Been getting swamped at work, not much time to play with the truck or post pictures lately. He's the final few for the right front corner of the cab... still looks worn and beaten even after many hours of cutting, hammering and welding. At least there is something to bolt to a frame safely now.


Notice the extra vertical welded seam on the outer skin... old accident damage that split open when I was hammering it flatter to get a better fit. More welding and grinding to fix, just a drop in the bucket on this project.



Some creative adjustments to the seam on the door pillar so the gap would look right when the door is shut... hopefully this doesn't move much when I bolt the cab to the frame.

 

Hello, and welcome from California. It looks like you're off to a good start. Lucky for you that you had some of the cab corner material to use! Keep up the good work.

I'm not sure what the best advice is....use the old frame and swap out everything or use the explorer frame. I'd tend to lean towards the original frame, but that's just me. From the looks of things, you are up to the task of the complete frame swap. Given that you're making it a 4x4, it may be less work to go the explorer frame route.

Dan

 

old_dan,
when I bought the truck many years ago I had the dream of a mean street truck, but reality kicked me a few years ago and I realized that it would never be reality (too many summer toys, not enough $ to build what I wanted).
Still loved the truck and the look of the 48-52'. The winter vehicle idea was hatched because except for a couple winter beaters (Dodge D50, Subaru Legacy) I've owned that worked great, they were embarrassing to drive as a 'car guy'. Most of the regular commuter vehicles I've owned recently are poor performers (lowrider trucks, lowered S60, skirted BMW M3 lookalike ,my current lowered Magnum... there is a common thread) in winter conditions. People around here tuck away their hot rods and old cars in the fall (October) and don't remerge until Spring (April/May). I thought it would be really cool to have something with all the conveniences I need for safe winter driving (AWD, strong heater, good weight balance, reasonable ride height) that would turn heads in the middle of winter when people are least expecting it. Hence my goal to put it on the explorer frame and make it solid, but not concerned about pretty. Having a $350 explorer that ran and drove fall into my lap at the time was also reason to pull the trigger on the project.

I've still got a huge ways to go. My first big milestone will be getting the cab mounted properly to the frame. I'm putting in a big push to try and have that done before the end of February as this project will be on hold until Summer at the end of next month. Motorcycles and convertible take priority again.

Thanks for the comments!

 

PO had bolted flat bar to the floor to reinforce where the seat mounts are. After I removed his patch I found this wonderful swiss-cheesed metal under neath.


Unfortunately, the reinforcement under the floor was in worse shape and that got cut out too. New metal and a better reinforcement from my other cab were welded in.



After a little grinding it looks pretty good and more importantly it's solid. I didn't put holes in it because I still haven't found a bench seat I'd like to put into this. It's going to be something more modern and will probably require further fabrication once I have it.

 

Hey Frosh,
Regarding Seats - We've got a '50 F1 & we measured 52 inches as the max width for a front seat. The guys with the later cabs can go with a bit wider seat.

We looked around for a seat in nice condition - pretty much anything from the smaller modern trucks will fit. We ended up going with a nice S-10 seat we found in Houston that had been rebuilt for a project that didn't happen.

You have to build a platform to get the right angle & distance from the floor & steering wheel - you'll have to do that with most any seat. The S-10 seat measures out at 48 inches - leaving you room to mount the seatbelt hardware.

Good luck over there.

Ben in Austin
1950 F1

 

Ben,
appreciate the advice. A day after you posted I got lucky on the local 'Castanet' classified and scored a 60/40 bench out of a 2005 Ranger for $40.



Looks like they will fit nice with some custom brackets, they measure out at about 50" from edge to edge. I had contemplated fixing the original bench, but my truck will be far from stock so I really like the modern upgrade. Plus fixing the original would have cost a lot more too. Here's the original bench:



Nothing a little duck tape wouldn't fix

 

$40 is a steal. Congrats on the find.

 

Both my rear corners are toast, but that's not such a major concern as they would have to be reformed anyway. The explorer frame is 6" wider at the back than the original frame so the notches for the frame need to be modified anyways. Here's how mine look:

Tape marks were reference for where cuts need to be made and where things need to line up after. Amazing that what lies beneath is actually worse than what's on top:

Hard to get a decent picture underneath, but only one of the factory spot welds was still holding the rear mount in place. Good thing it was bolted from the top. The mount pivot needs to be modified anyways as it has to go outboard another 3" to make everything (frame is 6" wider) work when it is done anyways.

 

That is exactly what I started doing with my 56 on the 05 frame.

 

Funny thing about this project is I remember buying the truck years (11?)ago because of how little rust here was and how much work it would save me... either my memory is bad (very possible) or parking on the edge of the field for about 8 years helped do it in. Probably some of both.
Anyways, I've had some time to make some progress on the left rear corner:

If I cut out 'all' the bad metal there wouldn't be anything left, I settle for the really pitted/holey stuff. Still makes for some pretty extensive surgery.

Always feels good to finally weld in some metal, outside shot

I decided to make a compromise on the inside (which I regretted later!). It was originally two pieces on top of each other. They were rusted to nothing so I had little to go on. I decided to replaced both with a single piece of 14Ga. What I didn't realize until I went to fit the rear cab mount back in is that there was a gap between the pieces so the rear cab mount would sit properly against the inside piece... my whoops leads to some more problem solving I'll show next time.

 

Well I took a mental break from work, and spent a few hours working on the truck this past week... my way of relaxing. Turns out none of the pictures I took of my cab mount fix turned out well, but I've moved on since that.
Built some new inner pieces. This pictures shows nicely the original (what was left!), the cut sheetmetal pattern (plasma did not do a good job replicated the factory punch marking for venting), and the final piece with bending in the vice and over my knee and some bead rolling for additional stiffness.

Picture of the new piece welded in, a good improvement! The grey is weld-thru cold galvanizing spray.

'New' inner cab corner finished.

Working on the last bit of rust removal on the left side of the cab before I tackle the other cab corner... more to follow.

 

More rust repair on the left side of the cab. Tackled the seat mount, similar damage to the other side:

The welded repair:

Left side sill had major rust damage:

Here's the comparison between the old one I pulled out and the replacement piece I fabbed up from 18Ga. metal:

Finally, here's the new sill section welded into place.

Hope to get the last cab corner done this weekend, at which point I can finally get back to mounting the cab to the new frame. I've only got about a week to play with this truck before it will go back into storage... I feel a little under the gun.

 

Nice progress. You have done much of the tedious work already!

 

My imageshack account got frozen for new uploads as my trial ended. This is my first time using Photobucket instead.

I got a little sidetracked as I was supposed to finish the last corner this weekend. Back when I put the cab on the frame to test fit I realized the cut-out in the floor for the transmission did not match and I ended up cutting out a much longer section right thru the channel that stiffens up the floor. My floor in the truck has been kind of floppy since and I'm pretty certain I know where and how the cab will sit on the frame now so I decided to deal with the floor and put some stiffness back into it.


This picture helps show how much higher and longer the transmission and transfer case sit in relation to the floor.


I didn't have much of an inspired thought so I just built the missing channel section to match the style of the factory one from 16Ga steel.


Of course with the additional 'hump' needed some clever cutting and bending was required. I used a piece of welding wire to make a template and find the angles I would need to put into the channel piece next.


Finally the channel piece gets welded in which immediately stiffened the floor up greatly.

 

Good solution and nice work. Keep it up.