And here is how severe it actually is. You can see the lean on the passenger side pillar, and on the driver’s side pillar it’s almost vertical.
And no that is not a distortion, the cab and cowl are sitting squarely on the sub rails. The windscreen pillars are really that twisted. The reason why none of this was visible when I first got the truck back was because the sunken cab hid the distortion and it was only when I took it all apart and rebuilt it that I first noticed the problem. And another thing I noticed was the diagonal strut on the passenger side was completely missing, so it would make sense that the passenger side would have sunk down even further than the driver’s side.
Knowing what’s caused the distortion will help me in figuring out how to correct it. The first thing I will be doing is bolting the cowl back into the chassis and repairing the toe boards and mounts, from there, I will place one of the legs from the chain block tripod frame on the inside of the passenger a Pillar and outside of driver b pillar at the top and place a chain around my tow bar and attempt to pull. The pole will force the passenger side one forward will it pushes the drivers side one rearward. That’s the theory at least.
Hey Guys. I took the cab apart to begin the repairs on the cowl. This included straightening the A pillar on the passenger side. I used a length of RHS that was clamped to it it. The idea being that I would be able to straighten it against the RHS using a large clamp. The only problem was the handle on the clamp kept slipping, so I settled on a better solution.
I ended up using the bench vice, the extra strength made it easier to straighten it. The other thing I concentrated on was the mount on the passenger side that had broken away.
With mount welded up, I wanted to see how much I’d managed to straighten the A pillars. So I got out the windscreen from the other truck and gave it a clean. And from there, I attempted to fit it. To my surprise the windscreen did fasten to the cowl, suggesting I had indeed straightened the lean. The only downside is there is still a lean from side to side.
You are getting there with ingenious out of the box ideas. A bench vise? Who would have thought of removing it from their bench to do that? I like your way of thinking. Kind of like a WV coal miner. Fix anything with baling wire and duct tape to keep production up and revenues coming.
Hey Guys. Another long overdue update. One of the hardest things I have been figuring out has been how to move the frame into the garage. With the rear end locked up, I cut through the U bolts to free it up last year. The other thing I have been wanting to do is remove the engine and trans, as I no longer need them. So last week I listed it for free. Within a few hours I had half a dozen replies.
Since I don’t yet have a functioning front or rear end to bolt under it to get it rolling, I came up with another idea.
I have a couple of 6x4 box trailers in the yard, they are virtually worthless and only fit for scrap. These used to fetch decent money years ago, but with more and more people choosing large duel cab pickups, the market for small trailers has virtually dried up, so can’t give them away. The one on the right I may end up saving however, but only for one reason, It has a double tailgate.
I took some measurements and worked out the width of the trailer and the width of the frame at the shackles appears to be almost identical, the tailer is maybe an inch wider than the shackles of the frame. I also measured the overall height of the trailer and the inside height, and worked out with the frame raised up high enough the trailer will slide under it.
Hey Guys. A long overdue update, the last few months have been pretty hectic, it seemed like from every other weekend from April up until last month, I was going away somewhere over the weekends denying me the time to work on the truck. When I wasn’t away, I was working on the shed itself, expanding its floor space by extending the slab at the front, eventually the shed will be extended out to the front of the new slab and height also raised in order to accomodate the whole truck, at the moment it’s just the cabs sitting inside. Those are major undertakings that involve more capital outlay that I don’t posses at the moment, so rather than sit idle, I’ve decided to concentrate on some less challenging tasks.
One thing missing from the truck was the cowl vent, so in the spirit of frugalness I decided to make my own. Luckily the other truck cab had a complete one and once removed I took patterns from it. From there I was able to create the hammer form, using quarter inch plate as the base.
I designed it in such away that I am able to get clamps between the base and upper level to clamp down the piece.
Once the original cowl vent was carefully taken apart, I was better able to study the inner support and hinging and take patterns from the inner support. This section is a lot more complicated as there is a slight radius running along the upper edge.
I also fitted it onto my roadster pickup cab as it also needs a cowl vent. A couple of observations, the length front to back is a little narrow, the solution will be to add another strip of flat bar to the hammer form. Once added, I will make the cowl vent for the truck.
Hey Guys. The local rodder has the 32 pickup back in his shop to finish the wiring and get the upholstery done, so I took the opportunity to take some patterns of the doors.
As I outlined earlier, the doors in mine were framed with timber and I wanted to replace it all with steel. I brought down my door for a comparison and after completing the pattern, we took some measurements of the lengths of both doors to find out mine are three quarters of an inch longer than the pickup ones.
After fine tuning the pattern last night, I fitted it up to my door for a rough idea of what it might look like.
I also made a secondary pattern out of cardboard to trace over the sheetmetal. The three quarter inch strip will be added to the rear of the pattern before I cut the steel out. In the interest of keeping this one as all Ford as possible, I will be using the sheetmetal that came out of a 1970’s Ford Falcon station wagon.
I tend to do that too. When making rust repairs after cutting out the cancer I use old door skins, hoods, or trunks to cut the patches out of. Lincoln hoods are fair game too along with Mercury, all Ford family.
Hey Guys. This was my first attempt at making the inner skin, I used sheet metal from old shelves that I salvaged from work. Needless to say it turned out to be a total mess.
The Jalopy Journal
