My 1954 F100/F250 4x4 Build

[fordman75]

Yesterday I started stripping down the 87 F350. Today I did some more work on it. So far I've got the front clip pulled and tore down and the cab stripped and the front cab mounts unbolted. I tried to pulled the rear cab mount bolts but ran into a small issue. So I'll get them pulled tomorrow. And I'm also going to start cutting up the truck box tomorrow.

[fordman75]

Today I did a little more destruction on the 87 F350 with Mr. Sawzall. I cut off the box sides and the cab's rocker panels. Once I get the windshield out I can cut up the rest of the cab.

[Customcab]

As usually great work in the making; I just wonder how your neighbors react to your work?
thanks for keeping us posted of your progress; you sure make my work look slow. Or i'm I just slower??? lol

Mitch

[fordman75]

Originally Posted by Customcab

As usually great work in the making; I just wonder how your neighbors react to your work?
thanks for keeping us posted of your progress; you sure make my work look slow. Or i'm I just slower??? lol

Mitch

Thanks. I think most of my neighbors have seen me tear down enough vehicles that it doesn't even phase them any more! I'm sure they don't like it but they are use to it.

I can tear them down fairly quickly it's putting them back together that I'm slow at!


Today's progress: I didn't work on it yesterday. I had to take a trip to deliver a couple parts I sold. Today I removed the rest of the box off the 87 and tried to knock as much of the mud/dirt off the rear section of the chassis. If it doesn't rain/snow tomorrow I'm going to cut up the rest of the cab.

I also swept off most of the dirt that was on the driveway.

[fordman75]

Today I finished cutting up the 87 cab. This weekend I'm going to pull all the drivetrain parts off the frame. Then I'll cut it up to get the frame out of the way.

[fordman75]

Well today I worked on getting the chassis stripped down. I pulled the driveshafts, all the wiring and a few other small items. I removed all the nuts on the front spring mounting points. I then removed the transmission and transfercase. Then I pulled all the front brake lines, proportioning valve master cylinder, etc. I pulled the front upper shock mounting bolts. Unbolted the steering box, pulled the PS pump pulley off and unbolted the pump. Then I cut and plugged the fuel lines. Hooked up the chain to the engine and moved the hoist into position and then pull the motor mount nuts. Then I pulled the engine out. By the time I got to this point it was getting dark so I called it quits for the day. I was hoping to get more done but everything was fighting me the whole way on the tear down today.

Tomorrow I plan to get the rest of it tore down.

[fordman75]

Well today I got the rest of the 87 F350 tore down and cut up. The amazing vanishing F350.

[Customcab]

Ted;
Now that the easy part is done; looking forward to seeing your progress!!!!!!!!

Mitch

[fordman75]

4-15-09: Well I've had a bunch of crap going on so I haven't had a chance to work on the 54 until today. I dragged the cab back out of my garage. I cut the firewall recess and transmission tunnel out of the 87 F350 when I was stripping it down. I'm going to use it and cut out the 78 tunnel I welded in. I'm going to work on that in a few days.



Then I pulled out the rear diamond plate panels I made last year and checked their fit again. I think the driver side one should be ok. But I'm going to have to make another one for the passenger side. It's got a huge gap at the bottom and I don't want to just fill it with weld. It looks bad enough the way it is. :lol:









Next I cut out the cross brace I had in the cab. I didn't want to pull it until I had the front floors in but it was in my way. So I cut it out with my 4" grinder with a cut off wheel. After the brace was cut out I ground down the welds that were left.






Last summer or fall I removed the original cab mounts and all the braces in the kick panel areas. This was what I was left with.







My plan to take care of this is to weld in some 10 gauge steel plate. This will add strength and give me something solid to weld the front floors and the replacement front cab mount braces to. So I grabbed a couple sheets of tag board/poster board (whatever you want to call it ) and made a couple templates. I transferred the templates onto a 2' x 4' sheet of 10 gauge steel. Then I cut it out with a jigsaw. Cutting 10 gauge steel with a jigsaw takes forever! I'm going to cut some windows out of these plates so I can get into the areas if I need to. I'll add some trim pieces to cover the holes. I had to cut a big notch out of the passenger side plate to clear the fresh air vent for the heater.






I took the driver side plate did some test fitting, some grinding, a little cutting and got it to pretty much fit. I had to cut a slit in the cab just below the hood hinge mounts so I could get the plate to sit flat. Luckily I don't need no stinkin hood hinges! :lol: I still need to do a little more grinding on the plate to get a good fit. I'm going to do that tomorrow. I'll get the passenger side to fit good also then I'll cut the centers out of them for my access holes and then weld them in.

[fordman75]

Today I did a little more grinding to get to get the plate to fit better. I also figured out what size access hole I wanted in the panel. I marked it out, and clamped it down on top of a piece of 2"x6" on the back of my trailer. I drilled some holes in the panel and then cut it out.



After I got it cut out I cleaned up the cuts a little. Then I installed it back in the cab.



I also noticed something today. There is a slight curve to the inside shape of the door post. So I'm going to have to weld in some more metal to fill in gap.



Now that I had a hole in the plate I decided I should work on the cover for it. Any guesses what I used to make the cover? Can you say diamond plate.:lol3: I had some left over 16 gauge diamond plate so I used it. I made up a template then transferred it onto the diamond plate. Then I cut it out. I think it turned out ok. I still need to drill some holes in the diamond plate and the 10 gauge plate and weld some nuts on the back of the 10 gauge steel plate. Then I can finally weld the plate in place.





I also did a little more work on the passenger side plate but still needs more work to get it to fit decent.

It's going a lot slower then I'd like.

[fordman75]

Today went ok, almost.

I started by figuring out were I wanted to locate the mounting bolts for the diamond plate cover. Then I marked them and drilled out the holes. Like everything else I do it's a little over kill. I used 10 3/8" button head bolts. They are definitely bigger then what I needed and I used more then I needed. But I had these left over from when I was working on my original F100 frame. That saves me a little cash. Once I drilled all the holes in the panels ( I love my new stepped drill bits! ) , I bolted the two plates together. Then I checked again to make sure everything still fit in the cab. Everything fits good so all I have to do is weld the nuts on the back of the 10 gauge plate and the plate will be ready to weld to the cab.







Next I pulled my template back out for the passenger side plate so I could figure out where to locate the access holes. And this is where I made the big screw up today. When I positioned the lower access hole I completely forgot about the passenger side front cab mount bracket. I didn't realize I did this until I had already marked out the panel and cut the holes out. I had the plate back in place on the cab and was working on a template for the diamond plate cover. That's when I figured out my screw up. I tried the cab mount bracket and you guessed it sits right on the lower corner of the access hole. So now I'm going to have to cut a piece of 10 gauge steel and weld it back into position. This is the point I got mad at myself and decided it was time to quit for the day before I screwed up something else!

[fordman75]

Well after a bunch more delays I finally got some work done on the 54.

First I cut a strip of 10 gauge steel to build up the low on the interior side of the front door jamb. Next I welded the strip on. Don't laugh at my welds! I hadn't welded anything since last fall. And welding 10 gauge to the thinner metal wasn't real easy.





I took the grinder to the bird poo welds and cleaned it up pretty good.

Next I needed to weld the nuts on the back side of the kick panel plate. I had to figure out a way to weld the nuts to the plate without messing up the threads. In the past I was told to use some grease but I remembered I had some tip gel for my welder. It's suppose to keep slag/ splatter from sticking to the tips. So I put some of the tip gel on the threads of each bolt. I then put 6 washers on each bolt. Doing this kept the end of the bolts flush with the nuts so there were no exposed threads. After I had all the bolts on the panel and had them all tight I put a little more tip gel on top of each nut. After that I clamped the panel down onto a couple jack stands and welded each nut to the panel. The tip gel worked great all the bolts came right out. Grease would have probably worked just as well since the tip gel just seemed to be thick grease. After the panel cooled down I cleaned it up then sprayed it with a coat of weld-thru primer.





While I was letting the primer dry I decided to repair the mistake I made the last time I worked on the 54. I cut out a piece of 10 gauge steel and beveled the edges where I was going to weld. I also beveled the weld areas on the passenger side kick panel plate where I was going to weld the patch in.

Next I clamped the panel onto a couple jack stands and welded the patch in on the one side. Then I flipped the panel and welded the other side. Then I took the grinder to it to clean up the welds.





After the panel cooled down I sprayed the bare metal with some primer to slow down the rusting.





Now it was time to weld in the driver side kick panel plate. I clamped the panel in place. I did a few tack welds, pulled the clamps and welded it in. I didn't weld it at the firewall or where it met the outer cowl area because I need to do some repairs to those areas first. Then it was grinder time. Cleaned up the welds. It still needs a little work but doesn't look too bad.








Here's a few shots of it primed and with the diamond plate cover.









Next on the list was to do some trimming to the new firewall recess/transmission tunnel. I got it where I want it for now. I need to add a 2" strip of metal to the firewall recess where it meets the firewall. That's just to make sure the recess is deep enough.







By the time I got this far I was beat! And the sun was setting so I cleaned up my mess and called it quits for today.

[fordman75]

Today I decided to work on a different area of the cab just for a break from the floor/structure.

I decided to drill a couple holes to mount a couple gauges in the dash. I was going to mount them both to the right of the instrument cluster but I ended up going with one gauge on each side of the intrument cluster. I just liked the way this looks better. I took a few measurements and then used my 2 5/8" hole saw to drill two holes in the dash.



Then I test fit the gauges. I think it'll work out ok.





Next I cut out a piece of aluminum to use for the instrument cluster. Did some test fitting made some minor adjustments more test fitting. Finally I was pretty happy with the fit.





I then moved back to working on the firewall recess/ transmission tunnel. I worked on a couple templates for the recess extensions. Then I cut out the first piece out of some 18 gauge steel I had laying around. That was it for the day.

[jay54f100]

Good job keep up the good work.

[fordman75]

Today I did some more work on the instrument panel. I marked out where I wanted the gauges and drilled some pilot holes then used my hole saws to make 5 holes. I had an issue with the hole saws wobbling. It made just enough of a problem to throw the alignment of some of the gauges off. But it's good enough for me. If I get bored someday after the truck is on the road I'll make a new panel.

Then installed all the gauges I've got so far to see how they fit. I used my fuel pressure gauge in place of the oil pressure gauge ( which I don't have yet ) . I think it'll look pretty good. I'm going to paint the dash blue to match the body and I think I'm going to paint the gauge panel white.







Then I moved the fuel pressure gauge to where it's going to be mounted.








After I pulled all the gauges back out and put them away I marked out the other panel for the extension for the firewall recess. I cut it out. Then I started to form both pieces to fit. It's still really rough. I need to do more shaping, trimming then finally weld them in place. Once I get this buttoned up I can swap out the transmission tunnel and finally put the front floors in.