Back up in yo ass with the fabrication

Well, I'm pritty much at a stand still till I either get parts or more welding shield gas; so I'm continuing making tools to make my life easier... Today was a stomper stand for my stretcher and shrinker...
I need to add a return spring, but that asside, I am very pleased

 
Just a bit of progress;
Used a buddies shop to mill off the adapter plate someone welded to the intake

Still needs a bit of clean up but all in all not bad

Got it home and had a quick break

Then today I got more shield gas and got the rear rails close to buttoned up ( I'll save finish welds and grinding for when the chassis is stripped. This will do for mockup
 
Well, owner finally dropped by with the cab and hood so we quickly mocked up the body...
Looks promising, seems to me we can take about 4" out of the floor no problem. He likes the looks of a 4" chop... So now the real fun can start!


 
Got a good bit done yesterday. I braced up the cab and rolled her on her nose. To start cutting out the floor

I'm all about trying to save as much real steel as possible but it looks like there were several poor attempts at patching the floors and there was a lot of mud on the cab corners so there really wasnt any good metal to weld to
This is what I pulled out of the floor

These are the bottoms of the front pan


So the floor was removed


So at this point there are two mounts at the base of the firewall so I shotebed them by 4" and removed the lower section of the cab that wraps around the frame rails.
Then I set it in place and re-assembled as much as I could. (Front still needs to be trimmed and come down a bit)




I am a bit worried about tire/fender interference but we won't really know on that till the wheels sho up that we will be using...


So the game plan is to get the cab sitting right where we want it and start fabricating a new floor using all the old floors brackets and mounts.
 
Only had a few hours today so I pushed the truck out, and cleaned out the garage.
Found this gem in the post-floor carnage

I used the freed up space to lay out some card bored and make a template of the old floor


I then added about 2 inches to the back edge (as the cab bells out the higher you go) and cut the template with excess all around....
That's about as far as I got, I then pushed her back in and buttoned everything up for the night
 
Started the day by getting the cab off the truck, wheeling the frame outside and getting the cab ass up in the air. Then knocked the corner re-enforcement brackes and lower firewall out.

It was at this point that I saw the true scope of metal work that has to happen. Apparently on all 4 corners and across the back of the cab some one filled this thing full of what my buddy Ryan calls "dumb-dumb" AKA bondo

It's a good thing I like metal work!
The first order of busness was fixing the lower hinge mounts. All 3 bolts broke off on one side and one snapped off on the other.

So I cut the inner door jamb and bent it back to allow the tapped plates to be slid out

Then mounted them back-side up in my vice and welded nuts to the protruding studs. I made sure to really pile on the weld to get them real hot!

As they cooled I frequently hit them with pennitrating oil till they were cool to the touch, then turned them out with a wrench

Ok, so it wasn't exactly that easy 2 came out no problem the other two the welds broke but it shocked it enough that they turned out easily with vice grips. This is a real handy trick for extricating broken bolts even if they are broken below the surface... If the welds brake just try it again.

Then it was just a matter of sliding the plates back in place, folding down the cut section of jamb and re-welding
 
Next issue was the cab corner supports. Because the cab is getting channeled 4" longer inner corner supports needed to be fabricated
So here you see the stock rusty rear corner support

Then with the support removed and some cheap insurance slobbered on (por15)

Then with a card bored template i cut some new corner plates using some 1/8" plate I had kicking around. I re-used the support topper for a more natural interrior look (if some one were to look behind the seats!

After all 4 corners were re-enforced I rolled the cab over and put it up on some simulated frame rails with a mockup transmission to start the floor work.

I then cut up the old floor to scavenge the cab mount, door brackets and both front and rear cross-bars/seat mounts

Removing the cab mounts and floor pan from the rear cross bar was less then fun, but atleast I made it out with only one blood blister

With those two pieces cut free and with my cardboard template cut out and fitted (trimmed where there was too much cardboard, added ductape where there was not enough)
I have the starts of a promicing floor template

I think this floor will have to be a minimum of 6 pieces...
 
Damn Kevin, you're really gettin down! Cool project, I need to get my hands dirty, all I been doing is painting lately. And Wally said hi.
 
Lmao!!! YESSS!

Well today was all about turning cardboard into metal...
Had to get a bit creative with bead rolling a pan that size

All in all time consuming and frustrating, but the results are worth it IMO

so one pan down 5 more to go!
 
Had a few hours today and worked on the front floor pans.
This was a clever template I made for a recess and the bead roll starts and stops within it

Here are the almost finished pans... I might just be dangerous if I had better tooling

 
mustangmike6996 said:
Looks AMAZING! I need to do the front floor pan on mine.
Click to expand...
Hey! Thankyou!
If you want I can probably make you a deal on my bead roller. I really need some incentive to get a better one! After I finish these pans that is...

Love my colicos and roper Whitney hole punch! They make work like this a breeze

And here she is all tacked in. Still need to make pans between the firewall and floor and also make a trans access panel.
 
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