for a torque tube. So I could do a chevy with that... but that might be a lot of work with shortening the toque tube. here's some pics of it as I picked it up and stored it at Colin's place for a while while my house got fixed. Gordy
Pulled the rear spring and was gonna run another one I found cheap but the eyelets were larger than stock. So I just pulled a bunch of leaves. I think I have 6 including the main right now. Think I might need to put 2 leaves back. lol The right side was higher than the left after lowering. Which I discovered was the exhaust pipe getting stuck in there. So I chopped it where it was hitting to get it even, and reroute it later. the reason I wanted to lower it so much was that I needed to to fit it into my garage lol. It clears by 3" now so I guess I was overthinking it. But I also removed a piece of 1" trim at the top of my garage. I also don't have much room lengthwise... so since these photos I've removed the front bumper lol Gordy
Playing around with some wheel choices and a better picture of the exhaust. Still waiting to get the front and lowered. What is that rubber bumper at the bottom of the frame rail that was hitting the exhaust? It's on both sides. I think the car is actually kinda riding on it currently. I'm also currently unable to use the dog bone shocks which I planned on doing. Anyone have good perspective on how to get the car low while retaining the original shocks? They seem to be in good working order and wanna keep this one pretty original. Here's some pics of me playing around with wheels and hubcaps etc. Still had the Taildragger look goin.. that will be fixed soon lol Any info on those rubber blocks and retaining the dog bones would be greatly appreciated!!! Gordy
Popped the mechanical drums off using my hobo freight puller and a ratchet strap lol. Bearing surface looks good! built the backing plates and drums for this thing the past few weeks. So just popped em on today. Played with more wheels. The mags won't work but they sure are cool. Think the chrome steelies are the winner. I hate the chrome grill shell. Gonna probably find another one and paint it yellow.
Nice looking truck! I always called those rubber pieces bump stops. On a really harsh bump or pot hole that will contact the rear axle instead of the frame rail banging against the rear end.
Of the options shown, I would agree with you. For me it would be painted Ford steel wheels or the wires.
I'd like to see the chrome grille shell with the chrome steelies, and some smaller chrome headlights. kinda make it cohesive. .
Still don't understand the brake upgrade....that behemoth will probably only do 35 with that wheezy flathead....could probably put your foot out the door and drag it to stop .
But big is BEAUTIFUL... actually might put 32 headlights on this thing.... still want a dropped headlight bar bad though! I think I'll have a better idea what route I'd like to take it once it's no longer a tail dragger. Had some issues with my original 34 dropped axle. The spindles I had heat and bent a while back had some lousy bearing surface as shown. So I ended up making a set of aftermarket round backs laying around. Pressed in the bushings and reamed them. Went to bolt it on the axle and had zero clearance with my dropped steering arms. Was planning on cutting down the steering arms but I'll eventually need another dropped axle for my coupe, so I ended up buying an aftermarket roadster supply axle with a 2" perch boss for this swap. The only issue I'm having is that the king pin won't slide into the king pin hole on the axle... maybe I clean it up with sandpaper? Never had that issue with my older magnum axle and the superbell I used on my pickup. Any insight? Gordy
That's cause I'm all about safety. Why do you think I like driving cars made of sheet metal and wood? lol
Bit 'O Honey yellow looks great on that panel truck and it won't stick to your teeth. I'd be subtle with any change in stance/rake.
Worked on the brake ***embly last night. This is an older Richard lacy early v8 garage unit. I think it's 10/20 years old tho. Ended up goin together pretty decent. also discovered at 11pm (after I will run my grinder) that my spindles won't fit the speedway early ford style bendix backing plates. So I ground them this morning.
Finished building up the front end today. Starting with grinding the spindles in the morning. Have one more leaf on top of this pack that I added. It's not as low as I'd like. I have 7 leafs in the front pack now (including the main leaf) a 165R15 front tire and a 235/75 rear tire. I thought this first image was cool. Here she is lowered. IMO needs to be lower yet.
I'm coming around on the chrome shell... I wanna see what it looks like with a dropped headlight bar and 32 headlights.
Nice panel @G_Don. You can't go wrong with chrome steel wheels imo. Keep up the good work. Looks like you're surrounded by cool projects.
Lol, I'm on the lookout for another widened rear wheel thats not reversed and I think is 7" wide and another 5" wide front thats not reverse. Cool thing about having all this room, I can have a spare little on the fender and a spare big in the back (and it wont make a dent in the amount of room I have. lol
Last night, burning the midnight oil since it seems to be the only time I have to work on stuff, I set the toe in of the front wheels, put in the Dennis lacy adjustable drag link, and then put the clevis' for the brake pedal and parking brake on. The most fun part was pulling the original parking brake pin which was pushed in from the transmission side and went outboard. When I pushed it, it backed up right into the transmission case. So after fighting with it for quite a while I decided to just cut it with a hacksaw haha. Safe to say the pin went back in from the right side toward the transmission on the new parking brake clevis. My short list is: Attach parking brake cables from rear wheels to the handle. Replace clutch and brake pedal bushings and pedal shaft Figure out why the one front hub bearing is tight on aftermarket spindle Add all my cotter pins once everything is where I definitely want it Add 1/4" or less wheel spacers on rear wheels Install wishbone ball spacer Plumb it! Hoping I can swing getting it done in a week or two!
The Jalopy Journal
