The door work continued, with vent window seals and those pesky window anti-rattle fuzzies. I did detailed posts about those 2 processes separately, so that the info can actually be found during a search. I won’t repost all of that in this build, but I’ll add a few shots just for fun.

Vent seals:































Fuzzies:




























The doors were assembled, and during this process I noted that several posts here referenced felt washers on the window channel rollers. I of course had not ordered those, but it turns out that if you buy cheap reading glasses from Costco they come with nice felt cases:







The doors are now assembled and have been put back onto the truck. The weatherstrip around the door will go on soon, along with other rubber seals (windshield, rear glass). I’m waiting for some warm temps to come for that process so that I can lay the rubber out in the sun to make it soft and pliable. My shop is still in the low 50’s and it's in the 30's outside.

 

The other day I had the chance to get at the remaining glass with the help of my brother. I’ve only done an old truck windshield once before, but the process was identical (and it's nicely described in the factory manual). We started with the rear glass, but that didn’t work so well. After a good half hour of trying to get it in place we realized that the glass and seal simply would not slide into the opening in the cab. We pulled off the seal and compared the old glass to the new glass that had been cut for me at a local shop and they were identical. Once the seal was added, the combination was too thick to fit into the opening so I suspect the new seal is too thick.

We switched over to the front windshield, which went in so quickly and easily that I forgot to take any pics. Here is the end result though:







While waiting for my next trip to town where the glass shop is, I kept busy with little problems (which are endless in this build!).

I hate dealing with leaks. I was doing some final work in the engine area while the clip was still off the truck, and I installed the remaining hose from the kit that adapts a GM pump to a mustang rack. I had problems earlier with the pressure side hose (the supplied fitting would not allow the hose to screw into the pump), and much to my delight when I installed the low pressure hose it immediately began to weep fluid from the fitting/rack joint. This is the spot I’m referring to (pic taken with the hose off):







I spent a couple of days trying everything I could, with the assistance of the kit’s customer service department (which was very prompt and helpful) . Eventually they suggested that the chamfer on the rack was causing the leak (their kit puts a steel washer over this spot).

They suggested trying to add a 2nd o-ring that sits below their steel washer within the chamfered area and sure enough it immediately stopped weeping fluid. That kit consisted of 2 hoses, and both had to be modified to work properly. Not very impressive.

Next problem: My cowl vent handle smacked into the bolt that holds the brake pedal into its assembly. This was easy to deal with as I just needed to shift the handle over about ¾ of an inch:












While fooling around near the brake pedal I took the time to fix something I had noted earlier. I was not positive that I would have full brake pedal travel once carpet/underlay/etc was in place, so I needed to add some more adjustability.

I couldn’t find a longer clevis with a ⅜ pin locally, but I did find a longer one with a ½ inch pin. I bought that one, then used a ⅜-½ bushing to convert the new clevis to a ⅜ inch pin (this was done to avoid drilling an ever bigger hole in the brake pedal arm).












Of course the added thickness of the new clevis resulted in the length of my existing ⅜ pin being just a tad too short, so I made a new pin out of a ⅜ bolt and my problem was solved:












Next problem: My check engine light was being triggered whenever I did a test fire, due to an issue with the rad fan. My ECU came from a donour truck that had 2 rad fans, and I am using a single fan that only has one speed. I can eventually get this reprogrammed, but the fellow who did my programming is a distance away and I needed a fix for the debugging phase. The ECU needs to “see” the 12 volt relays for 2 fans, so I wired up a dummy relay that only has the 2 trigger wires (pins 85 & 86). This apparently made my computer very happy and I no longer have a permanent check engine light on.

I’m actually getting into the home stretch of this build!

 

Where you putting the rear window glass in from the inside of the cab.

 

Abe, we actually got at that late yesterday and yes, it went in from the inside. This time I remembered to take pics and will post soon.

 

The glass work was finished with the re-installation of the rear window. My earlier attempt to install it was prevented by the glass & seal thickness being too big for the window opening. I took it to the local glass shop where 3/16 of an inch was removed from across the top of the window, and once that was done it fit (just barely!). Here’s what we did:

The seal was sprayed with soapy water, and the seal was installed onto the glass. It actually goes on easily if the seal is simply bent and pushed into place:

















A rope is inserted into the channel/lip that grabs the flange in the window opening, again with tons of soapy water, and the assembly gets pressed into place from inside the truck:
















The rope then gets pulled, which causes the lip of the seal to come out and sit on the other side of the steel flange:







And it's done:







I ran off a few small jobs next, just to get simple stuff out of the way. I started with the new parking lights lenses up front, and immediately got stopped dead when they wouldn’t fit. Here’s the lenses I bought:







And here you can see that they don't fit into the original stainless housings:












I pulled out an original lens from my son’s 1950 F3 and took a measurement:







And then checked the reproduction lenses:







Again, frustration from aftermarket parts. It doesn’t matter if I spend fifteen dollars or fifteen hundred dollars on an aftermarket part. They simply never fit.

To lower my blood pressure at this point, I tossed in the very bright new headlights. While I prefer the more rounded shape of original sealed beams, I had these on hand and they are supposed to be super bright. My area is super dark (the nearest streetlight is 20 minutes away), and I had wired in relays to support powerful lights, so in they went:












More posts coming soon as lots of stuff is now happening!

 

Great pictorial! Are there good used parking light lenses on eBay or other market places?

 

Abe, I can get lenses from other places, and with swap/show season starting I will likely come across some used ones that will fit. In the meantime I can get these to fit by using a special tool kit that helps me install aftermarket parts that are specifically designed to bolt on to my application:







While the truck was still up on jack stands with the front clip off, I ran off some small tasks. Nothing terribly interesting, so only a few quick pics here.

I added some header wrap in an area where the exhaust is a bit close to wires & lines:







Tossed on rear brake components:







Did front brake lines:







And after those tasks were done I was all pumped up as it was time to install front springs and set the vehicle onto the ground. I had picked up a set of rollers at the beginning of this build, but had only used them when I was rolling the chassis around. I didn’t pay any attention to the fasteners at the time, but now that I was going to put the almost fully assembled truck onto the ground I looked a little closer. I was working on the front when I noticed that the rims (Ford Ranger rims) are so thick that the lug nuts don’t go very far down the studs. I counted the number of turns, and the nuts go about 4 ½ turns before they are tight.







That’s not enough to use on the road, but for sitting here in the shop it would work. On the rear, the Explorer axle studs got about 9 turns before the lug nuts were seated. I was planning on steel rims anyhow, so in the end this won’t really change things for me.

On the rear axle I tossed on the shocks and discovered that the rubber hose from the axle vent touched the driver side shock (I really should have noticed this earlier). No big deal though. I removed the vent fitting, gave it a quick slice/bend/weld and everything worked out:













I was now ready to set it down on the ground. I used my homemade compressor (which I’m starting to get pretty quick with) and got the front coil springs in place, and set the old truck down for the first time on it’s new suspension:












The front end is currently sitting about 2 inches too high, but that’s not a surprise to me. The front clip/rad/ assembly was left off in order to make spring installation easy, and I still have to add the seat/carpets/heater and running boards. Right now I’m giving the new coil springs some time to settle a bit.

I’d be further ahead, but I’m spending some time on my son’s truck (1950 F68) doing an inventory of things that are shot so that I can keep my eyes peeled at shows and swap meets for used stuff.

 

I like your aftermarket installation special tool kit. That's funny but has some truth to it.

 

As I worked in my shop I kept looking over at my truck, and the backwards rake it currently had. I got to wondering how much that front end would come down with the extra weight it would get, along with a bit of spring settling. Curiosity finally got the better of me.

I weighed all the items that still had to be installed, and figured out roughly where their weight is centred. I then filled up pails of sand that equalled the various parts in weight and got to work.

My goal was to have the lower control arms parallel to the ground at final ride height. Here’s where I started, with the front end being 2 inches too high and the control arms clearly not level:






Next I added the “front clip/rad and hood” and looked at the control arm angle:












Next came the “seat and missing interior items”:












Then I added a bumper, running boards and fenders












At this point I was getting close to level. I then had a buddy sit on one of those pails inside the cab and here is where I was at:







It’s almost level now and may still settle a tad. My vendor had advised that I may have to do a minor trim of the springs to get to the ride height I want, but right now it looks like I’m gonna be bang on without having to remove/cut/reinstall those springs. I’m gonna claim a win on this one!

 

Curiosity can take time but excellent experiment .

 

In my previous post I claimed a win with the front springs and ride height. I would now like to rescind that claim. My final step on the front end was to install the shocks. Surprise number 1 was that the lower control arm mounts were too narrow for the shocks to fit. No problem, that's what my "bolt on part installation kit" is for:





Surprise number 2 was that the passenger shock could not be installed as it contacted the inside of the coil spring. After many hours of fooling around, measuring, thinking, etc., I believe I have figured out how to make that shock fit. I’ll post on that once I actually accomplish it! In the meantime I tossed on the front brakes and bench bled the master cylinder. My brother then gave me a hand with bleeding the system, which was the usual comedy of errors of stuff that I had forgotten to tighten properly. Other than those sudden surprise drips (and a few good gushes) it went quickly and a half hour later I had a wonderfully solid brake pedal and no leaks at any of the joints.







I now need to get all remaining weight back onto the truck so that I can accurately solve the spring/shock problem. To start this process I needed to toss stuff back in place under the dash, but I didn't have a firewall cover yet. I wasn’t sure what to do about one, as I have a very different set up for brakes, column, gas pedal, etc. and I didn’t want to start ripping all that stuff out later to install a pad. I’ve made my own before using ABS, but that was on a far simpler firewall (1947 Fargo). The monkeyface has some annoying curves to deal with, so I decided to give it a try with a very flexible vinyl pad. I wanted it to be easily removable as well in case I need to rip out stuff during the debugging phase, or for upgrades later. I enlisted the help of my wife and we got to work.

First step was to make a template of what I wanted:







Next we needed to make 2 sheets of the pad. 1 sheet for the raised hump in the middle and 1 sheet for the rest. We created the 2 sheets of pad by sandwiching synthetic batting between 2 sheets of vinyl and then stitching lines to firmly anchor the batting in place:















We used the paper template to cut out the pieces we needed. This is the main section that spans the width of the firewall:












A little bit of test fitting was done. I held the firewall pad in place while my wife pushed sewing pins through the factory clip holes from the engine side of the firewall, and I marked the spots and then punched out holes for the fasteners.







Since I wanted to be able to pull out the firewall pad without having to unbolt stuff under the dash, we had to come up with a way to do this. We settled on sewing in velcro strips on the underside of the pad as this would allow me to easily slip the pad around the obstructions (the parking brake cable, the parking brake attachment point and the brake assembly attachment point).







It was a bit of a back and forth process, but here’s a few pics of how things were done:

To attach the pad, I went through some boxes of modern fasteners I had and found some press in clips that would do the trick. They are black and won’t stick out visually, and can be easily removed and reused a couple of times (if I do this right I may never have to remove them!):







And here’s the final result. The pad can be taken out in about 2 minutes if I need to do any work down there, and it should help tidy things up and muffle noise a bit as well.









Obstructions like the parking brake cable are surrounded by the pad, but removal just needs tugging on the velcro flaps:












The outer edges were left overly long on purpose. Not having kick panels yet, I wasn’t sure how things fit together where the kick panels meet the firewall. My plan at this point is to just install kick panels that press against the firewall pad, and this may require light trimming of the kick panels. If I decide to do something with the pad, I can rip it out in a couple of minutes.

 

Well, my easily removable firewall pad is already paying dividends! Here's why:

My plan for the truck was to have A/C, but right now I really need to get it on the road for testing & debugging. My compressor is in place and I’ll get at A/C later, depending on how much I enjoy driving this truck (I’ll confess that right now I’m regretting having done a dark side build).

Without the A/C system done, I needed something to defrost the windshield as it’s a requirement for a safety here. I had a factory recirculating heater on hand, and I had tested it for leaks (none found), so I just needed to test the motor and figure out the wiring. There are some great threads with pics on this site that helped me out with this.

At first I thought I was out of luck, and I wasn’t sure if it was the motor or the switch. I did a bunch of continuity tests, getting no beeps out of my meter. I figured the switch was toast, and then heard a brief, faint beep. I kept testing, and sure enough I started to get more beeps from my meter. Eventually the light bulb went on in my brain. This switch had been sitting dormant for decades, and had built up corrosion/oxidation on the internal contacts. I spent a minute or two just dialing the switch back and forth and sure enough I ended up with a fully functioning unit. I then wired up the switch & motor on a 12v battery and everything worked fine. Here’s the testing phase:







Next I had to install it. I made a template to help me visualize things, but more importantly to help me install it straight. The 2 coolant pipes are not in line vertically, so it would be easy to mess up the installation and have a heater sitting at an obviously crooked angle.







I placed the template so that it lined up with the original holes, and was kicking myself for having welded them shut, but I quickly discovered that the original location was no good. This pic shows where the lower pipe would have been if I’d used the original heater placement.





By playing with the template I found that a shift upwards and to the passenger side gave me a decent spot.






Now I just had to drill a bunch of holes through my nice shiny paint and slide the heater in place







I was quite pleased with the firewall pad at this point, as rolling it out of the way to figure out the heater installation just took a few seconds.







Yes, I do plan on cleaning up that ugly heater box. As for running it on 12 volts, I very rarely need a heater as our show/cruise season is limited to the warm months. As well, I will run it on the low setting as other site members have suggested that this is much easier on the 6v motor. In the end, it may end up being temporary after I debug and make a decision on A/C.

 

Just my 2c worth but if you are going to truly put miles on it then going darkside is a requirement . We put 8-10,000 miles on the coupe every summer and have done as much as 4-500 miles in a day . Wouldn't even consider this without upgraded engine , suspension and brakes .