After having my dad's '58 on the road for a couple of years now, I realized the flipped axle along with the GM power steering conversion DO NOT work well together. The steering was far too twitchy for my taste, and after altering the power steering pump speed, adjusting the caster, toe in and air pressures in the tires more tomes than I can count, I converted the whole thing to cross steering. I am a couple of days away from driving the truck, so I will let you all know the results.
I am going to be honest, this cab is shit. As some will say I am lucky its not rusty as well, so I will just say its solid shit. The drivers pillar that I lengthened to get the glass to fit is pushed down a bit as well. This prevents the DS door from closing by about 2 inches. I am going to butcher the post until it fits because I can't afford a new cab at this point in the game. At least this will let me use the doors on the next cab. On a brighter note I am the new owner of a beautiful old original '57 grill!!!
Jim you are the man, and I appreciate the offer! I am going to pass at this moment only because I am determined to make this solid turd move. I mean, its already been on its roof at least once, so a little more cutting and grinding is not going to hurt it. In fact I am thinking of making this one into a Sonoran Desert moon roof cab by cutting out the headliner area.
sqrlnts, that's a nice score on the original grille! I looked for about a year and a half to find one that was in good shape and "local". I had to drive a ways to get it, but it is solid and was paint-free (just minor surface rust). I am not anywhere near worrying about the grille, but was glad to snag one while I could. Keep up the good work!
Strange things happen sometimes. 1 day after Jim offered up his cab I found this 58 GMC cab, 1.5 miles from my house! Thanks again Jim, I think your good karma may have something to do with this find. I need to replace the passenger side floor, maybe the lower PS front cab corner, and remove the dash so I can install the 57 dash. Speaking of which, whats the best way to remove the dash and not destroy it? Are there spot welds near the windshield? Almost forgot, it also came with the front dash windshield trim piece I am missing.
wow, you got a deluxe heater too. Don't throw it away... The dash is spot welded at the pinchweld where the windshield rubber fits. Looks like a pain to pull it out. Have fun!
Brad54 pulled a dash for me a little while back- if you work carefully along the windshield seam, you should be able to get that separated cleanly... then come the multiple spot welds on the sides (they are not fun). Needless to say, when I got to the yard, he had been working on it for a good while, and we wound up cutting the base of the windshield posts. Good luck!
I've removed 4 dashes from otherwise destroyed and rotted cabs so they would be saved. I have one GMC dash left, but it's for my nephews 57. They are spot welded. You need to take a cutting wheel and carefully cut through each weld. BEFORE you do that, take measurements...a lot of measurements. Not only do you have to have it centered in the cowl, you also need to make sure that it isn't sagging or tilting, so measuring from key points in the door frames and even from the floor to ensure proper alignment is pretty important. Some cabs are different...on a couple of the ones I removed there were hidden spot welds up under the left and right sides (left next to the headlight switch area and right next to the glovebox).
BTW: keep that dash if it's straight and doesn't have a ton of rust. I can't tell from the pic if the radio area was cut, but that can be patched if it isn't too badly butchered. They make decent horse-trading and swap meet material. Ditto on the deluxe heater too...keep it to use or sell...
Buzz, the 58 dash radio area was hacked so I am thinking its coming out in pieces. I was able to get the 57 dash out. It took about 2 hrs just to hack it out, can't wait to do it again..
Are you putting the original radio back into the 57 dash? The radio repair panels aren't really that hard to weld back in, but NOW would be the time to do it while the dash is out....it would be much easier to maneuver around the dash as it sits and get nice clean welds. I'd also knock out any low spots, dings, dents, fist marks (ask me how I know about these) from behind while it's out. Even skim coating it and sanding it would be easier as you could get good reflective angles and make it dead-nuts perfectly straight and smooth. EDIT: Another thing I was thinking you could do, as a favor to the rest of us, is take pics of the dash from both sides and from an angle that shows where all the spot welds are (maybe show the hidden ones on the sides up close)...just so we have it in the archives for future reference.
Buzz, you crack me up brother, fists marks!!! Hahaha, somebody get pissed did they? Hey you also mentioned dead-nuts perfectly straight and smooth which does not apply to anything going on here!!!!! I can take pictures for sure if you think it will help. I didn't run into any spot welds, yet. I may put a radio in the 57 dash and your right, now is the time to patch, Thanks!! I cut the entire length of the dash just below the windshield seam. Now that the dash is out I will need to remove the old cab side seam which is spot welded....probably every 1-2", lots of em bro, lots.....gonna take a flap wheel or two to remove...... On to shocks! Where the hell should I mount em? I could mount a brace from each frame notch and mount em inside the frame rails which has limited space. Or what about mounting them outside the frame rails, since I am running these pizza cutter rims??
Shabam make a mess with a cutoff wheel <a href=http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn53/sqrlnts/?action=view¤t=IMAG0252.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn53/sqrlnts/IMAG0252.jpg border=0 alt=></a>
Anybody have anything to say about mounting the shocks outside the frame? Someday I would like to mount taller and wider tires but thats years down the road.
I'm trying to come up with a reason why you shouldn't, but I can't. Although I will say that I personally would be hesitant about using the actual axle tube as a mounting point, simply because you aren't spreading the load from constant impact, you are concentrating it in a very small location. I would be concerned that the tube would crease at that location. The reason the tube can take the abuse where the u-bolts clamp around it and the leafs make contact is because the stress/load is spread out over a larger area and around the entire circumference of the tube. I could be wrong, but the physics of what I'm seeing in the photo concerns me.
how about hanging them off the bottom of the spring, and leaning foward or backward? btw I know the guy who did the fuel injection on the Charger....that's a really amazing car
I agree with mounting them off the bottom spring plate. On with getting bigger tires in there, I drilled out the rivets that hold the spring brackets to the frame. I moved the right side over to the left side inner frame and vise versa, all holes line up to use bolts instead of rivets. You can fit up to a 18.5 wide tire in there, that's blow out width not tread width, like a 14X32 slick.
not to take anything away from your project, just thought I'd show you how I did my wife's '57 3100. (remember me, you got the dropped axle from me).
mid-late 70's, early 80's, Chevy Blazer. 24 (?) gallon. I made/make an adapter to use the STOCK gauge sending/fuel pickup unit. Stock 5-6-7-8-9 Chevy is 30 ohm, the tank is setup for later 90 ohm senders.
that's an interesting way to do it. I did one of those once by changing the resistor on the sender, put an early resistor on the later sender. worked fine.
No problem, these days if it wasn't for some chit chat there would be no updates around here! Your wife's truck looks perfect, great job.
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