'34 Dodge Brothers, double build.

[MercuryMac]

You know that old 'hotrod builders dance', one step forward and three steps back, then repeat. Well, --- I've had some negative progress lately, with no pictures to show on it, so, 'it didn't happen', right?
Raising the truck back up a few inches and hooking up the shocks, hasn't gone well, but I'm almost done now.
Pic one is the drivers side done.

 

[Old Iron]

That's a cool pic

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks OI.
There was no progress today, because I got sidetracked, making a new piece for my lathe. Hopefully, I now can make snap-ring grooves in long shafts.

 

[MercuryMac]

The first picture is the gizmo that I made for the tail pedestal on my lathe. Now I will be able to work on the end of shafts, especially installing snap-ring grooves.
On the old truck, I got the passenger-side spring bolted to the rear-end, [pic two].
[pic three] is a brake line fitted in.
[pic four] is the back end fitting of the same brake line. This was a way more tricky than it appears, because one end had to fit 1/4" female and the other end is 3/16" female tube fittings. I was able to find a 3/16" ID male fitting with a 1/4" OD, so I cut the end off of the 3/16" line, slid the small male fitting off, slid the new weird bigger fitting on and re-flared the end.

 

[MercuryMac]

While I was rummaging around under my truck, I kept seeing the rusted out back of the cab, [pic one]. Not only is the back three quarters of the cab not really hooked to the floor anymore, I don't want the registration inspector seeing this and frowning. I thought I better fix it up, so I planed a hardwood two by four to the shape I wanted and mounted that new shaped board and a piece of tin in my break and made a 'reveal' patch for the bottom of the cab. [pic two] is the first bend and then I used a body hammer to bend the top little bend. I split the job in half because I want to make a driveshaft hump in the middle. The passenger side is welded on now but there are no pictures of my welding.

 

[MercuryMac]

pic one is some of the tools I used to make these cab bottom reveals. My brake is under the molded block.
pic two is the driver-side rear reveal.
pic three is the tin reveal clamped on.
pic four welded on.
pic five the passenger side finished.

 

[bob w]

As Diff (Rat Rods for Africa) would say, Nice piece of forest engineering.

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you Bob. I don't usually work with wood, but I guess if I can shape metal with wood then I'll use wood.

 

[Old Iron]

Nice work

 

[MercuryMac]

While I am under the truck with the welder, I thought I should fix up some cracks in the crossmember.

 

[Old Stuff]

While I am under the truck with the welder, I thought I should fix up some cracks in the crossmember.

Looks good. Ain't it great to cross stuff off the list like that?

 

[MercuryMac]

Yup, OS, that one's done but I still have to check for other cracks.

 

[lowbudget50]

Take lines look good. One of my favorite parts of a build!!!!

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks LB.
Today I finished up the back cab reveal line, and welded up a couple of more cracks all the while adjusting up my welder to do thicker metal overhead welding after doing new tin to rusty old really thin tin. I had to put out a fire that I eventually caught on to, on the front of my coveralls, near my ----- well, on the front.

 

[Old Stuff]

Thanks LB.
Today I finished up the back cab reveal line, and welded up a couple of more cracks all the while adjusting up my welder to do thicker metal overhead welding after doing new tin to rusty old really thin tin. I had to put out a fire that I eventually caught on to, on the front of my coveralls, near my ----- well, on the front.

I hate it when that happens.

I love my Miller 210. Almost 10years ago I lost my mind and bought a Millermatic 211- the 110/220 small box. I ended up keeping 23 gauge in it for the thinner stuff which is nice (though a luxury).

 

[gene49]

Coveralls on fire "on the front" get your attention pretty quickly.

For years, the only wire in my Mig was .035. After a while, you get pretty good at welding thin old stuff.
Now that I've closed the welding shop, I switched over to .030 wire, its much easier to weld thin old sheet metal now! Sometimes I weld 1/4" stuff, .030 wire is as small as I want to go.

 

[MercuryMac]

I'm using .023 wire but I have to adjust the heat and the voltage where the Millermatic does some thinking for you, I think.
Anyhow, quite a few social activities were taken in over the last few days and then I got back to the truck. I lowered the box again and was putting the ratrod mounting pedestals for the box in when I realized that that nice little driveshaft dimple that I made in the cab reveal was now covered back over with the box pedestal. I took it back out and cut a notch in it to correspond to the notch in the back of the cab. I could see the rub marks of the driveshaft on on this pedestal block, so it needed some changing.

 

[BillM]

No good deed goes unpunished MM. Your work looks great!

 

[MercuryMac]

Thanks Bill.
Yesterday I did a lot of little things that weren't picture worthy, but had to be done. One bit of weirdness was when I was bouncing the back of the truck up and down one side spring kept squeaking. I wasn't going to take a picture of me with my stethoscope running back and forth along the spring, while I bounced the truck. But I found the squeak and fixed it. A few other things had to be adjusted too.
Today I started fixing up the front fender again and making it fit on the truck. The original fender was too bad to be on a rat rod so I found some Plymouth front fenders and they turned out to be a wee bit longer than the Dodge Brothers truck ones. The first picture is of the back of the fender welded back up at its back end. It was in pretty good shape.
Pic two is the front of the running board where I cut off and inch and a quarter of rotten stuff and started bending the whole board down.
Pic three is the new shorter running board, bent.
The holes in the newly bent running board are where the PO ran his haywire loops through to hold the fender to the board.