49 chevy truck booger

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yesterday I started stripping and cleaning the frame for new mounts
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today I picked up some old 60-70s engine mounts, 6 dolars each! and answered an ad for a cheap oem 47-53 grille, the guy was nice and had some beat up running boards he threw in. I picked them up at house he was working on, he is a carpenter and pretty talented, the whole house was made from reclaimed materials. the floors were old warehouse floors, the front door was the original double door from the downtown sears robuck, it even had a sticker from the 40s still on the glass. but what I really flipped over was the bedroom door, I have seen a lot of warehouse sliding doors with rollers on top but this one was completely supported by the right side of the door with a complicated gear/lever setup.

here is the only other picture I took, sorry, I was flabbergasted at every corner. the newel post caps were backlit onyx, the outside stairs were ornate iron with wood.
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after that I cleaned up the rails with some simple green
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shuffled the frame around to get the cherry picker out and hooked up to the motor.
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trimmed the steel mounts
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and zapped them in with the caulking gun
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worked on the tranny crossmember for a bit, I may do something different here though
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tomorrow i will extend the lowers to match my extended uppers. then once the spindles are back on its time to test fit the cab
 
thats what I thought too, like a warehouse freight elevator door.

I didnt like that trans crossmember, so I modified the stock one.

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I got it bolted in (well good enough) and decided instead of modifying the lowers I would test fit the cab. My reasoning is, there is always time to add to the list, but never worry about what comes next if you havent done what comes first. the more complete the truck, the better chances of being motiviated. So I put the front suspension together. I cut little more than a loop off the springs to make it easier to assemble, I will do spindles or bags or probably both on this truck so dont kill me over cutting some roll aorund springs haha. I always flatten the end of the spring where I cut the loop off, habit.
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rolled it out and popped on the cab. forgot the old shackle mounts were still on the bottom of the cab DOH
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I have to trim the trans tunnel to let it hit the front mounts but I tell ya, it looks dead on. I might call my new sheetmetal friend (you can see I put the boyds on the front, you know, to make sure the front was level haha) and see if he can pop me out a replacement panel for the trans cover. I moved the motor 6.5 inches and probably could have done 8 easy. nice that all my body carts are empty and there is more room in the garage now too!
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background

likin' it a bunch:D

what is the truck in the background with the flat tire[S

if you have old an wheelbarrow around it makes a nice tranny firewall recess without a ton of work and fabbing.

Later :cool:
 

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thanks, I like this truck a lot

the flat tire is my latest acquisition, 46 chevy, go back a page for more pics

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thanks for the wheelbarrow tip but I dont need anything but a trim at the bottom of the firewall and a new trans cover in the floor. the distributor has oodles of room, still a couple inches to the factory dimple
 
doh"

[QUOTE}thanks, I like this truck a lot, the flat tire is my latest acquisition, 46 chevy, go back a page for more pics{QUOTE}




probally shoulda noticed that a few pages back:eek:

Later :cool:
 
I have been organizing, got some motorcycles that were just clogging up the place running and listed for sale, and rearranged my workbenches which gave me a ton more room in the garage. I put wheels on the welding table too, and made the plasma cart fit under it.

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so one of the things I wanted to develop with the 47 was a better radiator mounting setup. I have seen all the other ways guys have used the factory bushings and the guy who did the mechanical on the 47 even used a similar method. it isnt very producible, and I told him so, but it was never given any more attention and when the 47 was done I guess so was all the part development on his part.

thats ok, I had it in my mind what I wanted it to look like anyway, something simple that would not only hold the original core support and thereby support the front end, but also have an integrated radiator mount for the factory s10 radiator, which I like using because its already the correct one for the 4.3, and has the trans cooler and oil cooler built in. I had a guy call for a core support I had on craigslist and I dug it out. while I was looking it over, it hit me. It already had the bracket I was looking for on the bottom.
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I almost dug out the spot weld cutter and took off the bracket, when I realized it already had a nice spot to weld the 49 core support to, so I got out the cutoff wheel and carved out my part
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now to make some frame brackets to mount it to, wait a minute, those ALSO already exist.
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I carved the rails back about an inch too since I dont need the length for mounting this setup
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Now I needed to get the front clip from the side yard and start chopping it up to fit. Since my wife AND both my daughters were home today, I went ahead and did it myself (married guys with daughters know what I mean) Thank goodness for those industrial carts I bought, truly a one man operation, rolled through the yard just fine too.
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I ran to bowtie bits for some hardware: those special hood bolts, a stainless fender hardware set, a cab corner. he didnt have the clutch head socket kit or trans cover part of the floor in stock so I ordered them

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I also got.... THIS
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sauder lygrisse GMC on west kellogg closed a number of years ago and I guess they went to the auction. its the old radio display from the showroom, had three radios in it but I didnt know if it had a power supply, or speakers, or if the radios had any guts even. I made an offer and he said sure!
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it has guts and speakers and a power supply!
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and it works!



this is my new shop radio, I had been using a little clock radio but this pumps out the jams
 
need the cab bolted to line the hood. got the rear channel trimmed today to let the s10 bushing fit, had to find my 4.5" grinder (cardboard freight model) that I never use because my 6" metabo is the HOSS. got it trimmed, bushings set, everything ready, set er down
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trimmed the trans hump
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and it sits crooked. :/

it rocks back and forth between the front left and right rear corner. measuring it out and the rear is 1/4 off, the front dead on unless I pull down on the front left corner then the left is 1/4 low. ƨhit. I spent some time kicking my own ass because I thought I had double and tripple checked these mounts before attempting to put the cab on. maybe the floor is crooked, there is a lot of rust through on the passenger side, enough that it is how I was spotting the mount alignment from the top instead of underneath like the drivers side.


well, there it is. I was spotting from the top and didnt see the 1/4 rubber isolator stuck to the bottom of the cab on the passenger side.:doh: in fact I didnt even see it when I was crawling around under there until I took a picture with a flash.

drivers
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passenger
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well that was a simple fix at least.

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tomorrow I will get the broken hood bolt out of the mount so I can get it lined up and pop the front on!
 
started today planning on making a tutorial on extracting a broken bolt with the mig welder, drill a little for penetration, use a nut just smaller than the bolt, mig weld and turn it out. but with the first drill bit the broken hood bolt spun right through and fell out the back side. yay?

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got the hood and springs bolted up and lined up, looks gooooood, like one of those tremors overbite monsters.

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measured a bit, and cut the core mount, inners, and lower air director. you have to cut high because the power steering lines stick up so much.

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looks like my measuring was pretty good
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I'll put it on tomorrow and get it all tacked and set. I would do it tonight but I turned around and walked my scalp right into the open overbite hood and knocked the whistle out of me. :lol:
 
I would do it tonight but I turned around and walked my scalp right into the open overbite hood and knocked the whistle out of me. :lol:

Lol! I feel your pain...When I had my 92 C2500 up on the lift painting the rear frame I would squat down to slide under the rear differential...after carefully clearing it 7 times I bent down to get a paint brush full of paint...You can guess the next part...I stood up full force right into the bottom of the rear diff which stopped my head about 6" short of where it should have been...Damn near knocked me silly!:eek:
 
You guys need to pay more attention, I would never do that :rolleyes:
I was working under the 33 on the lift went to get a wrench, walked straight into the end of the lift arm which promptly knocked me to the floor :confused: I wanted to get mad but ended up laughing at myself [ddd
 
I did not have your sense of whimsy old iron, in fact the hood has two more "character marks" in the vicinity of the head strike and my wife turned up the gospel program extra loud to cover my hallelujahs

front day! working by myself but its still not too heavy to need a winch or lift.

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not bolted on yet and still a little down in front but everything clears: frame, steering box, a arms, splash pan.

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radiator will definitely clear the fan on this one.
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running for some washers, the bowtie kit came with 8 washers but they dont fit the bolts so I am not sure that is what they are for. There are 8 coarse threaded bolt screws that look more likely. in any event, washers coming up, then adjusting and welding in the core support mount. looks like it will fit well

in other news the 46 I bought had some tree limb damage. its hard to see because of the lichen and mottled paint, but the passenger hood would not shut (or even straighten out) and the hood was concave
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my second favorite tool is my BFH which I wield with the precision of a watchmaker (not really, usually I just make dents next to whatever I am trying to hit) a couple whacks and
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nice thing about that older thicker steel I have noticed is the memory it has.
 
with a big enough hammer I guarantee you will remember not to do it twice!
the guy who bought the 47 texted today just to say how much he loves the truck, made me feel good.

I got everything trimmed, the body square on the frame, the back of the fenders bolted to the cab, and the hood shutting great,
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and tacked the radiator core piece in when I was sure it was square
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then I tacked the mounts to the frame. I turned the wheels all the way to make sure the tires dont hit the mounts or the core support.
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lots of room!
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off the jacks, it sunk about a 1/2 inch. I had compensated about 1/4 with the jacks, so its 1/4" low. I will either fix it when I blow it apart to finish weld, or use a body shim. hard to plan for settling of rubber mounts.
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next I wanted to see how bad the windshield frame was, someone shot the roof and the bullet lodged in the window frame after knocking the seal out. add time and it had rotted. I pulled the rubber and found the rest of the frame better than expected, so I will only need that small patch area.
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so I moved on to the bed mounting. I will use a longbed bed floor like on the last truck. I had been using the truck as a scrap holder and the PO had used it as a trash can, so I needed to clean up. I pulled and separated all the steel and aluminum and swept it out
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I might go out later and get the bed loose and flipped off
 
working alone, pulled the bed. well how would you do it by yourself?
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work smarter not harder. I could have dragged it to the garage, dragged the 49 bed over, trimmed and fit trimmed and fit ad nauseam. instead, I measured the width I needed and marked it out, measured how far the first bed mount was from the back of the cab, and then measured the overall length. I left a couple extra inches on the back because the 47 floor was a couple inches short and I wanted to make sure I had some wiggle room.
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for anyone interested in the numbers, I used 50" width, 75" long (plus my extra), and 20.25 inches from the center of the first body mount to where the front panel of the bed would be.
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I saved the gas door too
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then it was cleanup time.
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here is a work smarter example, all the steel was in the wheel barrow and it would have been falling off the bed if I loaded it that way so I just backed up the hill and used the side ramps, then strapped it to the headache rack. at the steel yard I just dumped it.
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I was pretty flagged after that, so I did some light work. I drilled out the window on the passenger side to replace the glass. only one screw came out on its own, and after I drilled only two more were extracted.
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then I tackled the big dent in the passenger door. with my BFH and a baseball bat I got it knocked out pretty well
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tomorrow I will mount up the bed, should be easy peasy.
 

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