36 Ford truck on Ranger

[Shea Laking]

WOW!!!

One of my uncles had a '36 peek-oop back when I was a young lad. Was metallic green with black fenders, 350/350TH, open drive, stock front axle and unsplit wishbone (tranny pan didn't like the contact ).

Looks like the Ranger underpinnings fit quite nicely under there.[

Thanks for sharing![P

Regards,
Shea

 

[MercuryMac]

fitment

Thanks for the visual Shea Laking. I remember old Fords of any colour having black fenders sometimes but I didn't know how far back that went.
The '36 to Ranger fitment was pretty good but not perfect. Another little glich was the rearend width, or lack of width. I put 1" spacers behind each back wheel to make some clearance between the tires and the box.
Keep on tinkering.

 

[MercuryMac]

finishing

The wiring went quite slowly but usually forward more than backward until I got to wiring up the Ranger steering column. The frustration got to me then, so I put sound deadener in the cab and the upholstery. These seats were out of an old Mustang ll of my daughters that I had cut down shorter and had recovered. I got back at the wiring after the interior was in only to learn that you should finish the wiring under the dash before you put the seats in a small cab. The exposed wires were covered with axe handle tape [called hockey stick tape now] or in places old looking loom or there are some cloth covered wires. The wiring is done except for the front lights. Sorry guys, of the four pictures I tried to bring over I got four failures. They are in the mega bytes and that might be too big. I went out and took some more pics with another camera and they worked.

 

[MercuryMac]

visable progress

When you're doing bigger things you can have a sense of accomplishment sometimes because you can see your progress. Well, I started mounting the fenders recently and I can see some improvments. I started on the right side at the back and got up to the front fender partly. It's half bolted on in the right place and half propped up.
Keep on tinkering.

 

[440Clark]

This is coming along nicely. I have a 35 so I'm watching intently. Yours looks like a truck already, mine, not so much.

 

[MercuryMac]

our progress

Hi 440, I want to encourage you to keep plodding along. It's slow progress. The reason I'm further along than you is I've got a head start on you, of quite a few years. I have to push myself fairly hard now, because of the bold promises I've made over the last few years to be at the next show season, with bells on. O.K. so I've lied to them the last few years! Pretty soon my honesty will be in question. So you should keep on tinkering and keep your optimism contained in your shop. Oh Ya, post me a picture please.

 

[skull]

nice

it's looking good,

yep keep pluggin' away, my 2 year dodge truck build took 15 years to get running and another year to finish all the little stuff

Later

 

[MercuryMac]

rearview pics

I have to get you to look back for a moment. In the wiring part of the story I forgot to mention that the fuse box is mounted on a tang and is easily removed. It has reasonably long wires so it will swing down for easy access. That's the good news. It is a rotten bugger to get back up there and latched in. The next look back will be a before shot of my righthand door. I finally found the picture in the old files. As previously stated, the doors that I found had been in a bad roll-over and should have been thrown away. This is the better of the two by far.

 

[MercuryMac]

time slippinng away

Hi Scull, You mentioned taking a year to finish up the little things, so I started thinking of the little details I've done. They've probably added a year or maybe two to my build, but I like them and I like tinkering on them. Examples are; homemade banjo steering wheel, old looking gearshift, artillery wheels, heater and defrost system, power brake unit under the floor, old looking headlight buckets that no one in their right mind would fix up [ I got them a little cheaper], and making the exterior door handles sit in the horizontal position. These are all little but time consuming details.

 

[MercuryMac]

reversed regression.

I haven't shown you any progress lately, but I have a good excuse. There hasn't been any, until today. I reversed the regression, finally. I found out that to place the right front fender exactly, it had to fit with the grille. Oh, O.K. Oh , now the grille has to fit with the rad, and the rad has to fit with the fan, the hoses, the alternator and the fenders. The mounting brackets can't be in each others way. The solutions to some of these problems triggered other problems but I got things going my way now, I think. The first picture is just the open front with the AC pump taken off and the alternator moved from over the distributor to the old generator site, a new tightener for the powersteering pump and all new belts. Now the rad hoses should go on. The next pics are the drempt up brackets and their placement. It looks like the bumper is too low in this mock up. [S

 

[MercuryMac]

bracketry

Hi again. There is progress and proof of it. I've made the brackets to hold the bumper brackets, and the radiator bottom, and the front of the fender, which has sprawled out of shape.
I am getting excited and making a list, because some of the guys around here are going to a SWAP-MEET in RedDeer this week-end. RedDeer is half way between Edmonton and Calgary, and it only takes us seven hours of steady driving to get there. Boy, swap-meets are the best thing since sliced bread, right? [cl [cl

 

[MercuryMac]

life update.

Well, I got back from the swap-meet, and now have put everything away where I think I'll be able to find it when the time comes to use it. The upside of having a way too many projects, is that many different jewels can come home with me for future works.
I mounted the rad and then the grille. Oh Ya, one of this weekends finds was a grille chrome strip surround in pretty good shape. Anyhow, now I'm making the upper rad/grille shell bracket. The bracket has to anchor the long rods that go to the firewall, also. Some of you may think this is a John Deere combine safety shield. [S

 

[MercuryMac]

before pic

I should have shown you this picture before the last two. I had put the grille shell on and then started making the upper bracket.

 

[MercuryMac]

gettin' hosed

So I had to take the grille shell off again to make an extention on the rad filler cap. I couldn't get the new neck extention up through the stock filler hole so I customized the hole with a hammer and punch. Now I have to repaint the grille shell. One of the neat things that I got at the swap meet was 'Z' lower rad hoses for a flathead. They can come in 7" 'Z's so I took a set and they worked just dandy. I already had an adapter set of upper hoses that go from the smaller 8BA outlets to the bigger 59A or older outlets. All the hoses are now on and clamped. My upper rad to grille shell bracket is on also.

 

[Dirtyrat]

Those new hoses are looking real nice! I forgot how small the original lines must have been!

 

[MercuryMac]

Hi Dirtyrat, I know what you mean, they do look small. I almost wish for the bigger 59A hoses and pipes but I don't know if you can get them with a 90 degree corner or just two 45's. I could have put those reducer hoses on at the thermostat end and used the bigger pipes, but this is what I got.
Life keeps happening to me, which is a good thing ,I guess, but it gets in the way of building. Here's the fender bracket for the right side front [a before and an after].

 

[MercuryMac]

fender update.

This is a steel forum so I've probably ruffled some feathers here talking about fibreglass fenders so much and how they sprawl out of shape sometimes, especially if the're the cheap ones. This is what I learned about fixing the sprawl. If you slowly jack the offending fibreglass toward the proper shape, only until you hear the glass threads starting to break, then heat with a heatgun where you want it to bend. As you get the fender warm enough [you can just rub your hand on it] you can jack it out more and more as you keep heating. You will hear no more glass breaking. I let it cool with the jack still in there and the fender out a little too far. It came out pretty O.K. Right behind the tire was warped in a good 2" and now it's flush with the running board. There is a little brace in there now.

 

[MercuryMac]

Hello, There is progress to report. I have been struggling with the head light but it's mostly done now. The wires go right into the pot and are touching but not hooked up because they have to all come out again through a fairly small hole, so I can paint the fenders. I was hoping to use the '36 car headlight lenses because they bulge out the front so much and the pots are car ones and not truck, but the truck lenses seem to fit better. There's a Halogen change-up kit in there, bulb and reflector. The signal light perched on top is an amber flashing LED in a clear lens from Julians. They fit nicely on a '35 /'36 car headlight pot. Also on '28 / '29 Model A lights.

 

[skull]

looks

looks good.

Later

 

[MercuryMac]

The signal light housing that's on top of the headlight pot is from Juliano's, not Julian's. I'll get a sideview picture of it for you tomorrow. They look very nice and oldtimesy. [Spellcheck doesn't think that's a word] They are clear glass but they flash amber [well sorta yellow] Other than the yellow flashing they are the cat meow.