That's the conclusion I came to. I figured a little wedge would either burn up or warp or both and figured this would work. It takes some time to grind the patch off of the inside of the cab but looks clean when finished.

 

I set out to finish up the passenger side while on vacation for the holidays. It is now pretty much done. I have a couple of things to button up when I lay the cab on its back.

Cowl fully welded in and the welds ground down smooth. I picked up little flapper disks for my die grinder and they worked perfect for this.

Finished up the front portion of the rocker and ground down the door jamb weld.

Finished welding all of the panels and ground them smooth. There is some hammer and dolly work to do and then some mud but it should come out straight.

 

Tackled a few things the last couple of days. Disassembled the front clip so I could assess the rust and accident damage to everything. Started on the driver's side cab corner, and painted the steel wheels for the rear. I'm having tires mounted on them on Friday so the chassis will be a roller.


Surface rust everywhere. I'm hoping there isn't too much rot lurking. The panel below the grill is all kinds of twisted and dented up.

Headlight buckets are gross but in decent structural shape. Will clean them up and use them.

The grill had a huge mouse nest in the well for the right side headlight. Fortunately very little deep rust. It had some Bondo in it and will need a little hammer work plus some fresh filler. Will use it until I decide to step up for a chrome one.

Back side of grill

Treated with Eastwood rust encapsulate

Driver's side inner cab corner had more rust than passenger side. Particularly concerning was the rot on the support above the body mount bolt. You can see the golf ball size hole through it. I cut all of this out and cleaned up and treated the usable metal with rust encapsulator.

Created patch panel for the support with some solid metal from the rocker panel I cut out from the passenger side.

Cleaned up all the welds with flapper disk. It's all ready for paint and will be a good foundation for the inner and outer cab corners.

 

Way to go! You definitely are killing it on your progress.

 

I forgot to post the wheel pics. Painted them metallic charcoal to go with whatever paint I decide on. This color will go on the grill as well. Adding some 245/60 r15 Cooper tires for the back.

Also forgot to mention that I sand blasted the grill prior to rust inhibitor.

Will use trim rings on these with some sort of chrome center.

These Cooper tires have great ratings on summit racing website and are about $50 less per tire than bf Goodrich T/A's.

 

Driver's side metal work this weekend. A lot of rust to deal with and I'm going to work on the floor board and rear support that was under the gas tank before putting on the cab corner.


Cutting out the old rocker is a pain if you are keeping the original front door pillar. I got all of the rusty stuff out of there and then notched the new rocker so it would slide up in there.

Lots of dirt and rust behind the old cowl. I spent quite a bit of time with the wire brush on my drill, wire hand brush, and scraper to clean up all of the surface rust before treating it.

The floor sagged with all of the tools sitting on it so I had to use floor jack with a chunk of wood to make it line up with the new rocker.

Went slow welding a little bit at a time and moving around the panel so I didn't get any heat warping.

Cleaned up the welds including the plugs that attached the rocker to the center support. Also welded in the rear door support.

These are a pain to line up. The corners arent as deep as the originals so I chose to have the flat surface line up and I won't use the overlap on the cab corner.

Welded in the inner cab corner. Both of these took a lot of work to get them to fit. I wish they would sell them in 2 pieces so there would be more flexibility in fitting them.

Primed and painted.

Ran into an interesting issue with the front cowl. The way the new panel fit it looked like I was going to have to much gap relative to the door. So I mounted up the door to see how the body lines would be and it was the original panel that needed adjustment. You can see the line I had to cut vertically in the top half so I could hammer the upper body line even with the new cowl panel. The door will now adjust properly and have good front and rear gaps.

Cowl panel fully welded in.

 

Nice progress!!

 

Hey Rick, Can't believe how fast you are moving on this project! Looks great!
If you still have the front passenger spring and hangers, I would like to buy it from you. That's one of the very few things that I am missing.
Let me know and if so ill take a ride to see you. I can't PM you as this is only my 4th post.
Thanks!
Jack

 

I still have the leaf springs and hangers. Text me at ### and I'll take some photos to send to you.

 

Some really good progress there. Your color choice for grille and wheels is similar to what I was thinking so look forward to seeing that.

 

Thanks. I'm going to put some filler on the grill and paint it up soon. I'm curious to see how it looks too. The nice thing is that it's easy to repaint or replace with chrome if I don't like it!

 

Thanks again for donating the front spring and hangers!!
Debbie and I really enjoyed our visit, seeing your progress and swapping build experiences.

Jack

 

Glad to help. It was nice meeting you both and talking shop. Looking forward to seeing your truck come together!

 

I’ve been watching your reconstruction of your ‘56, I’m in the same process as you working on the cab corners,front floors and rockers,was wondering if you have the width of the door openings hi and lo, on my drivers side I have 35 7/8” and passenger side 36”, I actually got the truck in Jersey, I live on Long Island, I did the TCI 4 link and power R&P, after restoring mustangs I’m actually having fun with this, your build thread is excellent, Pete

 

There wasn't as much precision when assembling these trucks in the day and you'll find differences like that in just about every cab. There was a guy on either side with a spot welder in hand..