I had to dig some parts out of my garage today. That meant pulling the 54 cab out of the garage. Since I couldn't work on it I thought I'd take some pictures of it just to act like I'm actually doing something on it!

Here's a couple pics with the seats I'm going to run. Eventually I'm going to have them recovered so they fit the theme of the truck a little better. I'm going to build a full width tube seat mount. I'm going to mount both seats and a console on it.




Here's a front shot. The driver side seat will be closer to the door, but you get the idea.





My poor bird poo welds rusted up over the winter. It's getting a POR-15 bath when I finish the metal work so I'm not too worried about it.




And here's some shots with my messed up drivers door. The previous owner hauled it on a car trailer backwards and the door flew open going down the road. That's the reason I get to replace the front side cowl panel. And I'll get to practice my metal working skills on the door to try and fix it. In the last pic you can see how far out the bottom of the door is. I'm going to try some gentle persuasion with the BFH and a wood block and see if I can't get it closer to where it should be.




I've got two vehicles I need to strip down, cut up and scrap out. Then I'll be able to start working on the 54 again. So it will probably be sometime in May before I get working on the 54.

 

Feels good to do something anything really. Its looking good so far. Im trying to round up parts for my 65 think I have most now just need the weather to co-op and we will try to make a driver out of it. Hang in there.

 

Seats look good ! The sun is coming !!!!

 

I was just happy to get to roll the cab out of the garage. I don't know about it looking good. But it's looking something. The weather around here is slowly getting better. We'll get a sunny day in the mid 40's-mid 50's and then 3 that are cooler and either raining or just gloomy.

Having all the parts for your project is a big step. I've got a long ways to go before I have all the parts I need.





The seats aren't horrible. They were actually part of a 40/20/40 split bench seat in a 91 F150 I parted out a few years ago. I've used them in two different trucks before this. But they kind of look out of place in a 50's cab. But they are better then a wood crate or 5 gallon bucket!

Yea the sun has shown it's face a few times the past couple of weeks.

 

Looking good cant wait to see more progress.

 

Thanks, I can't wait to make some progress.

 

Well I had to pull a engine out of the back of my garage so that means the cab got rolled out again. I threw the passenger door on it while it was out.











And here's where I'm going to start the work on it. I'm going to cut out the louvered section and weld in a patch. And I'm going to weld in a patch to fill the antenna hole above it. We'll see how bad I can screw up the sheet metal with my welding! I'm thinking about trying to do this, Saturday.

 

Should be pretty straight forward stuff. Good luck post up some pics on how it goes. I dont even have my welder yet so your way ahead of me.

 

Yea nothing too difficult about it. I just have to keep from blowing a bunch of holes in it while welding the patches in. Since all my welding is is done outside I use flux-core instead of MIG. So the welds are a little hotter and not quite as pretty.

I want to get an Oxy/Acetylene set up and start gas welding my sheet metal. But no cash for that right now.

 

I did a little work on the 54 today. But mainly I spent a lot of time staring at it trying to figure out some of issues I'm having with parts of it.


I did get the louvered section of the cab cowl side panel cut out.




And I got a good start on the filler panel. I had some pieces of the original flamed hood ( I cut it up a last year ) and it was close to the right contour. So I used it for the filler piece. I got the piece cut out I just need to do some minor filing/grinding in a couple areas to get a good fit. Then I can weld it in.

 

Nope I haven't done a damn thing on the 54! I still need to finish off my one trailer( weathers been a pain! ) , Then I need to strip and scrap two vehicles, fix my F-Super Duty and then if I'm lucky I might actually get to work on the 54!

I posted this picture in my F-Super Duty thread but thought I would post it here since it's for the 54.

I picked up this new take off front bumper from a place that builds fire trucks! I think with a little modifying this will work out for the 54! It's a full foot tall and a 1/4" thick! They wanted $50.00 for it. I couldn't pass that up. It would have cost me almost $100 more just for the 1/4" steel plate to make a bumper for the 54. It's not the exact design I wanted to run but I think I can make it look pretty good on there. I'm going to cut off the areas after the bends andf then widen it to where I need it to fit.

What I wanted was a flat front bumper that would look like a larger version of the stock 54 front bumper. But I think this will look pretty good. Hard to beat for $50.00

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. If I spent $50 for it, I wouldn't want to beat it either !

 

That's just wrong!

 

Well here's a little update. I bought another donor truck!!! Back in April I decided to go back to a 300 inline 6. I sold my 351W shortly after. The 300 is one of my favorite engines and it will give me a little more driver side leg room.

I've been looking for a donor truck to get a good engine for it. I found a few and the deals fell thru. Yesterday I found one and today I went and checked it out. It looked good to me and I bought it and hauled it home.

I think I've got a damn good deal on this. It's a 1978 Ford F150 Ranger XLT Lariat 4x4. It has a 300, NP435 4spd, NP205 transfercase, 9" rear ( 3.50 gears ) and D44 front. It's got some rust, but the chassis is solid and it runs and drives. It does have some minor issues like a low brake pedal, clutch linkage needs adjusting, there are also plenty of oil leaks. It started right up and ran decent. Good power, no smoke or bad noises. But it does need a little carb work and could use a tune up.

The guy I bought it from and his son decided to scuff and black out all the trim. I like the look but it ruined a lot of straight trim that I could have made some cash on selling. Now it's just more scrap. They also removed and tossed the lower body trim and used bedliner on the lower portion of the body.

Anyways here's my newest purchase. Oh yea, I paid $500 for it!









Here's the mighty ( greasy ) 300!





And here's the spiffy Ranger Lariat interior. Yes that is a cb!














Since I've got my diesel for towing I'm seriously thinking about using the entire chassis from this truck for the 54. I'll slide the rear diff forward 23", have the rear driveshaft shortened and call it good.

This truck has everything I want and it's driveable. So instead of having to make a new transmission crossmember, make new rear frame crossmembers, mess with trying to work around the front leaf springs, I can just use this chassis. The coil spring front suspension will make fitting the front clip tons easier.

So I'm starting over again on the chassis! My plan on this one is to just leave it together, get plates and insurance on it. I'll drive it around and figure out any issues it might have and fix them as I can. Once I get the 54 cab and front clip buttoned up and done I will pull the body off the 78. Then I can move the rear diff/suspension forward, clean everything up and paint it all. I plan to replace the suspension bushings, shocks, brake pads and shoes and fix any leaks ( plenty of them ) .

Well that is this years plans. At least until I change my mind again.

 

Other then the rust, that is a pretty nice truck! Sounds like a pretty good buy, too. I'm interested to see how it all turns out.