Thanks. I haven't really done much else since this as I'm out of money until I pay off several things so I can send this thing off to bodywork/paint and then get a new transmission in the crew.

Thanks, I had to jump on the crewcab. I overpaid for it, but it's now mine. HA! It needs a new transmission and wiring, but after I get those done, it'll be a fun weekend toy until I get this build done and my RV garage turned into a shop.

 

Just figured I'd update a bit. Unfortunately, I haven't done too much on this as the CrewCab has taken precedent over this until I get it up and running. I'll start a thread on that shortly as I've done a bit of work to that in order to try and get it up and running. I did end up cutting out the floor pan I had tacked in. It wasn't correct and I cut it too small. I guess you learn the hard way sometimes when this is your first time doing something. The floor pan didn't come down far enough to touch the cab mount, or where the original floor was tacked to the door frame. I ended up purchasing a new floor pan from dennis carpenter (same as the one I cut out) and outlined about 1" from where I think I need to cut. I'll probably go another 1/2" or so outside of that just to make sure I'm at the right spot. I haven't gotten the courage to try again, but soon I'll get back to it. I also started putting the front end back on just to see where the front wheels are going to sit. I think I did a pretty good job of getting them centered. It'll look a bit better when the engine is in and there's weight up front.


Wheel alignment in front fender. Looks like I got it perfect. This would be at full droop with suspension travel. You can see where the floor pan is cut out again in this pic.


Side view of front fender. Looks like it'll fit nicely. At least I wont have to roll the fenders on the front as I will on the back.

I also started to fab up the center area on the dash where I'm going to have a double din stereo. Here's a quick shot of where I've gotten so far.


Outside groves made and center cuts done.

First bend after getting the cuts and groves made for the double din stereo.

I've actually got the bends done and the extra metal trimmed off. I just didn't get a picture of it. I still need to determine the angle that I want to have the stereo and then I'll cut the edges and weld em in. Once I get that done I'll cut out the old stereo and hvac controls section and weld this in. I'll probably move over to TIG as I can control the heat better. We'll see. That's about where I'm at until I can get the CrewCab running and some more things paid off... A few small things like the fuel lines and brake lines I have, but I need to fab up a tubing straightener. I'll add that here once I start doing that. At least it's progress, even if it's slow progress....

 

Neat to see! Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks. It'll get done at some point. I promise. At least that's what I tell my wife. Ha!

 

Any updates? Great job so far!

 

Unfortunately, no. I’ve been working on getting my CrewCab roadworthy. AC is almost in and then it’s on to wiring, then new transmission.

I’ll get back to this thing in due time, I promise.

 

Ok, just went through this whole thread. Ton of impressive fab work, outstanding! You make it look easy.

Project is much further along than I though. Not sure how you paused on this one to put so much work into the crewcab.

But, it's been awhile, so get back on it!

 

Thanks. That's a huge compliment coming from someone with a lot of fab skill himself, so thank you, again!

If the Crewcab was in better shape than it was, I would have been back on this thing much sooner, but I want to drive the crewcab as it's what I got it for. I paid too much for the crew, but hindsight is always 20/20. HA! Oh well, I have my dream truck and it's almost driving well. Just gotta do all the maintenance the PO never did.

I've actually thought of selling this project to fund a few other things that the wife wants done on the house. I know my wife would love it if this was out of the garage; she hates this thing. I'm on the fence about it. I could go either way. I'll finish the floor pans, cab mounts, and stereo fab work, but then there's several other things I'll have to pay for on the house before I can send it off to paint (I'm not sure I want to tackle that as I'd want it perfect). I could sand it down to steel, primer it, and then wait, but who knows. If someone offered me a price I couldn't refuse, I'd probably take it for my FE stroker engine and the truck combined. Too many projects and the wife wants projects on the house done. HA!

 

love both builds, looking to do something similar on a 67 f100 Im working on. Early model crew is another project I’d love to get my hands on. I live in the same general area and might be interested in some parts

 

Thanks! Depending on what I have I don't mind selling a few things. But if it goes to this truck, it'll stay with the truck.

So I decided to start doing some more work on this thing. Floor pans, kick panels, and cab mounts galore!

First thing I did was lay out my old ones, both the original I cut out and the one I messed up. Then I got to thinking, let's fix the kick panel first before the floor pan. It really needs to be fixed. So I cut out the old section on the kick panel.


Old floor cut out. You can see that the lower kick panel is rusted out and needs to be fixed.


Here's the floor pan I messed up last time that I had to cut out. I'm going to take a lot more time this time around. You can see a lot more 'edge' on the new pan that I traced out so I can slowly get the new floor pan to the correct size.


rusted out kick panel is cut out. Time to make a template so I can cut out some steel. Cleaning up the old steel was a pain in the butt and difficult to do in this spot. But I got most of it before welding.


Vacuumed out the inside of the panel as there was a lot of dirt in there.

After getting the old kick panel cut out, I went and made a template out of construction paper. After doing that I traced it out on some steel sheet I had laying around which was the perfect size. The first one I made I cut along a line I previously made and messed it up. The second one was almost perfect. I had to trim a few parts, but here is the part in place before I started welding.


New panel cut out and ready to bet welded in place.

Welding it in place started out well, then the holes started. The top portion just loved blowing holes through the thing. I ended up cutting a section out and patching that, but that too wanted to blow holes everywhere as well. It was very frustrating. Fixing holes that tried to just keep getting bigger and bigger was difficult, but I got em all fixed. This is perfect, but when it's painted, you'll probably never be able to tell unless you look through to the back side. Here's the finished product of the kick panel.


All patched up. It's not the best work, but then again, I'm not a professional.

Now it's time to do the floor pan. Hopefully that wont want to blow holes like this one did today. We'll see though. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it'll be a better day tomorrow with the floor pan. After the floor pan, I'll do this sides cab mount and then it'll be on to the drivers side.

 

Awesome job on the truck so far! I really like that you kept the bedside toolbox!
The kick panel looks great, Unfortunately the floor pan is pretty easy to blow through when welding. But when you are done the butt-welded panel will look lots better than overlapped( which is what I did ).
Good luck!

 

Thanks! I did want to keep the tool box and I've seen a few others are doing it as well. It's a perfect size for a battery and starter solenoid which is what I think I'll put in it when I get done.

So I got to work on the passenger side floor pan today. After getting the kick panel done yesterday I figured this was going to be a bigger ball ache, but it went pretty smoothly. At least it was a lot better than the last time I tried this. The first thing was cutting out the new pan and getting it approximately the size I needed it. The once I saw that the cab support that was originally there needed to be replaced, I cut it out and made a new support piece. This went pretty quickly as I just bent a piece of sheet steel I had laying around and cut a few pieces out. These welded in pretty quickly without too much burn through. I ended up making it longer than the original for a bit more support as the floor pan would have had a gap to the kick panel if I didn't. Once I got the support piece welded in, I took a piece of construction paper and taped it above where the floor was cut out. I traced where the floor was cut out and then cut it even with the cuts on the floor. This will allow me to trace exactly where the floor was cut so I can make a better educated guess on how far I need to cut the floor pan to get a good fit. I did this on each side. After getting the paper templates cut, I go the floor pan set in and then I drilled some holes in the side and put some bolts in it so each time I removed the pan, I could mount it back in the same spot each time. After trimming here and there, I got the pan pretty close. I still cut a tat bit too much on one side, but I can fill that in.


New floor pan cut out. You can see how much extra I cut out this time to make sure I had enough when getting the new pan to fit well.


Here's the gap between the cab kick panel and new floor pan. This is why I re-did the cab support portion.


New support piece getting ready to be welded in.


Support welded in. I noticed that I needed a bit more than the original, so I ended up making another strip.


Support pieces all welded in. Now for the floor pan. A lot less burn through on these. Maybe I'm getting better.


Template for the floor pan cuts. I did this on the other sides as well. Made it a lot easier on figuring out where the cuts needed to be.


Here are the screws/bolts I used for making sure the floor pan would go in to the same spot each time. Make sure you trim out where the door sill screws go. I almost forgot one before it was completely welded up, but I caught it in time to trim it out around the screw hole.


Floor template sitting over the new floor pan. I used a grease pen to outline where the cuts where. Made finding the cuts so much simpler.


Most of the way finished. I still have a few pin holes to fill and a the alignment holes I made, but that should be pretty simple to do. It's not perfectly aligned with the old groves in the floor, but it's close enough for government work.

This was much easier than the kick plate. I didn't burn through nearly as much and when I did, it wasn't as bad to fix it. Either I'm getting better, or this was a better position for me. So now it's on to the passenger side cab mount. After that it's the drivers side, but that will probably be next weekend.

 

Boy has it been a while since I've done some work on this thing. I've been driving my CrewCab a bit and doing a few things on it here and there, but I'll post on that thread in a bit.

I decided to get back to work on this thing. Between the hot weather and rain the last several weeks I just haven't wanted to work too much on anything and especially with things opening back up around here I've been wanting to get out and about more. But I decided this weekend I'd finish the passenger side floor pan and replace the cab mount.

The first part of business was removing the old cab mount. What a giant pain in the a$$ that was. I didn't realize how much of a pain to drill out the last few spot welds it was. But I got on with it and it was finally removed. After removing the cab mount I wanted to make sure the floor pan was fully welded in and the welds ground down to a reasonable level. I almost forgot to weld the spot welds along the door, but I noticed them in time so I got to getting those welded in. It's not perfect, but you're not going to notice the floor pan under the carpet and this isn't a show truck, but a go truck. I'll clean up along the kick panel a lot more just in case the carpet moves a bit and you see the welds. I'll also cover it with a sealer before painting.

Oh yeah, I got a new MIG welder. It's a Primeweld Mig 180. It's dual voltage and comes with a spool gun. Much easier to control the speed and amps on the welder, and it's welds sooo much better than my 115V Hobart AutoArc 130. I'm glad I made the investment in this thing. I'm looking at Primeweld's plasma cutter next as I already have the Lincoln Squarewave TIG 200. But on with the show...

After finishing up the floor pan and making sure there were no left over pin holes I ground down the old metal on the front of the cab and then hit it with some primer and paint. This was to make sure the inside of the cab mount isn't going to rust for quite a while. I also primered and painted the inside of the cab mount. With it being about 90 outside and sitting in the sun the paint dried as I went inside and had lunch. After lunch I came back and starting fitting up the cab mount. One thing to note, you can see I pre-drilled the cab mount prior to removing the old one. This wasn't the best idea in hindsight. It worked, but I'm not sure I'm going to do it on the next one. I may wait to do it as I'm fitting it up. These are the two piece design from Dennis Carpenter. Much better than the single piece design. There was a bit of fitting that was needed for this side.The top portion needed to be bent out a bit. You can see it in the following picture toward the top where the cab lip rests on the cab mount. What I did was cut the lip on the cab mount off and re bend the lip. It fit much better after that and actually mated with the profile of the cab a lot better. I still had to re-bend the mid section of the cab mount about 1/8" in order for the cab mount to rest on the cab completely. After getting the cab mount to fit well, I drilled all the way through in order to bolt each corner of the cab mount to the cab while I welded it up. This helped quite a bit as only having a single set of hands is quite difficult to do without doing that. I also used a C-Clamp in order to get the tabs pulled together well and to make sure they welded up nicely. After getting everything fit and bolted together it was time to finish up welding on the cab mount. I got to it and the end result is shown below.


Cab mount is off! If you look closely you can see how it started to de laminate while rusting. Glad I decided to replace these things.


Finished the spot welds along the door panel. I made sure to cut the spots for the screws (I almost forgot, but remembered in time to trim it out.)


Before grinding the welds down on the outside portion of the cab mount. I believe I still worked on the rear section after the picture.


Starting to fit the cab mount. It's just laying there Prior to lowering the cab back down on it.


More fitting of the cab mount. You can see how I had to remove the front tire to get enough room to work on this thing. I can't imagine doing this with the fenders still on. You can also see how I lifted the cab. Worked great. You can also see the large gap which needed to be reduced along the sides of the cab mount.


Here you can see where the cab mount didn't fit against the cab. That top portion is where I had t bend out, and make the new tabs that mate to the edge on the cab.


Getting much closer. You can see how I basically brought the bend on the cab mount tab shorter in order to get the cab mount to fit better.


The other side of the cab mount. A bit more fitting was required, but it's most of the way there.


You can see why I needed to remove the original tab off the cab mount. It stuck out too far after getting this this to fit better.


Primer the inside of the cab mount. I made sure to cover the area that will be welded so I get a better spot weld.


Cab mount painted and ready to be welded in.


Painting the old metal that will be under the cab mount.


Here you can see one of the spots I bolted the cab mount to the cab. I did the same spot on the other side and then two spots underneath. This allowed the cab mount to stay almost flush up against the cab to be welded up.


Almost there. I had to lift the cab a bit further up off the frame to get the inner side of the spot welds welded up. Seemed to work well. That line you see is a reference line I drew prior to removing the cab mount. The reference is the right side of the cab mount cover screw hole so I knew where to line up the cab mount. Worked well and I'll do it on the other side as well.


All welded up and the hole for the cab mount drilled out. I'm not going to bolt this thing down yet so I can get the other side done.


Inside of the passenger floor pan. I'll clean up around the kick panel a bit more with a new puck on the grinder so it doesn't look so ratty. Then I'll clean up the weld areas with a wire brush, clean with acetone and then put sealer on it. Will probably do the same on the underside to make sure that stays rust free as well.

Now it's time to start tackling the driver side floor pan, kick panel, and then cab mount. It's not quite as bad as the passenger side, but that's me saying it now before I really start. Which I'm sure will come back to kick me in the butt.

However, I can't say enough about this welder. It's several times better than my old Hobart. I'm glad I put the investment in to this thing. It's a better price than the Mig 180 from Harbor Freight and this comes with an aluminum spool gun to boot. And better warranty. I'd suggest checking them out if you're looking for a new welder.

 

Glad the new machine is working out for you, given all the work those repairs are.

 

Great work on the mounts.