A little bit of an update. I was hoping to have the rear suspension almost completely done this weekend but instead I took one day and just cleaned the garage. I regained my work bench, table and finally know where to find stuff again. Best of all I can walk around without grit under my feet. Now I'm just trying to maintain a level of cleanliness.
As for what I have done I put the axle back together. However I never got around to replacing all the bearings and races so I've ordered a rebuild kit for the new rear end. But in the mean time it's together good enough to roll in and out of the garage and in the drive way.


And after I pull the axle back out I'll go ahead and overhaul it. But for now it's under the frame and the control arms are mocked up in place.





I've also got the mounting boxes for said control arms fabbed up as well.



My goal for tonight is to get those boxes mounted and reinforced.

 

i say just because so many people dont like it, paint it yellow.

 

Alright well I've been plenty busy. Everyday after work my goal has been to get at least a little done.



The frame is finally up and on all four wheels. The shocks are mounted as well as the sway bar.







The panhard bar still has yet to go on. Because the original panhard bar looks like spaghetti and the one that came with with new rear end isn't any different. So I'm gonna make on using rod ends, but I'm waiting on parts for that.

In the mean time I decided to go ahead and get the reinforcing done to the control arm mounts. I put a tube in between the upper and lower control arm mounts and then from the lower control arm mount up to the frame about a foot away. It's looking pretty beefy now.





Ignore the excessive washers for the shock bolts. I ran out of bolts the right length and need to make a hardware run.



In the above picture you can see a better view of the driveshaft. I like my pinion angle but the angle coming off the slip yoke seems like it's kind of much to me. But my drive shift is only just over 4 feet long. So I'm gonna run it like this and if I have any issues I guess I'd have to put a split shaft in with a carrier bearing... thoughts?

I still want to reinforce the front as well. But before doing that I decided to start working on the fuel tank. Now the thing is that the original Ford frame is a little wider than the frame I have built and if you go back to the pictures of when I first built the tank it was already a tight fit. So I had to cut some off of one side. I can't remember for sure but I think it was close to two inches that I ended up cutting off. But I know that inside of the new frame rails is 32 1/2 inches wide so I cut the tank to 32 inches. And after welding the side plate back on it came out to having just under a quarter inch of clearance on each side. Unfortunately I didn't really take any pictures of the tank when I cut it and what not... my bad.







Anyway I have the tank just mocked in roughly where I want it to go. I like the position because it puts puts the filler neck right between the upper and lower tunes of the frame. Making it a little easier to get the filler and vent hoses clamped on the tank.
My goal for tonight is to cut a cross member to position right in front of the fuel tank and get the straps in position secure secure the tank into place.

 

Just read all the way through. Sad the see the truck in the accident, but the resurrection process is both amazing and inspiring. Excited to see!!

 

WOW!!!!! GREAT READ!

 

Concerning drive line angle at the trans you will really have to see how it is after the full weight of the truck is on it. Currently it looks like the rear is sitting pretty high compared to the front, so I imagine that once you get the body and everything on it will squat down a little and improve the angle some. Or once it's done you may want to go with shorter springs in the rear.

Looking great by the way.

 

BLOCKS ARE GONE!!!



A little cut here, a little grind there and viola a! Fuel tank has its new home.



Yea I did figure the rear would come down a little bit but I'm just not sure how much. Well just have to see.

And thanks for the kind comments everyone.

 

Very nice.

If your drive shaft angle is still unsatisfactory after you get weight on it, you may want to consider going to a CV drive shaft. You would have to rotate the pinion up to point at your output yoke though.

 

Yea I was thinking that I may end up using something like that. I'm letting the pinion point below the tail shaft to give me some pinion angle. But yea well gave to see. Also I haven't down the math to figure out how many gallons that fuel tank holds but I'm sure a full tank will pull the rear end down as well.

But yea thanks for the compliment. After seeing your build it makes me feel pretty good.

 

TL;DR Looked at pictures:
Crashes, Dents, Frames, Hemi, almost turnkey, Crash during Move, Custom Frame, wheels and hemi again.

Dang... if your dentside wasn't getting so many dents you might not have the motivation to push past crazy, sail past nutty, and cruise on through to a Jaydoubleyou Forge.

 

Haha! Too true, had the accident never happened this project wouldn't be near as much as what it is now.
I'm bummed out this week because they got me in St. Louis and I can't get any work done.
But as soon as I get back I have four more braces to put on and I can start on the cab mounts.

 

A quick update...

I'm back from St. Louis, it kind of sucked having to go a whole week of not being able to make progress.

Anyway I did go ahead and put two more support tunes for the front x-member to the front of the frame. And then later on those same tubes will be used to mount some trick looking skid plates. I still have two more tubes to cut to length to support the rear front cross member (assuming that made sense to anyone other than myself).






Anyway as I said before I needed to strip the frame down again and flip it over to finish all my welds. But as you can guess with all the extra cross members and mounts it is now a little too heavy to man handle. So I mounted an engine stand to each end of the frame. This way I can flip, spin or whatever I need to do to get the best access to all the joints on the frame. Tomorrow will consist of mostly welding.

 

You are cranking on it now. I am looking forward to seeing it finished (again)

 

So evidently it's been a long time since I last posted an update. Alot has happened for both the truck and myself.
Since then my son was born, and so there was a while where I couldn't get too much time to head out into the garage. But since he's a little bigger now he doesn't mind hanging out in the drive way or garage in his walker.
However he wasn't born until March, so I still have plenty of explaining to do.

But first, a pic of the kid!



When I last posted I was getting ready to paint the frame. Well I rattle canned it a bright red. And it doesn't look too bad. After that it was time to start working on mounting the cab. After bolting the power train back on, I sat the cab on wood blocks and bolted on a fender so I could get an idea of the fender's relationship to the wheels. Took a few measurements, squared it up, took a few more measurements and then welded my cab mounts to the frame. Threw the doors on, and started setting the interior in.







Something I didn't have last time that I do now is the center console from a 2010 Ram. I needed it for the shifter, or so I thought but I'll get to that in a minute. So yea the center console is kind of sweet considering I'm using the buckets up front.




Now the majority of the past couple months was spent trying to get the engine to fire up. So of course in go the electronics. The gauges, mounted the pcm, and routed the monster of a harness from the Ram. And when i put the key in and turned it, of course it didn't fire up because that would be far too easy. I sent the pcm out to have the anti-theft bypassed. When I got it back I plugged it in and at least this time it did more. Such as rounds a few more lights in the cluster would turn on, the throttle would cycle, the fuel pump would prime the fuel system. This got pretty happy, but it was a let down when I went to turn the key to start. Because again nothing happened.

So I grabbed all the diagrams I could think of and started tracing circuits. Which is about the time I went and bought the center console and shifter. Because the shifter has a few wires that go to it for the shift solenoid interlock, auto-manual shifting and a few do-dads. But as I was tracing out the circuits I started to find that I had more and more components missing. So finally after a couple months of fighting this harness I decided to look for an after market alternative.

I came across HotwireAuto.com when they claimed to have already done the swap a several times. So after a phone call I had ordered the harness. I did have to wait about three weeks but it was worth it. Because when it did finally come in and I had the chance to inspect my new purchase you could tell that they took a great deal of pride in the products that they make. Everything connector is labeled with a little tag as to where it goes. All the wires were protected by a heavy heat shrink tubing, and the grommet that goes through the fire wall is nice, solid and thick. And of course the best part is that it didn't have all the extra parts that the factory harness did have.



Now I'm not trying to sound like a commercial but I am just really impressed. A couple hours of setting everything in place and you're done.

So the harness is in, I don't have any gauges yet, and as it turns out I can't use the factory cluster with this harness. But they told me that before hand. And since the transfer case that I'm using communicates to the pcm through the cluster I won't have 4 wheel drive until I swap to a transfer case that is cable operated rather than electronic.

So anyway, the time comes.



I go to a put the key in any IT ACTUALLY TURNS OVER!!!! Man its funny how when you've been trying to do something like this and all it had to do is turn over to put a huge smile on my face. Now I a didn't start up, but come on!!! The fuel pumps turns on, the started turns the engine over!!! That's gotta be worth something a didn't I'm stoked. I figured that the engine wasn't starting because of bad gas. Because I never really emptied the fuel rails and the engine has been essentially sitting for a couple years. So I pulled those massive fuel rails off and emptied about half a quart of old gas into my wife's flower bed. Just kidding I didn't kill any plants but I did get the old gas out.
Where I messed up is that I didn't fill the rails with gas and try to get the air out before reinstalling the rails. So when I went to start it I cycled the key a few times to fill them with fuel. But even still it takes a few seconds of cranking to fire it up. So I think there is still some air in the fuel rails.

All I really need to do is hold the throttle at about 2000 rpms for a bit to work the air out. But my throttle isn't responding. When I hook up the scan tool, I am getting a cam position sensor fault. So I need to checkout that sensor and make sure the leads going to and from the pcm are good to go. But I'm pretty sure that will fix the non responsive throttle issue. And once I can rev it up I'll be sure to get a burn out video, hahahaha!

But there are also a few other things I haven't mention such as the transmission cooler. I'm using a hydraulic unit cooler. It's rated for 250 psi and it's sized pretty good. I doubt I'll have any cooling issues. It does however come really close to the where I think the grill will sit, and I couldn't find any fittings that would be low profile enough to fit cleanly. Soooo I made some, I used some stainless pipe bushings, and cut a notch so I could weld a stainless tubing in, it's low profile, clean and should clear the back of the grill.

As for the brakes, I had them plumbed before. But that was before the accident. So it needed to be redone. The only issue I ran into was with the ABS distribution block. I'm not using abs, but the way Ram engineers designed this system is that the lines go from the master cylinder, to the ABS module, to four individual metering blocks and finally to each individual wheel. However, the last time I hooked up the lines to my abs module I guess I didn't flare one of the lines right. And while it sealed the first time it must have deformed the flare inside the port because now that particular port doesn't seal at all. Upon inspection I found the sealing surface pretty messed up. So I figured that since I'm not actually using abs, I'm just using it to keep the hydraulics in line, that it's time to eliminate the abs module. So as of recent if been playing with some casting aluminum, so I have a whole mess of aluminum cupcake shaped ingots laying around. I brought one to work with me and machined out a new distribution block from it. It's small, compact and does what I need.





Also, I bolted an aluminum plate to the inside of the frame on the driver side. This is just to serve the purpose of having something to secure brake lines, fuel lines and wiring to. Eventually I'll get around to making another plate just like it to go on over the lines and wiring, just to keep things from potentially snagging on them.

 

I'm really liking the way those wheels look..

Lookin good