1948 Thriftmaster

[Dr Crankenstein]

My belated condolences as well. (Better late than never, I suppose.)

I'm also sorry you didn't show us the running boards before, but they look good now!

.

 

[joedoh]

haha what an unlucky guy with your little 4" patch. usually these trucks have a couple lifetimes of rust. nice work though!

 

[Old Iron]

I started putting the hole plugs in with body seam sealer instead of welding them in. It's ten times as fast and haven't had a failure yet.
[P[P[P

 

[BillM]

I've been knocking off little job here and there, nothing really picture worthy but felt like I'd better give a little update. I picked up a couple of seats at the pic n pull in the city, and found that I like this one the best. It's the second row seat out of a Cadillac SRX, so it adjusts on slides, and the passenger seat also rolls forward to give me access to a little bit of storage underneath. We plan to eliminate the headrests and then have it recovered in a "distressed brown" (DW's idea, so I'm all for it!) I had to cut the original seat frame a bit, weld in a piece of angle along the front and then make the rear seat brackets.

 

[soltz]

That Works

I can smell the burning rubber already [cl
;[P;

 

[lowbudget50]

The seats look really good !!!

 

[DozerII]

Great looking seats and the fit well.[P[P

 

[Torchie]

[cl
[P [P [P
Torchie

 

[joedoh]

thats a good looking seat! [cl[cl

 

[earthman]

cool

 

[BillM]

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to return that seat for a black one, the belts and plastic fittings around the seat belts would look a lot better in black.

I am in need of some help though - I'm getting the inner fenders and rad support ready for paint and found that the lower center mount on the rad brace has been "modified". I was hoping somebody might have a picture of what it should look like, and a dimension of it's distance from the lower support frame. I'd guess it's in the neighborhood of 5/8" but would appreciate it if someone could confirm. Here's a few pictures that will hopefully make sense of what I'm trying to describe.

 

[joedoh]

I have 10 core supports at the new building, i cant say one will be right for the center mount (most I have seen are the double mount from 49 and later) but I will be mowing there tomorrow if it doesnt rain and can check.

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Not much help, but I found one on Ebay or Kijiji, can't remember which...

Looks to me, like the depth would be correct if you just bridge the gap on your bracket...

.

 

[joedoh]

i found one, i was busy rescuing Smelly, the dead squirrel, from behind the brake booster of my daughters mini cooper though after I brought it home and forgot until just now. sorry, will update in the am.

 

[BillM]

Thanks Doc, and Joedoh! I've been tempted to just bridge the gap as you say Doc, but the height of the rad support sets the elevation of the fenders, inner fenders and hood. From what I've read, these hoods don't fit very well from the beginning, so I hate to make matters worse. That and my simple little mind loves to fixate on things so I'm hoping to remove this issue from my list!

 

[joedoh]

looks like 5/8", I measured from the inside edge of the core support too juust as a sanity check and to give you two points, and it is 1 7/8"

the material is quite a bit thinner on the bottom than on the sides, maybe some of it rusted away? its on a rubber pad so maybe.

 

[BillM]

Thanks so much Joe! I figured about 5/8", so I'm glad to have that confirmed. I had already bought the rubber pad from Bill's Truck near me. I'll have this all fixed up by noon tomorrow!

 

[Torchie]

Thanks Doc, and Joedoh! I've been tempted to just bridge the gap as you say Doc, but the height of the rad support sets the elevation of the fenders, inner fenders and hood. From what I've read, these hoods don't fit very well from the beginning, so I hate to make matters worse. That and my simple little mind loves to fixate on things so I'm hoping to remove this issue from my list!

You speak the truth about front sheet metal fitment on theses AD trucks. They were bad right from the factory.
You can see a bit of my 50 GMC panel peaking out from behind the 41 Ford. I fought the front sheet metal on that on and ended up shimming up the front cab mount s. As I recall. Of course it was not on a stock frame.
[P [P [P

 

[Skip]

You speak the truth about front sheet metal fitment on theses AD trucks. They were bad right from the factory.
You can see a bit of my 50 GMC panel peaking out from behind the 41 Ford. I fought the front sheet metal on that on and ended up shimming up the front cab mount s. As I recall. Of course it was not on a stock frame.
[P [P [P

OUCH! Was the 41 there for you to perform restorative magic on it?



I like the panel. i like most panels.

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Yay, brother joedoh! [cl

I've been tempted to just bridge the gap as you say Doc, but the height of the rad support sets the elevation of the fenders, inner fenders and hood. From what I've read, these hoods don't fit very well from the beginning, so I hate to make matters worse. That and my simple little mind loves to fixate on things so I'm hoping to remove this issue from my list!

Understood!

Our '37 coupe project also relies heavily on the rad support for proper shell/hood/fender alignment... so, when we replaced the rotten frame crossmember, we lowered it 1/2" on purpose... thinking, we can always shim the support up, but we can't shim it down!

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