With 2011 behind us, a few days off, and some mild Colorado weather lingering I pulled the yard truck out and started cleaning the property before working in the shop. It’s been sitting out back for about a month but after a few cranks it fired right up and even though the back was full of branches, Orville and I took off for a joy ride. How could I resist?

It was so nice out when we got back that I pulled the tractor alongside the garage in anticipation of protecting myself from the Winter wind as I intend to get to this from time-to-time before Spring. Ever since I built this thing I’ve been procrastinating gearing it down. It’s really just too fast to work with - even in first – so I’ve continually debated between either adding an offset jackshaft or installing a tandem transmission. The offset jackshaft will allow me to work with the compact 10″ span between the trans and the rear without having to change the rearend setback, but the second, inline trans is really the way to go from a functionality standpoint.  Whichever option I commit to, it’ll get done this time around since I’ve already started tearing back into it.

The ’36 has been getting it’s fair share of attention, but it’s been a repeat performance on the driver’s side door of work that has been done to the passenger side door. So far on this side since my last posting I’ve:

1. shaped the lengthened door to its opening:
   
   
2. built the inner structure such that that it was stable enough to remove from the opening. This let’s me continue shaping and finishing it at a more comfortable height and flip it over to get to otherwise hard to reach areas, etc:
   
   
3. started on the hinge pockets for the suicide treatment:
   
   

 
I’ll be keeping at it as time allows after family and other priorities so stay tuned.

It has been awhile since I have posted any truck progress due to a lack of said progress.  The reason for the lack of progress is mostly due to the learning curve that was involved with putting the roof together.  It seems that as with most things taking the roof apart was easy; putting it back less so.

When planning the work on the ’51 I knew that I wanted to pancake the roof.  This is because of the “turret top” style roof.  The story is that the old vehicles had tall roofs so that men could drive them with their hats on.  I don’t know if there is any truth to that story.  I do know that the high roof crown makes the truck look top heavy; this look is accentuated as the glass area is reduced when chopping the top.

 When I built the concept scale model of the truck Continue Reading »

Now that the door is a single, solid unit again thoughts go towards cutting the tabs free from the car and getting it on the saw horses to finish it up:

I don’t know about anybody else, but when I drug this rusty hulk home on the trailer and was pushing it into the garage because it obviously couldn’t get there on its own, my wife had an immediate reaction upon seeing it. She said, “It needs to be chopped and you need to suicide the doors.”
Continue Reading »

With the door skin re-formed to the outside, it’s time to give this door some support and structure. For a quick review: When the front pillars are dropped down for a chop they also more forward. Since the back of the door stays where it is, this effectively lengthens the top of the door. You can usually take the vertical part of the door that was removed during a chop and reuse it horizontally across the top of the window opening. It should come as no surprise that this was not the case on this project.

Not only was the 3″ piece removed from the vertical chop insufficient to fill the gap created in the top of the door, but the 7″ stretch from converting it to a 2-door compounded the problem. I didn’t have anything to work with so I started from scratch and I started from the inside out. The first piece makes one half of the window channel and is the one you’ll see when inside the vehicle. This inside edge will hold the window weather-stripping in place and gives the window something to roll-up into.

  Continue Reading »

In April when I was chopping the top I also cut the doors to stretch them to get a look at the proportions for making it into a 2-door. By August I had the inserts from the back doors welded into the middle of the fronts and started on the rear side window openings, but I really haven’t been happy with the way the doors turned out. Struggling mentally with the accepting the fit, I finally decided to cut them back apart and start over. This time, I took the two pieces and temporally welded them in place on the car with some tabs I cut from some scrap.

It’s not easy staying motivated when you’re cutting apart something you’ve already worked on. There’s always that little tug in the “make it work” direction and sometimes that’s OK since things can be fixed. This wasn’t one of those times and to get the body line, bottom edge, and skin surface all to line-up before piecing the top frame together required nothing less than major deconstruction (as if the 1st time wasn’t enough) :sigh: 

  Continue Reading »