New Project-63 Shortbed
(Of a 02 Ranger!) :shock:
This is the project that we have in his barn at the moment, we get the front end pulled off, cut the aprons, pulled the wiring harness and pulled the motor and trans yesterday. Today he pulled the bed and rear end out, its ready for a ladderbar/Explorer 8.8 now and eventually a stock block 5.4SC Lightning motor and drivetrain swap! It will be a weekend warrior but street driveable :lol:
Pre-teardown


How it ran hahaha
As it sits now



From this...


To this...



These girls made me stop occasionally haha

And...


Pretty much the entire day here, stripping out all the wiring and labeling what each one is. Looking forward to getting more done tomorrow!

Pulled seats, divider, carpet, pulled the doors, pulled the wiring up to the front. Then pulled everything off the fenders, just need to pull a couple more bolts to pull the fenders all the way off.
Took half the day just to do all of that. Then we pulled the car up behind the Danger Ranger and got down to it.

Cut the quarters off, rear body panel, roof, supports-basically everything from the B pillar back that wasn't the floor.



Dennis helpin with the left 1/4

Its commin along! Lots of work left to do. Need to tear the dash down then one of the worst parts-tearing down the firewall. Then tearing down the truck, then fitment, then then then.....





Here is what I started with :rockon_ford
Got the fenders off, and grill off and only had to plasma off 3 bolts-in surprisingly good shape for the most part


Then all of the bolts on the tailgate were frozen so I broke those off, then the bolts holding the bed were frozen solid so we plasmaed those off too


Their sweet drop shackles hahaha

Started to rip out the entire interior aka speaker box covering, drywall mud, just thicker than aluminum foil sheets of "metal" held down with sheetmetal screws. Really unnecessary really, the only problem parts of the floor are the cab mounts and front of the floor pans.



http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...74061982_n.jpg

Got the doors off too

Gonna need new cab corners, and to fab up some new rocker pieces


"Some Assembly Required" hahahaha


:bigtu
Next up I'll be cutting out most of the floor in the cab, pulling the dash apart as much as I need to, and pulling the cab off the frame. It will be two weekends until I do that though, going racing next weekend with the Lightning...but it's comin!
Ford Trucks for Ford Truck Enthusiasts
Ask and you shall receive!
Got the cab and frame separated a few weekends ago!

Floor looks better in this picture than it really haha

Here is the frame, trans, 292 Y block and the REALLY scary rear drum set up hahaha

A little plasma cutting later...

Also started to tear out some of the WORST body work I've ever seen. It was DRYWALL MUD. DRY. WALL. MUD. AND it wasn't covering rust!! It was just a horrifying attempt to "smooth" the rear cab seam.

Metal under it looks great for the most part

And a little real body work where there was some rust clearly...doesn't bother me since its a shop truck build!

Next real step is finishing the stripping of the cop car firewall, then pulling the body up off the frame and cutting out the back of the floor of it. Then pull it the rest of the way off the frame, and start test fitting the F100 cab onto the CVPI frame!


We then pulled the chassis out of the shop and dropped the body down. Cut the floor and firewall out from the middle of the rear seat all the way up to the very top edge of the firewall in one fell swoop. Cut inside the rocker structure all the way up with the plasma and sawzall, and chopped the rest of it up. Our plan from this point:
Drill out the inner panel on the inside of the cab (on the F100) that goes from under the interior vents to the floor/front corner of the cab. We will be replacing that with plate steel since the front of the cab corners are fairly rotten.
Put the cab up in the air, place the chassis under it, and start to test fit the cab to the chassis! Once we have them in the right position then we start welding.
Then last night we dragged the cab into the barn and got it up on the lift.

My friend cut out the rest of the firewall, then we started to "trim" the rocker steps down since we'd need to do that to get the cab to sit over the frame. Once we started to do that we realized that the right step was literally totally rotted away, to the point that this is all thats left of the rocker.

And here are the ****ty patch steps/horrible bodywork/heater core and firewall.

So now we'll be figuring out how to replace the actual rockers, not just the steps. On the other side of things-we are all set to drill out the footwell panels and start to test fit to the chassis! Hopefully get the panels welded tomorrow and roll the chassis in, then Saturday will be a long day of test fitting test fitting test fitting!


Here is what the bare Crown Vic frame looks like, with the floor we cut out of it just laying in the stock position.



Once we got the plates welded up to the kick panels we rolled the chassis in and set it down over it!

Of course the back of the cab corners weren't meant to fit over this wide of a frame, so a little cutting was required.
BUT
We cut here, there, notched it in the back and this is how it sits with one fender visegriped in place!!

There is a HUGE amount to do from here but just seeing it with a fender hung off and how it sits as is makes me so happy-makes it feel like it is going to start coming together!
Saturday we'll be at it all day to try and tie the stock Vic floor and firewall into the F100 cab, and get the cab semi mounted so we can roll the chassis around with it in place (the front is sitting on jackstands in the pic.
But it looks kinda like a truck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the front plate on the cab with the post on it that fits in an L shape of 1/8th in plate on the frame

Got the rear plates welded in and the post on it too

This is the L shape on the frame on the front (there is one on the 4 corners of the cab/frame)-this allows us to pick the cab up off the frame but it fits back in the same position every time. It still gives us about a 1/8th of an inch to shift it around as we fit the rest of the truck together

Cab sittin on the frame on her own, with the Vic floor just layin under her


Trimmed the Vic floor to be even with the frame

How we welded the cab to the vic floor in the back, 3"x5"x1/8" plates

Then cut a piece of 2 inch angle to fit where the step will go and got it welded in on the top to give us a flat spot to weld to

Panoramic view of the cab with the floor in it and Dennis welding the other side of angle in the step

You can also see where we put 2 3x5 plates on each side of the cab from the cab to the Vic floor

And here is where we left off-firewall fitment

Next up we'll be filling the top of the firewall-some odd angles, but I'll be scrounging through our metal at work to see if we have anything that might be useable. Then it'll be filling the rest of the gaps from the cab to the CV floor and then welding the cab to the frame!
Got some huge progress done today and this past Thursday night! This is where we left off after a long *** Wednesday night and a longer Thursday night...

We bent some angle iron so it matched the curve of the F100's under cowl/where it's old firewall was. We then took a old door skin we had laying around and started building pieces to fit the gap from the Crown Vic firewall to the angle iron on the cab. We got all the pieces cut and set to weld by the end of Thursday, and also had finished welding the back of the cab's floor

We incorporated the back of the floor pan into the back of the cab-it looks so good because Dennis and I massaged the metal for hours and he welded the hell out of it haha.
The final touches today on the back

Proof its a cop car-alum drive shaft

Final grinding

Ground, prepped, ready to etch prime and seam seal

Seam sealed in the back, then flipped it over and did the front



Hitting it with the bedliner!

All bedlined!

Letting it get tacky...we used Herculiner liner and their spray gun.


And....drumroll please...

The last time she will be going on the frame! Final welding on tomorrow night, and thats all she wrote as far as the cab comin off again!

Dropped the seat in just to see how the seating postion was-felt good, a lot lower than stock F100, which is great

Needs final welding, then seam seal and rhino line from the inside out. After that it will be steering column, getting it to run again, gas tank mounting somehow, then moving the core support back a couple inches, body panel fitment, cutting out the old rockers and cab corners and welding in the new ones, making rocker steps, then bed fitment/chopping and then paint! I'm sure there are a bunch of things I've missed but thats the general plan


