This will be the official build thread for my '47 tonner panel I bought out of Parker's Prairie Minnesota last winter. I have posted pics of various aspects of the project. I just thought it was time to bring it into one location. It is late tonight, I've been working on the front brakes out in the shop and then assembling pistons and rods on the kitchen table. My wife is long asleep as she is on long shifts at the medical clinic. She is a very tolerant woman. Next weekned she is going to a birding symposium so I will be working on the panel nonstop. She makes me stop for bird roadkills so she can salvage the remains. This owl was in Idaho and still warm from being killed on someone's windshield. I start this thread out with her as she makes it possible for me to pursue my dreams and it never bothers her one little bit. The other pic is very random. A friend of Havis in Minnesota took it of me here in Washington not far from my island home. He sent it to Havi because he knew he liked old ford trucks......

 

Looking forward to this build thread GB! Too bad about the owl. They are beautiful birds and I enjoy seeing them when they are on the hunt.

 

It started as one of those internet romances (the truck, not the wife). I had been looking for a tonner panel for almost a year. There were a few out there, but always missing a lot of parts and worth 1/2 of the asking price. This one was not cheap for such a wreck, but it was complete and totally unmolested. The license plate was from 1966. I had a rear axle here on the property to replace the broken and separated one that was under it. I pulled the trigger on it and waited for a hauler to get into that part of Minnesota. At one point I headed out to get it myself, but was defeated by a series of events, and my not full recovery from open heart surgery. I met the trucker on the mainland about an hour from the ferry and transfered the panel from his trailer to mine. Upon arrival on the island I unloaded it at a friend's better equipped shop so we could roll my good rear axle under it. That's when I saw all the broken leaf springs. At this point it took all the strength I could muster to steer the front wheels an inch or two. At Nate's shop I aired up one of the rag front tires and when I was around the other side airing up another, the first one blew up like a stick of dynamite. I'll leave my tale here at Nate's shop as I need to get to a jobsite.

 

Subscribing...

Good on you & your lovely wife for making best use out of the owls misfortune. My wife & her aunt are big fans of raptors.

https://www.raptorresource.org/

Will enjoy your mechanical (and carpentry) talent playing out, thanks for posting it.

 

Subscribing.

 

I'm glad you finally started a single thread for this panel. I'm looking forward to the story in one place!

Have you given any thought to getting your neighbor's aux box and twin sticking the panel?

 

If I got that Watson, I would most likely put in in my '59 f350 with the jr Cummins. It has a lot of space between the gears. Today I assembled the pistons and rods to the crankshaft in the 59ab that's going into the panel. I plan to pick up some brake lines tomorrow at napa and new hoses should be here from C and G ford parts. The front half of the floors were bad so I cut them out yesterday. Sure gonna be easy to replace the master cylinder from the top! I will replace them with steel from old electrical boxes that I get from an electrician friend. I guess that's a step up from road signs, but they are mostly aluminum now and not as good looking for a floor as the old steel ones were. Hoping to get this thread up to current date soon, but spring gets real busy and maybe over the weekend I can catch us up on all that's gone into the panel so far. Thanks for all the nice comments. Good night from the East side of Mt. Pickett.

 

Sounds like you are making good progress. Have fun!

Did someone mention an aux box? I'm looking for one for my COE....

 

Sub'd

 

After repeated attempts to free the original engine, I finally gave up and decided to rebuild one using a good block I had kept in my shop's attic. Got a crank shaft turned and started gathering up the rest of the parts. Tinman donated a fistfull of nice stainless exhaust valves. I found a set of adjustable lifters in a cardboard box also in the attic. The block from the attic had 5000 miles on it but had a bad crank and rod bearings. Unknown to me at the time, this combination produced a side thrust on the rods which drove 3 of the wristpins sideways enough gall out the u shaped groove which holds the circlip. Otherwise the pistons and rings were like new. I first tried to hand machine the 3 bad grooves to hold a circlip from merc pistons which were formed from a larger wire. In the end I chickened out and still determined to save the 400 bucks for new pistons I took another route. In my search for an answer I came upon hot aircooled vw bug racers, motorcycle builders (S&S harley) along with British bike builders, airplane engine builders, Drag racing flatheads, builders of supercharged street driven flatheads and all manner of high tech high stress engine guys using a mushroom shaped teflon 'button' driven into the ends of the wristpins. All these engines have, like our flatties, a floating wrist pin. As strange as it sounds, these buttons ride nicely on the cylinder wall keeping the wristpin centered. One account reported 300,000 miles on a set of these buttons. Caterpillar and Lycoming (aircraft) engines have been designed with an aluminum button of the same configuration. This was enough for me so I looked around and nobody makes them for flathead v8s and custom makers get 10.00 apiece and take 6-8 weeks. I decided to order two feet of .750 teflon rod and make my own. With shipping it was 38 bucks and change. I made a jig for my stationary disc sander to dome the end that rides in the cylinder and a router jig to create the tenon or shoulder to press into the end of the pin. While waiting for the teflon rod, I tested out my tooling with a 3/4 hardwood dowel....Well I am really running on and I haven't even gotten to the homespun kingpin job or the wooden running boards. When the block was stripped I drilled the lifter bores for easy valve adjustment and yesterday I installed the pistons and rods and all the valves and adjusted them. Now I have to decide what to use for nuts on the rods. I have the old ones on just snug, not torqued. Ok, enough. I need to take advantage of the day and keep moving on this thing.....Sorry this is so wordy. Pics are more fun!

 

That's awesome Gary.

 

Looks great! She'll be purring in no time....

 

Only thing gonna be purrin' today is my Kawasaki V-twin. That's on my walk behind mower btw..... Grass was about 6" high this morning and now it's 3:00 and it looks more like 8".....Got a lot done yesterday but not on the engine or brake lines as planned. Napa was shy a few parts I needed, so I decided to install my new master cylinder instead. Timing was good as I had just cut the rusty floor out and removal of the master was entirely from the top. Pleasant change at my age. Well I looked at the floor edges that were left and the cab mounts or what was left of them and decided I didn't want to put that new Master and lines in and then grind and weld around them so out came the welder and grinder. Maybe this was why the drivers door was 3/4" low at the top corner and had no dovetail and the striker was worn to an oval and stuck deep into the doors' edge. I placed a jack under the lower hinge and raised it up a bit. Hmmmm door fit a lot better. I raised it up to where the rotted off mount would have held it and it was really close to shutting. Next I made two new mount blocks copied from the one good one that had survived. These I made from black locust I cut on the mill 3 years ago. With the blocks in and on new 3/8" thick rubber belting pads I fabbed up new cab mounts from 3x3 angle and 1 1/2 x 5/16 strap. After welding to the door pillar I set the cab down on them. The lower hinge still had a problem, with some cracks in the door itself from fatigue. My '47 two ton has a nice surface mounted 'farmer's patch in the exact same location. That door works great and the look doesn't bother me so I did my own with the door propped up with a 2x4 post. Now I needed a dovetail so I stole one from my '1/2 ton in waiting'. With the dovetail in all aI needed was a latch. Heating, tapping pb blaster and a few minutes later the misshapen striker popped out. I gave it a good dose of oil and laid on some weld and reground it to the proper shap. Slam, click everything really nice. Except for the hideous crunch in the roof and gutter about midway above the window on drivers door. I never saw it in the pictures, but it was really a bad hit. Roof pushed in about 1 1/2" and somehow upwards a full inch. You could see right into the cab with the door fully shut. With the door lining up so well now, I could use it as a gauge to know where to beat the roof and gutter to. Took about two hours, lots of heat, all kinds of hammers, wedges, blocks of shaped hardwood, crow bars, tire irons etc etc to beat this tough area into submission. It still need so move outwards about 3/8 for a good lineup, but the door reveal is actually pretty good considering body work for me usually involves a tub of jb weld and some window screen. My wife came home to this filthy scene of carnage and immediately got the camera out because she thought you guys should see what she saw. When I was finishing up she brought me down a big glass of red wine she picked up on the way home. That's what old heart patients are supposed to drink ya know. Well I came up to the house and grabbed the big orange pump jug of gojo hand cleaner and took it into the shower with me. Afterwards we had another big glass. Life is good.

 

your a miracle worker!

 

Actually I'm exhausted. I just mowed my lawn, but thanks. If I remember correctly you welded in a complete new bottom into your cab and you can't even tell......