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If you want a guarentee that you will not have the spider cracking again, you need to go down to bare metal. I would be careful with rattle can primers. Like I said, a mild regular primer can be softened by the powerful chemicals in the automotive paint. If you know what brand of auto paint you are going to use, you can see if they have a rattle can primer that is made to work with it.
I have seen those U nuts you asked about at my local NAPA, in various sizes.
I think I got mine at Tractor Supply or Lowe's hardware.
Thing to watch for is the bolts on our trucks are metric and the ones I got were SAE threads.
If you need a lot like the carriage bolts for the bed sides look at McMaster Carr they may have the U nuts in metric.
There is not a part on my flare side I have not needed to rebuild!
Dave - - - -
edit:
I was going to use this at the front of the metal bed floor and the front panel.
But the "U" was to deep and hit the front bed floor cross member so I use the bolt and drilled smaller holes and had the new self taping bolt pictured thread into the floor.
Because of the ribs on the metal floor the front panel does not sit flat across the whole floor, it sits up on top of the ribs. This way water & dirt has I way to drain and not rust / rot the floor or panel.
Dave ----
Getting deeper here.. A little further than I originally wanted but I think this will make it easier on the exhaust and intake installation.. Now I'm working on ordering body parts.
LMC truck is the only place I've found everything I need for a flareside bed except the main quarter panels/wheelwells ... I mean EVERYTHING I need really.. the cross sills, wood mounting blocks, front bed panel... It's going to save me so much time but at a pretty good cost, almost a grand. I'm trying to avoid LMC for everything I can though. I have read so many bad things about LMC my concern is I might be better off just taking the extra time and making my own sills / patching up the old bed metal... I dont want to put junk in my truck that will just fall apart again.. but I don't want to fall back on my time frame. So here's my chance to change my mind before I buy the stuff!
What would you do?
Also I'm getting some OEM front fenders from Dennis Carpenter I definitely feel better about that, and I'm checking out tabco for cab corners.
Yes do check http://tabcoparts.com/ for the parts.
I did not need fenders so don't know about that.
As for the bed cross members, don't remember who thru, but it was going to be $1000 just for them and to spend that on a $800 truck was crazy.
Then I would still need a tail gate, front panel, wood, metal strips & hardware that would add $$$$$
Then again a cab off frame rebuild was even more crazier!
No one makes the bed sides or rear fenders. I made patterns for the bed side lips and welded new lips on my sides and welded patches as needed.
I even drilled square holes to hold the carriage bolts.
BTW I used my parts truck style side metal floor to replace the wood floor for my flare side.
Check out my sig link on my rebuild it will show how I did the work.
Dave ----
LMC truck is the only place I've found everything I need for a flareside bed except the main quarter panels/wheelwells ... I mean EVERYTHING I need really.. the cross sills, wood mounting blocks, front bed panel... It's going to save me so much time but at a pretty good cost, almost a grand. I'm trying to avoid LMC for everything I can though. I have read so many bad things about LMC my concern is I might be better off just taking the extra time and making my own sills / patching up the old bed metal... I dont want to put junk in my truck that will just fall apart again.. but I don't want to fall back on my time frame. So here's my chance to change my mind before I buy the stuff!
What would you do?
Also I'm getting some OEM front fenders from Dennis Carpenter I definitely feel better about that, and I'm checking out tabco for cab corners.
Check out Mar-K for the bed parts. They have everything LMC does, and more. If you get on their email list or follow them on social media, they do some decent sales from time to time if you're not in a rush. I find their website a little clunky to use/peruse, but their paper catalogs are nice.
I've purchased quite a bit of stuff from LMC and have been pretty happy with it for the most part. I just received a box from them last week with all new cab mounts, swaybar bushings, and a bunch of other odds and ends. Not cheap, but the stuff seems OK.
What are you looking for when you say rear wheel wells/quarter panels? I assume you're referring to the steel sides of the bed, and not the fiberglass fenders? Nobody makes the steel sides aftermarket, but Dennis Carpenter Surplus has some NOS Ford panels for a reasonable price. I have a new set myself, but they're still in the box, untouched, so I can't tell you much about them unfortunately. They're supposed to be original Ford panels, so the fit/quality should be good. I've only read comments from one guy that has installed them, and he said that they fit perfectly. Take that for what it's worth.
Note that the panels are not 100% complete. They are missing the fender mounting studs, the lower extension panels, and the stake pockets. All pretty easy stuff to deal with, but depends on what you want to do. My side panels are in bad enough condition that the new replacement sides just made more sense (for me).
My next big purchase is Flareside bed parts...probably in a month or so. I need front and rear sills, a new headboard, the wooden mounting blocks, and some hardware. That'll be it for me.
Edit: If you do decide to order those panels, they must be ordered through Ebay. Apparently Dennis Carpenter Surplus is set-up separately from the regular catalog/website stuff. You can call their main line and ask questions about them, but if you decide to order, it has to be done through Ebay. PS: They also charge $75 to crate the panels, and for what it's worth, they did a really nice job here. These are NOS surplus parts, so when they're gone, they're gone.
Have you ever used aircraft remover? It's a pretty hot stripper. I haven't used any of mine yet, it's on the waaaay back burner. But a buddy of mine does great paint/body work on older cars and trucks, he's in the middle of restoring his dads '56 Chevy. Anyway, he swears by the stuff, says it'll go down to bare metal in in no time. Works really quick, spread it on, wait a few and wipe it off.
Parts stores usually carry it. I ordered mine online over a year ago. Stuff is a bit pricey. Can't remember where I got it from, but I got two gallons shipped for less than the price for 1 gallon at the parts houses. Beats sanding if you're going down to bare metal IMO.
I know why he likes using the strong stripper. Those old chevies used laquer paint jobs and that stuff is difficult to get off.
I assume he likes it because it's quick and takes about 0 labor lol. Although that may be why he started using it. I hope when I get around to using it that it works as well as I hear. I'm a special kind of lazy.
Those bracket studs were stubborn coming out.. The rivets were deformed into the frame pretty good I guess from all the stress and weight etc it was like they were counter beveled into the frame
New polyurethane body mounts coming:
I may be waiting for warmer weather to blast and paint. I just don't want to spend the time and money on something that is going to crack and peel. My garage is cold and uninsulated and even when I get the air warm with my wood stove, the metal is still cold and moist. Maybe a propane torch to sweat that moisture before painting? They do it before coating pipes at work and that's the engineered spec. They got a little moisture/ dew point ratio calculator that tells them how warm the pipe has to be according to the relative humidity. Maybe that's overkill I dunno but it works well. I also seen them lightly propane torch finished surfaces on our fleet trucks before applying company logos.
Anyway, thinking ahead here toward planning the intake exhaust and emissions equipment. I know this would generally be more of a 300 forum topic but here we go. think I'm pretty much getting rid of all of the spaghetti lines except the vacuum advance and the brake booster. I'm going to put a breather filter on the PCV port. Doing away with the charcoal cannister. Belt driven Heat pump thing is long gone since before I bought it I don't even know what the thing was or what it looked like. I really just want the truck to be like a lawn mower. An engine and a carb. I know this is considered sacrilege by some but I'm doin it. I only have a couple questions regarding some loose ends. First: what should I do with the evap line coming from the fuel tank?
Next question that I haven't really been able to figure out is this thing:
I think it might be called the Ported vacuum switch and it connects to the coolant elbow, intersecting with the the heater line. It has a bunch of vacuum lines coming out of it and it just seems like an Important Thing with all those lines coming out of it but I don't know how to plug it into my new set up. Can I just remove it and plug the hole and forget about it?
Here's a little drawing that came with my carb
And here's the Weber 38 DGAS carb
Now I know this is not a very popular carb here in the Ford world as I have not seen very many positive things here on the Ford forum about the Weber carb. The only set ups Ive seen around here that people really spent any time on are the dual Weber carb setup with the Clifford intake. But I got the single carb setup for the sake of simplicity and my budget. The Weber is more so popular on the Jeep straight six's I believe.
Anyways the main reason I got it is this guy Larry who runs Clifford performance seems extremely enthusiastic about the Weber Carb as he types about it in all CAPS and seems to recommend it as the best carb for his set up. The negatives I have heard are that it can be difficult to tune and can be finicky, which does not fit into my lawn mower equation too well but a little too late to turn back now, So I am gonna run this Weber and you will all hear about it. I am hoping that if I tune it well and take good care of it that it will give me good reliable service through hot summers and cold winters.
As far as dropping the emissions, there are lots of complaints of a fuel smell when you get rid of the carbon can. And some folks tend to believe that in addition to evaporation from the open vent lines from the tank that your fuel could potentially siphon off while driving. If you cap the lines you WILL need to get a vented gas cap. I want to say bad things can happen in the carb if pressure isnt vented. As far as the ported vacuum switch, it should just run emissions components. Not let the egr open until the engines at operating temp. Same thing on the Purge cv to suck the fumes off the can. My truck doesn't have any of that in it and I intend to put it all back. If I were you I wouldn't throw anything in the trash, that stuff is getting really hard to find, or it's waaaaay over priced. I'm sure you've heard the emissions delete arguments. Keep it, or remove it, but you will have to make sure the engine is tuned to not have it. And any computers involved are retrained. I'd tell you to keep it if most of it were there and functioning. If most of it's gone and it's not functional, then you lose nothing by removing it.
01-16-2019, 08:49 PM
