I haven't been around the forum much for the last couple of years because I haven't done much with my truck besides stare at it and daydream. I'm actually starting to turn a few wrenches now though, so I want to start a build thread for it. This build won't be quick and I'm sure that there will be gaps in progress from time to time. Life always happens and priorities have to be adjusted. It will get done when it gets done. The important thing is that I enjoy myself and have fun building it!

Some of you may find this thread to be a bit boring and tedious. I plan to document basically everything that I do in excruciating detail with both pictures and text. But honestly, this thread is as much for me as it is for the rest of the forum. I figure I'll need someplace I can refer back to in a few years to see how I did something or what parts I used to put this mutt together. If someone else can get some ideas out of it or gain some knowledge, then that makes it that much more worthwhile. It also never hurts to have an audience watching to point out your bad ideas before they get too far out of hand!

A Little Background

I bought my 1952 F-2 about 20 years ago as a running parts truck. I intended to swap the cab onto a seriously rusty F-1 that I had been playing with. I eventually gave up on the F-1 and sold it off as parts, but the F-2 continued to sit patiently in the barn and basically was forgotten about over the course of time. Then we had a bad fire in the barn in the spring of '09. The fire originated right beside the truck. The F-2 suffered some damage and came close to being completely destroyed. I kinda felt sorry for it as I looked it over during the cleanup. Curiosity got the better of me and after putzing around under the hood for a bit, I managed to get the old flathead fired up without much trouble at all. I decided right then that any truck that could narrowly avoid being parted out, be left to rot in a dusty barn for 15 years, get set on fire, and then still have the heart to start up and run deserved a second chance and a happier ending than a date with a cutting torch.

I kicked around a few ideas and came up with a vision for what I wanted to do with it, but it has taken me until now to come to a place in my life where I really have time to dive in to it. I have, however, bought a lot of parts in that time and have most of what I need stashed in the spare bedroom in boxes. The only thing missing until now was a little time.

The Plan

When I bought it, the F-2 had a homemade wood flatbed on it with hacked off running boards. The rest of the sheetmetal was in decent shape other than the bondo sculptures that passed for fenders. It had a flathead V8 and a crashbox 4-speed. It had a complete Magic Air heater too. It did run, but it had no brakes and the steering was pretty dicey. It was a good parts truck to me at the time and that was about it.

The fire incinerated 80% of the bed. It also completely consumed one back tire and about 1/2 of the other one. The back window shattered and the paint got scorched on the back of the cab. Fortunately, that's all the damage it suffered from the cab forward. Even though I wanted to resurrect it, I really didn't think the truck was a good candidate for any sort of accurate restoration. While it was still in OK shape considering its age and what it had been through, I couldn't escape the fact that it was an F-2 with a missing bed, rear fenders, most of the running boards and rough front fenders too. Finding the correct bed and rear sheetmetal in decent shape would have cost a fortune and been a real pain to boot.

With a true restoration off the table, I decided to just have some fun with it. I wanted it to still look and feel just like a '52 Ford, but I also wanted it to be functional and useable for more than parades and Sunday drives. I had inherited my dad's antique tractor collection and I needed a good tow rig to pull them back and forth to the shows. What better rig for antique tractor tow duty than a period correct truck?!?

I didn't have a four wheel drive truck at the time and it's not uncommon for the exhibitor parking areas at the steam and power shows to be a muddy mess, so I decided that a 4x4 conversion would be a good place to start. The crashbox tranny absolutely had to go and even though the flatty still ran, 100 horsepower just wasn't going to drag a trailer full of antique tractors down the interstate at 75 MPH. I also wanted good fuel economy and driveability, so a strong modern overdrive transmission and EFI went on the wish list. My intended usage also mandated power steering and really good brakes.

I mulled it over for awhile and finally decided that I was going to build it with a stone cold stock exterior and interior, custom flatbed with an integral receiver hitch and toolboxes, four wheel drive via a Dana 44 front axle and a divorced New Process 205 transfer case, a ZF S5-42 5-speed tranny, and a "healthy" small block Ford. I settled on a Toyota power steering gear and hydroboost power brakes to give me good power assist while being small enough to fit under the floor.

Here's what it looked like the morning after the fire:




And here it is after the burnt mess was cleaned up and it had some fresh tires on it. I had also temporarily swapped the rear axle as the old one had the right rear hub cooked so badly that the wheel wouldn't even turn, but I'll get to that a bit later. This is the first time it had seen the light of day in over 15 years.







It was right about the time these pictures were taken that the truck got its name. When I pulled it outside, it was covered with soot and stringy black cobwebs from the fire. My 7-year-old step-daughter was supervising and yelled, "Ewwww! It's all dirty and hairy!!!" The truck has been referred to as "Dirty Harry" ever since. It kinda fits with the brauny, masculine personality I expect that he'll have when I get him all screwed together.

Here's a couple shots after he'd been trailered back home and pressure washed:













And here are a couple after he got tucked inside his new quarters in the shop:







Next up: Building the rear axle. Stay tuned....

 

Nice!! Keep on!!

 

Welcome home, BOR! Best wishes on the project. I'll look forward to following along.

 

Actually, it looks to be a pretty good candidate for what you plan. 1952s are also the best looking so don't be surprised if some on the board are a little jealous.

 

Glad to see you back on it!

 

Me too! That is a beautiful and clean example of a very handsome ford truck. I like the manure spreaders best of the trucks in this group. And being an F2 makes it even better. Can't wait to see the 4x4 conversion. Good to see someone who creates even longer posts than me!

 

Thanks all! Like I said, it won't be quick but hopefully the progress will be steady.

The Rear Axle

The first order of business before I could even get the truck moved out of the barn was to do something with the rear axle. When I bought the truck, the original Timken rear axle was long gone and in its place was a full floating Dana 60. I'm not exactly sure what it was out of, but judging by its 4.86 gears and dinky brakes, I suspect '56-'60 F-250. The right rear bearings and hub got cooked so badly in the fire that the wheel wouldn't even turn. No great loss as the 4.88's wouldn't have been much good for highway use anyway. Don't get me wrong - the Dana 60 is a fantastic axle and my first choice for a 3/4 ton truck. But besides being French fried, this one was just set up all wrong for my needs.

I knew that a Dana 60 out of a '67-'72 F-250 would be exactly the right width for the truck, have the perches in the right locations, and have big brakes and better gears. I had ran some numbers and determined that a 3.73 would be ideal for the combo I had planned. I checked in with a guy I know that has a small, private salvage yard full of older stuff. He happened to have one with the ratio I was looking for in a '72 F-250 and told me he'd let me know when he'd got it out of the truck. He called a couple weeks later and he had it sitting in the driveway waiting for me when I got there. He told me I didn't owe him anything and that I could have it, but I made him take $30 for his time and torch gas anyway. Such a deal! Thanks, Kenny!

I swapped it under my truck right away to get the thing out of the barn and moved to my shop. It fit like a glove! Once the truck was home, I decided for various reasons that it was a good place to start the build so I pulled it back out. Here it is in all it's grungy glory:




Even though the ratio was what I was looking for, the open carrier was not. For what I'm doing, I really wanted a limited slip. I did a bunch of research and found out quickly that this wouldn't be as simple as I had thought. The early Dana 60's came with small 16 spline axle shafts. The only real limited slip option for 16 spline axles was a stock Dana Trac-Loc. I'm not a fan of clutch-type limited slips - especially in a truck. Besides that, Dana hasn't made the 16 spline flavor for decades and they're getting hard to find.

After doing some shopping, I decided that what I really wanted was an Eaton Truetrac. The Truetrac is a torsen style limited slip that uses no clutches and is maintenance free. Unfortunately, they're only available for the Dana 60 with either 30 or 35 spline axles. Hmmm....... looks like I'll have to swap axle shafts too. And you know what they say - go big or go home. If I'm buying axles, I might as well go with the larger 35 spline pieces. Besides, they were less expensive than their 30 spline equivalents. Here's my shiny new Truetrac and the bearing kit for the entire differential:




And here are my new Yukon 4340 chrome moly axle shafts:










There's a big difference compared to the tiny little 16 spline stockers! I won't have to worry about snapping one of these if I get carried away with the throttle while towing 10,000 lbs.









Now I've only got one more problem to overcome - they don't fit. The outside diameter of the new 35 spline axles is 1.500" while the inside diameter of the spindles is 1.407". This is not an uncommon problem. The hardcore off-road guys apparently run into it all the time. The fix is to bore the I.D. of the spindles to 1.560" or 1 9/16". There's plenty of meat in the spindle and it doesn't compromise spindle strength at all. There is a tool available for doing this at home in your garage, but it's $500 to buy it or $250 to rent it. Um, no. Not only no, but hell no! I've got more resources available to me than your average guy and I have a better plan - but I'll come back to that later.

The axle shafts, drums, hubs, and brakes were all pulled off first and set aside to be handled later. I pulled the cover and drained the oil overnight. The oil was clean and things generally looked pretty good internally. Since I'm reusing the original gears, I wanted to check and measure everything so I could make sure the ring and pinion went back in exactly how they came out. The first thing I checked was backlash with a dial indicator:




I came up with .014" which is a little loose. The spec is .006"-.010". This will get addressed during reassembly. Next up was a little gear paint and checking the pattern for reference during reassembly.




There are guides all over the internet on how to interpret gear patterns, but I prefer the chart from Dana's factory service manual. It seems to be a little more straightforward to me. Dana has TONS of manuals and literature available to the public on their website. According to the chart, the pattern indicates that the pinion depth is correct but the backlash is excessive. This basically confirms what I have already seen.

With those two checks done, I went ahead and pulled the carrier and ring gear out and knocked the ring gear off the carrier.




Rather than let it get rusty from condensation in the shop, I cleaned up the ring gear and mounted it to the sexy new Eaton Truetrac. I used all new bolts that came with the bearing kit. They got Loctited and torqued to 120 ft/lbs. From there, the assembly went back in the box and into the nice, clean, dry spare bedroom in the house until I'm ready for it.







With the carrier out of the way, it was time to pull the pinion out. Before I started taking it apart, I wanted to see what the pinion depth was so I can verify that it goes back in at the exact same depth after the bearings and races are replaced. I made a 3/4" thick aluminum plate at work that would bolt in place of the carrier bearing caps. I marked and drilled a hole in the plate directly over the pinion for a depth gauge and checked the depth.










The pinion and bearing races were removed after this which finally had me down to a bare housing. I loosely reassembled the pinion parts and pieces for now to keep them together and set them aside.




Next on the agenda is to get the axle housing cleaned up so I can drag it in to work with me next weekend to fix the spindle I.D. problem. I hate cleaning parts. Ick!

 

Well, it took the whole weekend and it sucked just as bad as I thought it would, but I got my axle housing all cleaned up inside and out. The insides of the axle tubes required some ingenuity with a hacked off toilet brush attached to a piece of EMT conduit, but they came clean too.

I also went ahead and hacked the shock mounts off of the tubes and ground them smooth. The lower axle plates won't fit correctly with them left in place and the plates have the lower shock mounts built into them anyway. It remains to be seen whether or not the spring perches will have to be cut loose and moved. I won't know until it's back under the truck and the transfer case is permanently mounted so I can check the driveline angles.

I did run across two fairly minor things while cleaning that I wasn't expecting. The first is that the tube flanges are really rusty where the brake backing plates attach. It's bad enough that I'll have to blast them to get them clean enough to do anything with. It's flaking off in big chunks. The second issue is that one of the spindles is pitted in the seal area. It had been leaking and will again. It'll have to be sleeved, but that's no big deal.

I might get a chance to sneak out to the shop and get some of the smaller parts cleaned, but otherwise I'm pretty much at a standstill with it until the weekend now.

 

This is a great thread.

Do you have a name for the truck?

.

 

Yep. The story about how he got it is in the first post, but we call him Dirty Harry.

 

I've been busy working on my daily driver lately, but I did manage to get a little work done to my rear axle. As I mentioned before, the Dana 60's spindle I.D. is too small for the new 1 1/2" 35-spline axles I bought for it. This is a fairly common problem that the off-road and rock crawler crowd deals with all the time. Fortunately, I've got some pretty cool toys at my disposal at work. The large lathe back in our die shop was perfect for spinning a Dana 60 housing.






I trolled eBay for a couple weeks and snagged a good deal on a brand new 1 9/16" drill bit and the right morse taper adapter to chuck it into the tailstock of the lathe. I had a little less than $70 in the tooling. Besides that, all it cost me was a couple hours after I clocked out on a cold Saturday afternoon. Getting it squared up in that blasted 4-jaw chuck wasn't much fun, but it was pretty cool watching a 3/4 ton truck axle housing swing in a lathe like it was nothing!








So that's the good news. And then there's the not so good news. I got the pinion and rest of the small parts cleaned up and as I was preparing to press the inner pinion bearing on, I took a really good look at the teeth on the pinion gear. And they're shot. Lots of heavy wear. I'm guessing that it ran low on oil at some point due to the severe pinion seal leak. That would explain the excessive backlash that I measured at teardown. (sigh) It's always something. So much for all the measurements I took to get it set back up exactly the way it was before. I went ahead and ordered a new set of Dana SVL 3.73's for it. I'll get started on setting them up and building the axle as soon as I finish putting my work beater back together.

 

Whoa! That is an impressive lathe. I'm tuned in for the thread. Someday I may up grade my Dana 60! I like your plans so far "upgrade but keep it looking stock". Dirty Hairy will be a strong truck when you put him to work.

 

Well, it's been almost a year since I've posted to this thread. As usual, life happened and I didn't get a chance to touch the truck for most of the last year. Besides working 60 hours a week and a couple major repairs on the other vehicles, I got blindsided in May by the crotchety old coot that owns the storage building that dad and I had rented for the last 20 years. He decided that he wasn't going to renew our handshake lease when the agreement expired at the first of August. Soooo, I had to have a new toybox built over the summer and move into it. Oh, well. The old Quonset that I'd been renting was a dump anyway. No electricity, leaky roof, drafty and filthy, holes at the base of the building big enough for cats and coons (AND MICE!!)to roam in and out, and the floor was busted up and heaving all over the place. Now my junk collection gets to sleep in this:



Clean, dry, lights and power, critter-proof, and 6 inches of concrete that is as smooth as glass!

After the barn crisis was dealt with, I decided to rework my nonfunctioning blast cabinet before I tore back into the truck. I knew I would soon have a lot of parts to blast - too much to continue dragging it all back and forth to the blaster at work. I took the whole thing apart, caulked all the seams, and reassembled it with a new window and a high quality pedal operated gun kit from TP Tools. I went ahead and sprung for an abrasive reclaimer and a new dust vac, too. Now I can get some stuff done!!



BACK TO THE AXLE!!!

While I had the housing at work to bore the spindles, I had the best welder I've ever seen (who just happened to work for me!) go ahead and weld the tubes to the housing for me. It's a tricky procedure to weld the carbon steel tubes to the nodular cast iron housing and I'd never try it myself, but Greg is the kind of guy that could weld your feet to the floor if you'd stand still long enough. For him, it was a walk in the park. He preheated the housing ends to 400 degrees before he welded the tubes up.



After the preheat, he stick welded it with 309 rod, postheated, and then we wrapped it in insulwool to cool it slowly overnight.



This is what we ended up with after the slag was removed and it was cleaned up:



This step wasn't completely necessary, but I had the opportunity to have it done and it didn't cost me anything. Now I'll never have to worry about spinning a tube in the housing. Thanks, Greg!

Next up was to address the thick, scaly rust that had grown between the spindle flanges and the brake backing plates. It really needed to be blasted clean, but there was no way that I could get the whole housing in my cabinet. But maybe I could get the ends in there! Time to make a new door for the blast cabinet. I made it out of plywood and I'm fairly happy with the way it came out. I like it well enough that I'll probably paint it and just leave it on there rather than reinstall the cheap blow-molded plastic door that came with it. I cut out a couple bolt-on baffles to help keep the abrasive inside when I had the axle in it. With the housing hung from the cherry picker, it worked out really well.









I duct taped the spindles to protect them and keep the abrasive out of the inside of the housing. Here is the end result:






More to come....

 

Nice building Joe!

 

That truck cleaned up NICE! I'm glad you're saving it. Great work and pics. Thanks for sharing.

Scott