Looks like a great parts find. If you keep buying there may be a new workshop in your near future. Could always write it off as a business expense if you put some of your cabinet making equipment between the trucks and parts.

 

Yeah, I know... I'm slowly spreading across where the big planer is in the lower shop. I'm leaving an alley that's 20" wide because that's the max width of board it will plane. Got some stuff dragged out and surveyed. Nothin' I can't fix, and if requires some skilled welding, I'll just ask my wife to do it for me!

 

A no rust Express bed!! How can it be that a part of the country that features constant rain can preserve metal parts like that? Yes, I know, no salt.

I see the headboard off to the side in one picture. Nuts and bolts will serve well to reconnect it to its sides, but if OEM is your interest you'll want to set rivets using the original waffle bucking bar. I found one on a Model A web site and ordered it from Snyder's Antique Auto Parts in Ohio. Picture below. Or, I guess you could make one. Stu

 

Thanks Stu, but the truck was from California and is slowly making it's way north from Oregon. It has only been in Oregon for a year or so. And it has some rust through behind the piece of angle iron that follows around the wheel housings. As you know, that's a bad design where all the compost collects and never dries out. I am going to need to remove the angle and replace some flat steel from the bedside and reattach the angle. I guess I will decide rivets or bolts later. I can't really start on this with the woodie half done.....And my honeydo list is growing.

 

Yeah, my AZ truck's bed has the same rust along that rail. Yours sure looks good in your pics. Stu

 

But it would have to be out of wood!

 

You're missing me, I don't understand. Bed sides to head board is metal to metal. Angle iron side rails riveted to bed sides with same technique. What am I missing? Stu

 

I think he meant that If I made a bucking dolly it would have to be made out of wood, like my panel's running boards and my station wagon's body. It is after all, my better medium.

 

Another nice score GB! Does this elevate you to the level of "Jailbar Consultant"?

 

I busted out the needle scaler and found more rust between the bed sides and the steel angle that supports the floor. It's a poor design but Ford engineers had no idea that 'hobbiests' would be restoring this stuff 70 years later. The bed sides are so nice and straight I couldn't help but get after the rust. It will be primed, painted and sealed with seam sealer when I'm done. Not to mention it will never spend a night outside in the weather under my watch. I plan to get the truck on Friday near the state capitol in Olympia, where we transfer it from his trailer to mine. I posted a pic of the Rim Rock Ranch in Old Station California on Tinmans's vintage photos thread. That was actually because the seller had been able to keep the original Ca title and the original owner in 1947 was Rim Rock Ranch, a dude ranch in the '30s and 40's and is still in business today as a resort with eleven rustic cabins. The cab corners, door and floors seem to have avoided the rust that collected in the bed sides.

 

About the only thing I miss about Texas is all the good swap meets. I only went to a couple of the Mega meets and they were just too big to cover in a day, like Pates. Decatur had a good one, lots of old stuff but I think Chikasha Oklahoma has the best ones, 3 a year and one is prewar only. I have a Radio Flyer with sideboards and balloon tires that must have 1000 miles on it from dragging it around swap meets.

 

I think my best course of action would be to avoid the swap meets altogether. "Hello, my name is Gary and I'm an......."

 

I go to the big swap meet/car show every yr here in Daytona - the Turkey Rod Run - but the last yrs I've had a sellers spot and selling/cleaning out my stash of this and that. I want a Jailbar or the next generation 48-52 but no way that's happening until I get thinned down some more.

No old truck stuff, mostly motorcycle, tools, and whatever I pull out of a tub that I hadn't seen in 15 yrs.