Projects Pulled Dad's 37 pickup out of the barn

Wow great project!

 

How are the cab mounting wood pieces?

 

A little update. Fenders and running boards removed. Lots of rusty bolts that haven’t been off the truck since it was rolling down the Ford assembly line. Next is the steering column/ box and then the cab.

 

Dad got it stripped down to a rolling frame. We’ll peel it naked and then it’s off to the blaster to get cleaned up and a fresh powder coat.

 

Dad and I ended up in the Feb. 2022 Hot Rod with his '37 Ford pickup! That was an unexpected surprise. The truck is in an earlier thread of mine. Dad has it stripped down to the bare frame, and it's heading to the powder coater next month. I drug a few dead flathead V-8s to my shop yesterday to see if I could salvage some parts. It looks like we do have a useable Merc crank! I am in need of some opinions / advice. We have a couple of (what appears to be) good '37 - '38 blocks, and I brought home a few late model engines to disassemble and inspect. What block would be a better one to run in this, old style or later?

 

Run the later block...just my 2 cents ! keep the updates coming...

 

It’s been a while, but here’s an update. The truck is stripped to the bones, and everything was blasted and primed. I tore apart a couple of spare flatheads looking for useable parts. One was a Merc engine with a hole in the side of the pan from a thrown rod. The block was junk, but luckily the crank looks pretty good. There’s a local older gentleman with a large cache of parts who has offered some to me, so I’m hoping that there will be some good stuff there that will help us out.

 

The wood was in excellent condition. We plan to reuse all of it.

 

Here’s some more pictures. The grille was missing a bar. Dad made one out of a piece of scrap. I thought he did a good job. Next is the frame and suspension rebuild. The engine will follow that. Dad bought a rebuilt transmission from a guy a while back, so that’s covered.

 

Lookin good!

 

Thanks for updates.

 

Haven’t had an update for a while. The frame is painted, and dad is working on the front and rear suspension now. Here is a picture of the bushing that was a real booger to remove. One step at a time…

 

Say, we need to buy or borrow a king pin reamer for this truck. We'll probably need to do the same thing to a '36 Ford pickup as well (future project). What's the best (and cheapest) source for a reamer?

 

back up to the top

 

Ok folks, not much progress to report on, but it’s slowly moving. I went through the rear axle, and I’m about to attempt to install the rear spring. New eye bushings are in, but how the heck do I get this spring on the thing?

 

A spreader bar is used .

 

Or, disassemble down to the main leaf, attach same, reassemble spring.

 

Great project. Thanks for posting.

I wanna see some pics when it's done with Big Brutus in the background....

 

Will do! It’s about 9 miles away from me.

 

So I buzzed over to dad’s shop with the axle and spring today, and asked dad how he took it apart. He used his porta power. So that’s how we got it back together today. This was not for the faint of heart or the safety minded individual. It was sketchy, but it worked.

 

I found a trick to use a regular spring spreader when you flip the eyes of the main leaf. I cut off two four-inch-long pieces of 1 x 3 channel, then notch each piece of channel so that the notch is just wide enough to slide onto the main leaf. After the two pieces are in place, use the spreader and wedge each end into the channel pieces. Not nearly as fast as the porta but safer.