Creating a COE thread for my records, your amusement and entertainment.
This will take several years.
Stage 1 bringing it home.

 

Cleaning rat chit out.

 

cleaning more rat chit out and some horse chi too?????

 

Bet that had people wondering when you brought the front fenders home on your pickup, cab looks good with little rust to worry about.
Bet your a happy camper now......... John

 

ill be happier when i get the cab outta the sun!!!!
I am happy that I dont have to replace anything else than maybe the passenger window and gas tank.Gas thank looks good tho.

 

That body really looks solid. What a great start to the project I know you really wanted it. If yours is going to take years to complete then we might get both of ours done at the same time.

jim

 

Iwannaflattie, I can see why you don't have any buddies to help you turn wrenches....I'm not sure I would even want to crawl around inside that one!!...LOL
I love the COE, looks like another fun project....
w

 

Yeah my friends like to polish their scions and hondas I like to lay with greasy sand and rat turd.
Jim the hardest part will be having the money for a donor vehicle.
hopefully I can sell some of my crap to start the coe

 

Flattie, how hard is it to unbolt the fenders on one of those? I'm going to pick up a '51 COE cab soon, and thought if I took off the fenders and hood it might be easier to handle.

Your cab looks pretty solid, must be that dry desert air.....

 

Unbolting the front clip on a COE is just like unbolting one on a regular truck. You just have to find all of the nuts and bolts. I've done this with just hand tools on the side of a street when I had to pick up a 51 COE body in the Los Angeles area. It wasn't easy, but I did it. I even took the cab off without any power tools.

This was the truck before I got to it.


And this is what it looked like about 6-8 hours after I took everything that I needed off of it.


Just for some giggles, this is how the truck was finished after the COE parts made their way to New Zealand. Here's some inspiration for you, flattie.

 

Tin man:I unbolted the cab skirts with 1/2 wrench in a few minutes and the fenders look like they would come out fairly easy and could be handle by 2 people.
The cab is another story.The cab mounts were torched by the PO to free the cab
from the frame.
I would ask Ilya on how he got his out of the frame since I got lucky and found the cab already out.


Ilya that is some nice inspiration.
I hope it paid well to get the cab off the frame.IT IS DIRTY BUSINESS!!!!!!

 

The COE cab is mounted in the same fashion as a regular cab. There are brackets in rear and front just like on the regular cab, except the front brackets are rails that come out from the front of the cab at 90 degrees. All of them unbolt. Just be careful not to damage the additional skirting that's under the cab when you're removing the cab from the frame and during transport. I suggest removing the skirts.

I acutally got a day-laborer from the local Home Depot to help me with the grunt work when I had to move the clip and cab from the frame. We didn't have a hoist to help, so I just parked my trailer next to the cab, through some tie-down straps under the cab and lifted it while he was rocking the cab off the frame. It was a major PITA, but paid off well in the end.

 

We all start somewhere, keep up the cleaning. Donor chassis is pretty easy. Just search craigslist or other sources. It all depends what you want for final truck result. You can find a lot of old motorhomes for cheap or free that can be good donors.

 

[quote=51PanelMan;10328844]

I acutally got a day-laborer from the local Home Depot to help me with the grunt work when I had to move the clip and cab from the frame. quote]



Thats a great Idea! I hadn't thought of that, I have rented tools there before but didn't know about this. Do they just charge half day/ full day or is it by the hour?



Thats a great looking start to your project, and you got a good deal on it too!
Cheers

Josh

 

I'm kind of suspecting that there aren't day laborers at Home Depots in Salt Lake City?!

Iwanna, I hope you meant the PO torched the frame mounts off, not the actual cab mounts?! That could be tough to duplicate.