Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Edit: Hey if this makes no sense look up thread '40 front fenders'......Got my second vaccine shot yesterday, told all the good folks waiting patiently for their furniture stuff I had to 'recuperate'. Finally I had two days off to get my modified bed onto my mongrel toyota landcruiser chassis. Yes, I have to come clean to the purists, I had to make some wheel house tubs because a 42-47 bed is too wide for the track width. But I have known that forever as I have planned this out for at least 25 years. I had a couple of galvanized boat trailer fenders sitting around so I split one down the middle. Nice radiused corner. Had a straight gym locker door with a perfect 90 degree flange which made two 'half moon' pieces to fill in the arches. To fit the 1/2 ton jailbar bed to the Japanese chassis I fabbed up a 'ladder ' type affair. A subframe that mates two different worlds together.. Picture a couple of 6 1/2' pieces of 1 x 2 heavy wall rectangular tubing on edge, 42 1/2 " apart running fore and aft. Same material running thwartship across them, but on the flat. . About 2' centers. 1/2" coupling nuts (for allthread) welded to this subframe at the toyota chassis factory mounts. My kid picked it up with the old Case and it bolted right on. :Pretty good two days and hey, lookie that ,now it's the weekend. Some may look at this project as some kind of half assed ratrod, but I assure you no navajo blankets were used on the seats, no hand grenades for the shifter. No whitewalls of any width, no red wheels, no flat black anywhere, and best of all not a single skull and crossbones or spider web anywhere. I just like making stuff with what I have on hand. BTW, IHC 3/4 ton rear fenders. Funny how much they match the paint on the ford bed that came from 150 miles away.

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

She looks like a goer bub !!!!!.......Mark

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Interesting project, keep the pictures coming.

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What, no highway signs for floor boards? Lol. Seriously looking good. You must be related to the guy who put the Studebaker bed on my '39 p/u back in the day.:cool:

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"thwartship" Your boatbuilding past is showing both in verbiage and your creativity.

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Love the things you do! (Did you ever get a video of the log skidded in operation?)

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No, but I bought 5 gallons of gas to put in it on the way home from town today. This afternoon I completed the floor framing on my latest contraption by welding a perimeter frame of 1 x 2 rectangular that the 3/4" plywood floor drops into. I am using the jailbar seat riser screwed onto the plywood floor with two fj 40 landcruiser bucket seats from the sixties on their factory slides. It has been assembled once already and taken apart for welding and paint. I think I used about a gallon of various oil based paints under the bed. Mopped it on with a 4" brush. Friday was sunny and very windy, what my dad called 'a good painting day'.

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

We have been doing the vaccine dance here. Who has it or whatever. Still doing stuff. Next week I'm inline for my first, and happy about it. I'm not worried about bill gates or the some weird gov thing. I have a cell phone, all the tracking is built in. hahaha just kidding. Science is good. Both of my elderly parents got it a month ago and they didn't turn into lizards. Cool stuff GB!

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I tricked the vaccine trackers by wearing my tinfoil hat into the clinic. And thank you all for your nice comments.

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The truck is sure to be cool but the pencil sketch is a work of art.

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Good golly, Miss Molly; you may be ON to something here!
(Just ignore the purists...)

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

I don't think I have ever seen or read of old ford (or chevy)sheet metal set on a japanese 4x4 before. These landcruisers are a very rugged and dependable vehicle. They also have a narrow, boxed ladder frame and a track width about like most prewar stuff. PS, PDB, 3.73 gears, inline six. The axle shafts are about 20% larger in diameter than my 92 f350's. I see a lot of folks using s10 and ranger stuff, but as I have so often stated, I like to use up all the junk I have collected over the years, so my kids don't have to scrap it later.. I have the back of a shed and an attic full of landcruiser stuff, and even more early ford truck parts scattered about. After all this time I think it was inevitable that these parts would comingle in the hayloft one night and produce offspring.

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HOT RODDER!!! :eek:

I like it. 8^)

Is that the in-line six that's a copy of the Chevy stovebolt?

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Very similar if not an exact copy. The early Datsun non overhead cam engines were a pretty close copy of the MG 1500's like those in MGA's. But the Datusn ones didn't leak oil.:cool:

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Yes, a metric stovebolt. At 195,000 miles untouched, there is not the slightest trace of a drip of any kind of fluid under this project truck. I get it though... The Goldwing guys have said this about Harleys for years.

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

My sister and brother in law are near you. Had an old toyota 80s stump climber, I wish I could have got from them. Had a 80's datson 210 hatch when I was in colorado in 92. Wish I had that too. My old trd 99 3.5 liter 6 would smoke trucks off the line.

None of this is flatheads. Go figure why I care about this one.


Goldwings were big uncool bikes. Harley is a harley even under AMC. Like a fleathead if you worry about a drip of oil, well who cares it happens.





.

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Well now it's Friday and so I worked a half day... The second half. This morning I got the parking brake assembly mounted and functional. These Toyotas have the parking brake, which has internal expanding shoes mounted on the rear of the transfer case. I counted 30 actual pieces to assemble in position to activate this drum brake. OR buy a 30-31 model A parking brake assembly for 95 bucks on Ebay to expand those shoes. I fabbed up a rather complex bracket (in yellow) to adapt the model A lever to the side of the toyota's 4 speed tranny.. Fully adjustable in all directions, and with all partys rebuilt it takes the first two clicks to lock up the mechanism. Hoping to call a few pals by tomorrow afternoon to set the front clip back on and pull this jalopy outa the shed ....

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...9&d=1617411888

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...0&d=1617411901

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Sorry about that out of focus second photo. Not sure if there's a pic of this rig with the front clip on. I now also have the front factory bumper attached. It has not had the bed and front clip on at the same time so hopefully this weekend that will happen. In my pencil sketch you see a tubular bar with a 90 degree bend at the seat. I have some old hand-rail sections from a church remodel I did in Seattle about ten years ago. They should fit the bill. Another reason to never throw anything away. :)

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...0&d=1617421755

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...1&d=1617421801

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...6&d=1617422787

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Well, the front clip is still off because I continue to fine tune the engine and engine bay, but that doesn't mean I can't continue to improve the rest of the vehicle. A fellow Washington barner had the tailgate I needed and though his health is an issue right now, he reached out with a really friendly price on a tailgate he wasn't going to use. He lives on the Wa. mainland, as most Washingtonians, do and my wife and I are finally vaccinated and were going off the island for our anniversary. We had an extremely memorable visit with a fellow barner along with driving in the rain in his model A. My entire adult life has been punctuated with the amazing side trips that happen only because I am a lover of old fords and antiquities in general. A trip to the mainland that involved just saving $ at costco, a doctor visit and new glasses would be soooo boring if we did not also visit with a fellow enthusiast. My hat is off to the great folks who love our old fords and continue to house, feed and love them!!!

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The tailgate looks so nicely done. So, will you A: Bring the rest of the truck up to a matching level, or. B: Beat the tailgate down a stage or two, or. C:Not worry about it?

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Love it GB! The pencil sketch looks like something our boys used in the Western Desert during WWII.

Graeme.

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It's Saturday and not raining so I played with the faded blue paint on the front clip, well what I mean is I started painting on the bed to match thje faded blue front clip... I really wanted to install the front clip today, but I find I need to fix an intake manifold leak and that is sooooooo much easier with all the front sheet metal off. The gasket should be here on Wednesday and it's like 65 degrees all week, so next weekend should be all good. This afternoon I drove it up some very steep inclines, maybe a video of such tomorrow. The tailgate will be a convincing faded blue to match the front clip. If I could be so bold as to make up a story about this build it would be an ex military rig sold after ww2 as surplus and used on a ranch. Of course the new owner painted over the OD paint with some blue he had. In my younger years I had occasion to drive various surplus willys jeeps. None of them retained their OD paint. On one jobsite it was brush painted gray, the other yellow.....

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

Playing with the blue....And yes I agree it looks like it's been through a war. From what I've read it was a helluva war.

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I like blue. I like the muted dark front end blue better. A lite grey is classic work truck. Paint it coral pink, I bet no one will forget it for 50 miles around. haha

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I have always liked grey trucks too, but I don't think it goes well with the tacoma cream trim. The blue paint on that fender is from the batch I mixed up and painted the grille/headlight panel with in the second pic down on this page. It is primarily Ace Hardware horizon blue, their flat grey primer and some rustoleum flat white. It also got a splash of hunter green and flat black and of course a fistful of baking powder. I have lots of partial quart cans of paint stacked up on shelves.

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Is this for flattering? Baking POWDER or baking SODA?

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Baking powder for flattening, baking soda for flatulence. I learned many years ago that baking powder makes a good flattening agent. I have since seen mention that the paste we stir up on flat oil based paint is talc, so I'm thinking gold bond or baby powder would do the trick as well. Also, today I found the blue paint can from Ace Hardware that I started my current mix with and it's not horizon blue, it's their tractor and implement enamel and color is 'International Blue'. It is considerably darker than horizon blue.

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Thanks! I once asked an auto paint shop if they had a "flattening agent." They said they didn't have it but it was "very expensive."

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A friend told me about a company called 'hotrod flats' or flatz... I just never paint a vehicle with one can or one tone of paint. The horizontal parts like the roof and hood are always more weathered than the doors except where your arm hangs out, or the crowns of the fenders where you lay on them to work on the engine and that's sort of shiny. You just have to get creative.

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Not so much of a fan of all the orange parts involved, so I busted out some gray primer and a brush this afternoon. Also a makeshift spare tire location and continue to work on the 'cab' ok, passenger/driver area. It now has a tool storage area behind the seat, and more subtle changes. It takes every bit of moral strength I can find in my fiber to work on the bathroom remodel parts and clothing store display shelves I need to complete by week's end instead of going out into this remarkable spring sunshine and working instead on this creation blending my Family car with my love for old fords. Anyone here in the Pacific NW knows how incredibly rare this long run of summer weather is in April......

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

My advice is to keep on going at it. Here in North Central Minnesota, we've had snow 6 of the last 10 days and it didn't get above freezing until 2 PM today.

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Back when I had a TV, that Ricks restorations guy used corn starch to flatten paint. Years ago I bought a can of the real stuff at the paint store, then next time I asked they said no such thing! well, corn starch or baking powder sounds good to me !

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...1&d=1618972587

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...2&d=1618972614

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/attac...3&d=1618972652

Re: Covid excuse to play hookey
 

I hope your paying customers aren't reading FordBarn...

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My customers read the New Yorker. This toyota bumper is something I want to keep from my old station wagon. The right hand 'bumberette' was missing so I fabbed one from a piece of light 4x4 angle. last week. Then today I installed a model A duo lamp for a brake light and worked up a rear view mirror. Then went for a couple mile tour around the East end of the island. I'm thinking I will get a license plate before I head into town.

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Chipper's goggles? I think I need a pair!

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Unscrewed the caps and pulled the dark green lenses. Could see pretty well after that.