This project has been 5 years in the making. It's a 1952 ****** pickup truck that I bought, a royal mess to say the least. Shortly after I bought a 1989 Econoline Catalina E350 (camper) without the camper from a local junk yard. It had an efi 460, solid chassis, Dana 70 rear end, no trans no nothing else of much use. Also only 34k miles on the odometer and looking at it I believe it. I checked oil and antifreeze while it sat at the junk yard and all was clean. I bought it for a price that I couldn't get the money out of my pocket fast enough.... delivered too!

Sadly this truck was bought by me, built to be a mud truck, lost interest, made a 2wd driver, sold... bought back and keep reading and you'll see where we are today.

Most of the pictures I have of this project are on photobucket and I hate photobucket!! I'll try to keep the build in order as well as possible.

Here's a shot of the ***** the day I originally bought it. I'll upload more soon.

 

Note: These are old pictures from my original build.
Here's the old econoline in all her glory sitting in her gravesite.


Taking delivery.



177" wheelbase



118" wheelbase now.



If you look closely between the O and the T where it says photobucket there is a hole that lined up perfectly. Those were 2 different holes that used to be 59" apart. That wasn't planned or noticed until I put it back together.



7018

 

Here's me getting her home (say what you want, I miss that truck!)







Got her semi put together with the parts she came with. Obviously started replacing the floor that was nonexistent for the most part. I made the rockers and welded them in. This was the first round with the floor (I hated it) at this point I didn't have a transmission or transfercase but wanted to make progress. So I just did something. Then I redid it later as you'll see.

 

Out with the original ****** chassis and onto the econoline chassis . At this point I was still needing to pin down a front axle, that was the last big piece I was still missing to build it as a mud bogger.

 

Here she was with the front all put together... kinda. My old phone sucked and took bad pictures. I ended up burning that welder up shortly after I took the picture. It was a 220 My-T-Mig. I never ended up being able to get any info searching on the web. After this everything was stick welded. I prefer stick welding but mig is nice for obvious reasons. It's replacement is to follow.

 

Yep... That's a big block. With a lot of trimming and not caring too much it fit. Remember... mud trucks don't have to be fancy, just function.

 

The bends are far from perfect but for what it's for it will do just fine.



I'll admit now that I absolutely hated this bed! Our break at work was junk at the time and I did what I could. Plus I got paid to make truck parts at work so I dealt with it.

 

I made this real real quick with scrap I had laying around the garage







Hack job making a shroud for the Taurus/Sable fans I bought but I thought it would work.

 

I also have just about all the parts to convert the rear drums to rotors. I have to cut the factory drum bracket off that's welded to the axle, fab up the dana 70 rotor style and weld it on. I could have easily bought a conversion kit but I don't want to go with a single piston GM caliper. I'm using all the factory parts from a 2000 E350 which is a dual piston setup. I found these specs for the new plate I need to make if anyone ever needs it, I thought I'd share

I didn't follow the specs on the OD because I wanted them as big as I could make them.

 

Here was the idea of what it would have looked like once the tires were on, they were 39.5x18

 

You guys have seen the floor... here's the revising of it, obviously still not complete in this picture. Also at this point I had a C6/NP205 installed and knew what I was working around.


More of the floor done. I used 1/8" plate over to drive shaft/u-joint in case ***** ever happens I won't have to worry about anything getting into the cab.

 

Hole..... No hole...

 

I taught my 11 year old niece (16 in present day and now taking welding in school and killin it!!) how to mig weld, she went to town with it.

She welded up a good majority of the bracket. I will be making some slight changes to it now that I realize the flaws in the design.


New seats installed

 

Here's the on of my daughter laying under it with a flashlight on her shoulder pulling the bolts off the trans pan. Just before we installed the manual valve body.

 

Then I moved onto the suspension



And then this problem....