I am finally getting around to starting my build thread, thanks to tinman and his great 51 COE thread.

My story starts about 7 years ago when a friend of a friend contacted me wondering if I was interested in a pair of '51 ford COEs and a 52 International truck. I wasn't ready to do a build, but how could I say no? I had always wanted a COE rollback. I bought the trucks (all 3 for 1200) and hooked them up to my F250 one at a time and drug them home about 50 miles, since I didn't have a trailer heavy enough for them. I chained a removable hitch to the front bumper on them (securely) and they pulled quite nicely. not DOT, but I was on backroads anyway.







After I got them home, I got the international running (not pictured, this is a ford site after all) and did a little research on what to do next. I read that using a forward controls type chassis is a lot easier (van or motorhome) and started looking for a used rollback. I really had a problem that I didn't feel like investing a ton of time into a vehicle that I only used when hauling stuff (a couple times a year) and was so big it was hard to store. Because of this I let the trucks sit for years and spent my time playing with mustangs.

A few years back I saw a pic of the orange 48 ford COE with a modern dually pickup bed. That's when I had a revelation. I could still build a truck capable of pulling a trailer, but if I put a pickup bed on it, then I could drive it around town, to cruises, etc! That made the whole project justifiable. Plus, I had a burning desire to build some sort of streetrod... I wanted vintage steel on a nicer drivetrain. This would solve that problem too!

After a bit more research, I decided that if I was going to build a vintage truck, I wanted it to be a diesel... a 7.3 diesel to be more specific. And a dually, 2wd. That will make things a bit more tricky, but also will add some uniqueness to the build.

Originally I had also planned to merge the 2 cabs into a single 4 door truck, but after seeing other peoples examples of doing so, I decided that wasn't the look I was going for, so I am leaving the cab as is.

Now I was on the hunt for a suitable chassis and box.

 

After a bit of searching, I found my chassis on ebay. It was a '99 E350 "people mover" in good driving condition with a 7.3, auto and 2wd dually. This was exactly what I was looking for. It was about 250 miles away... but it went cheap on ebay so I drove down and drove it back. It seemed to run and drive well, but it was a monster. The interior had already been stripped and someone had used it to haul is motocross stuff. The drivetrain seemed to be in good shape, but the body was pretty rough (although it didn't show too bad in pictures).




Once I had it home, I drug the 51 out of the trees and parked them next to each other. I picked the "red" 51 because the body was a little cleaner, and I didn't have to deal with the dump bed at this time. I spent a lot of time measuring to make sure that my plan would work. Interestingly, the proportions of the van cab and the COE cab are surprisingly similar. The engine is set back on the frame about the same, the front axle position is about the same, etc. Based on all my measurements, it looked like it would fit. The COE body was way higher, but so was the frame height, so by setting it down onto a lower frame, I think I can get the look I am going for.

This was about 2 years ago... and I had a problem that I didn't have a shop to do the work in. I took some time and started building a shop in the back half of one of my sheds (something I had always wanted to do). Again, this set back my build a bit... but it was well worth it in the long run.

 

Very cool.....keep it coming!

I gave up on the car hauler idea too, just didn't seem practical.

 

Interesting build!!!

 

This summer, I had the shop about 2/3 done... but I was getting tired of working on it and wanted to work on a car project, so I drug the 51 in.

The first step was to get the cab off. I don't have much experience working with COEs, so my first discovery was how easily the front clip came off. That was awesome and made getting to the rest of it much easier.





The body mounts came off pretty easy, and I didn't have much of a problem disconnecting most pieces holding the cab to the chassis. The only problem was the steering column. I could NOT get it loose. I really didn't want to remove the steering box completely, as I wanted to be able to roll the chassis around the yard easily.






The easiest solution I found was to get the steering wheel off (that in itself also required a large hammer, but the wheel was in tough shape already). Then I just lifted the cab and slid the chassis forward slowly and threaded the column out of the hole in the cab. I was pretty thankful for the hoist I had just installed in my shop at that point.







Now I pulled the chassis out and put it back in the yard... and started to focus on stripping EVERYTHING off the body.







While I enjoyed the "Patina" of the paint, I wasn't going to be able to match my box to it... and I wanted to fix a few rust spots, so it had to go. It had been sitting outside for many years, so it had quite a bit of moss growing on it. We scrapped that off with a putty knife. you can see the difference here-



At this point, I parked the cab in the corner of the shop, and went back to working on wiring the shop, feeling better that I had made some progress.

 

Good find on the Coes and the E350 I think you have the right combo there.

 

Sounds interesting! keep it coming.

 

I found a place who could blast my cab... and realized that I would be sandblasting for weeks if I tried to do it myself, and the cost of materials would probably be more than paying someone else. So I loaded the cab up on the trailer.




Once it was blasted, I saw that there were a few spots that were a little thinner than I thought... but all in all the body was pretty straight and solid. the monstrous grill guard that had been on the front protected it nicely. Of course, at this point, the cab went back into it's corner. Notice now the better lighting (I had at least gotten some of my wiring done at this point).



This was pretty motivating. I felt like I really had something to work with. Unfortunately, the weather was turning cold and I had to get my wiring completed before the ground froze, and get my furnace installed, so the cab waited some more. I probably could have made more progress had I paid someone to do the shop work for me (wiring, installing furnace, etc), but then I wouldn't have had money for the COE!

 

Looking good!

What are you going to do with the yellow dump COE? In the picture it looks like the better truck. Is it good enough to get it fixed and running?

 

I finally got back to the project this winter. Next step was to get that monster body off the E350. I pulled the van into the shop and parked it under the hoist. Last spring when I was shopping for a hoist, I decided to go with this new model because I could mount it in a "wide" configuration that would give more width between the posts. My reasoning was because I wanted to be able to pull my car trailer under the hoist and pick up/set down cars onto it. That also turned out to be important to just fitting this body on the hoist.





My first plan was to torch the body mounts off... but the rubber insulators had a tendency of starting on fire... so I gave up on that plan. My friend decided to cut the bottom nut/bolt off with a cutoff wheel. that looked like it worked well, but the body mounts were actually threaded farther in than the bolt, so it didn't free anything up. To make matters worse, then I didn't have anything to hold on to. :-(

The correct solution was a big breaker bar and tightening the bolts until they broke... the backup plan for those that I couldn't do that with was to cut the rubber mount off and then use the cutoff wheel on the bolt behind the rubber. it took a while, but eventually all the mounts were off.

Next step was to disconnect all the power lines and hoses to the body. it had multiple heaters and air conditioners in it, so I had to remove quite a bit (no fear, the freon had all leaked out long before I got it). Then I had to disconnect it from the cab. This was challenging as they had filled in all the voids with spray in foam and welded it to the cab body in various places. Finally I was able to get it broke free.





I picked it up, and pulled the chassis out and then backed the car trailer underneath to get it out of there. I had offered it to a friend who wanted to use it as a storage enclosure. But it was a little rougher than I realized, and the think was crazy heavy. I don't know exactly how heavy, but it really squatted down my car trailer. He didn't have any way to get it off my car trailer (without damaging it) so I decided to haul it off to the scrapyard.







Now that's one less problem that I don't have to deal with. The junkyard took it for free, he was a little leery because of all the fiberglass and glass in it, but there were a bunch of AC units and heaters, so I think that convinced him.

You may notice that the shop now has a furnace and windows. :-)

 

Abe, I haven't decided what I am going to do with the yellow one yet. If this build goes well I might try to make something else. It looks better in pictures, but the body is a little thinner and there is a chunk missing from one of the fenders than the red one. All repairable, but just more effort. The motor is a 6 cyl that has been partially disassembled. I don't think I will "restore" it, but more than likely take the cab for another project like this. I was also thinking of pulling the bed and the hydraulics system off it and putting a couple axles under it and a hitch and making a dump trailer. The box is big enough that it could fit my skidsteer in it, so that would be nice. Not sure if I will ever prioritize that over other car projects though...

 

Once the big body was gone, it was time to get rid of the cab. My goal is to try to use as much as I can of the OEM parts, so I wanted to take stuff off without damaging it too much. My plan was to just unhook stuff from the cab. As it turns out, I had to remove EVERYTHING from the cab.



This is the cab as it sat. I pulled the bumper, grill, and radiator supports off just to untangle wiring and plumbing. I also removed all the wires and hoses that were added aftermarket to support the rear heater, A/C etc.

In the interior, I ended up pulling everything off. I didn't plan on removing the dash, but because the wiring looped around the back of it, it was easier to just remove it than to work around it. The pic shows a few parts still on (like the brakes) that were eventually removed. I may cut out the doghouse area to see if I can reuse parts of it as well.



Once I got everything stripped off, the cab really wasn't that heavy and myself and 2 guys just picked it up and moved it off.





At this point, I now am ready to start cleaning stuff up and seeing how things will fit together. I have my complete chassis, a body, and although I haven't mentioned it earlier, I have a dually box off of 2000 F350. All the big parts are there and things are starting to get interesting.

 

I'm curious to see how/where the steering box was set up on the van. Any pics?

Are you planning to leave the engine up front or move it behind the cab?

 

Now I am pretty much caught up with my current status. The next step is to get the cab body and box in place so I can determine my frame modifications.

The frame is obviously way too long. I know I have a couple feet to cut off the back end, and I likely have at least a foot to cut off between the axles. Fortunately the frame is very clean and straight there, so it will be easy to get it cut shorter. I also am going to need to narrow the box to make it line up with the cab. Once I get things in place I can measure and figure out how much that will need to be narrowed. I will get better pictures and post more on that later.

My concern now is getting the cab fit in place. I would like the cab back on the body as far as possible and as low as possible (within reason). My concern is that with such a wide engine and a narrow cab, I won't have a lot of room in the foot well. Fortunately, with an auto tranny, I won't need as much space. I hope that by sliding the cab back as far as possible I can limit how far back into the cab the doghouse has to go. Without having the fuel tank in the cab, I can push the seat back a little farther as well to make up for a small footwell.

The good news I have is that although this motor is big, Ford didn't have a lot of space in the van cab either, so everything is packed pretty tightly. That should help as I start trying to reassemble.

I decided to take a first shot at seeing how things are going to fit. I pulled the front clip out and set it on top of the chassis. It isn't back as far as I want it, nor is it as low as it should be, but it already feels like a little bit of progress. Once I move the radiator out of the way, I will be able to slide it back another 4 inches. Then I need to cut out some of the inner fender well and I can lower it about 8 inches. That will put the top of the tire about level with the lip of the fender well. that will also put the body at about 5 inches off the ground. My plan is to bag this so I can control the ride height carefully... but if normal ride height is 5 inches, I should be able to drop the cab all the way to the ground without any front suspension modification. That will probably give me a little room to move the body up a few inches and make the doghouse a little smaller (or use taller tires).



This weekend I am going to pick up a friend's plasma cutter and spend some time trimming and see if I can't start getting the fenders and cab in place.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!

 

This is amazing how fast you are doing all of this. You've done more in a few days than I did on the F3 in a year. Keep up the good work it is great to see and enjoy