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.

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 I had a great deal of difficulty with getting the roof to look right.  I tried to blame the problem on the out of scale thickness of the plastic model.  In my heart of hearts I knew better and the result was that I entered the roof modification phase with some trepidation.

When I cut the roof apart for the top chop I knew that the roof area would grow lengthwise and so I cut a large “sun roof” area out of the middle.  I also was planning for the increased roof area brought on by streching the cab four inches.  The entire roof is some 5  1/4″ longer that stock through the middle above the doors.  Interestingly I lost about four inches of roof length when I took out the two piece windshield and replaced it with the curved windshield.  The resulting roof is only about 1  1/2″ longer overall; due mostly to the top chop.

I also had to deal with the additional metal that needed to be inserted due to widening the front of the cab 6  1/2″.

My plan was to use the original cab for about 8″ into the roof and then cut a panel from the spare cab roof that was large enough to fill the remaining hole.

There also was the little issue of the holes in the roof edge caused by streching the cab.  I cut patch panels from the original roof skin that was left over from the “sun roof”.

 The side pieces were pretty straight forward in that all I needed to do was run the patch panels through the slip roller until the curve matched the roof and then weld the parts in.

The center fill piece turned out to be more challenging in that it needed a bit of a compound curve to transition from the right side to the left side.  Remembering what I had seen demonstrated in the metal working seminar that I attended a couple of years ago I determined that hammer stretching would get the job done.

After finding my anvil (it had hidden it’s self) I commenced pounding on the center of the patch panel.  I had carefully laid out a grid to use as a guide and didn’t pound too hard.  Nothing happened.  Then I started pounding between the grid marks.  Then I started wailing the living daylights out of the part.  That actually worked pretty good; well enough in fact that the patch panel fit on the first try.  I didn’t even put any extraneous dents in the panel.  My very first on purpose compound curve.

In order to reduce the roof crown I simply rolled the roof edges down until the roof thickness looked right.  This turned out to lower the roof (pancake it) around 1  1/2″.  I had to cut slits in the cab corners in order for them to make the compound curve at the corner of the roof.

 Eventually I had a continuous ring of roof that was about 8″ wide.

At this point things started to get interesting.  The first thing was that the top of the windshield opening is an arch that matches the cowl arch.  The back window has no arch.  The factory roof follows the shape of the back window and so the roof is essentially flat across the front with a cut out for the windshield.  I have looked at literally hundreds of these trucks and never noticed that before.  To my eye it made the front edges of the roof look like they had shoulders.  Or a little like Frankenstein’s forehead.  I took pictures of the front of the roof from every angle and cannot see the bumps in the pictures.

Naturally once I saw it I couldn’t see anything else.  So I cut the roof corners apart and took another stab at it.  And another and another etc.  I realized where the project was going when I lost track of how many times that I had cut the corners loose, moved them around and then welded them back together.

I eventually got one side looking pretty decent and so moved to the other side.  When I got that side done it was so much better that I had to go back to the first side and redo it.  Rinse and repeat, I heard somone say.  I made several rounds with that.  Practice may not make perfect but it sure improves the situation.

Now I have a problem; the front of the roof has an arch and the back of the roof doesn’t.  This is going to result in the roof skin having to make the transition; very scary stuff for an amateur metal person.  Added to this is that I am wanting to put some sort of third brake light in the back of the roof.

In order to see if the roof skin is even possible I made a test model out of heavy paper.  I arched the paper and taped it to the kitchen
counter.  The arch simulated the front of the roof.  Then I cut a series of slits in the back of the paper and taped it down.  In theory this will work.

Meanwhile back at the junkyard I am looking for some sort of scoop to put into the back of the roof to put the brake light into.  After finding and rejecting several candidates I found a ’62 Ford Falcon hood.  It had the fake scoop that I wanted for the brake light and the scoop was fared into the hood making the transition that I needed between the arched front and the flat back.  How cool is that?  The hood was also big enough to cover the roof without any additional patch panels.  Hopfully the Ford restoration crew won’t come after me with pitchforks and torches.

After getting the hood home I proceeded to skin it.  I used my grinder to cut the skin where it was folded and spot welded around the edges; very similar to a door skin.  After getting it cut away all the way around I found that the putty that the factory put between the frame and the skin was holding the skin on solidly.  I was afraid to pry too hard on the skin for fear of damaging it so I got out the propane torch and heated up the putty spots.  This worked amazingly well as it only took a few seconds for the putty to pop loose.  I didn’t even scorch the paint.

The skin is really floppy and loose at this point and so I just set it on the top of the cab to see where I needed to trim to make the parts match.  After trimming I adjusted the cab edges to meet the new skin all the way around without any pressure on the skin.  I figure that there will be enough stress on the skin due to welding and I don’t want to add any additional stress.

I found that the Falcon skin is made of thinner sheet metal than the ’51; no real surprise I guess.  My initial plan was to butt weld the parts together like I have with the rest of the truck.  Finding the dirrerence in thickness resulted in a change of plan.  When I had trimmed the opening I had left about 1/2″ overlap around the edge.  I simply laid the new skin on that overlap and tack welded it down.  I expect that I will be able to blend the welds down and then use filler to smooth the transition.

After looking at the photos that I took when cutting the roof off I found that it has been a little over two years since the truck has had a roof.  Time flies when you are having fun, I guess.

So now I have several yards of finish welding to do.  After that I will have to decide what part needs to be done next.

Norm

Side streets:

I changed jobs, again.  In the process I reduced my commute by 80% and I am hoping that the reduction in driving time will equal more time in the garage.

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.”

Had it been left to me, I probably would have slipped the hinges in their existing pockets the other day to move forward thinking about rolling down the road when the warm weather of Summer returns, but before I go farther on cleaning up the door and starting the next one, I need to accommodate her wishes and put the hinges where they belong:

But look at the outer-most screw hole of the lower hinge in it’s new location. Can’t put a bolt in there… but there’s plenty of room towards the back:

So I take some pieces from the former extra door hinges:

and use the jamb-side from the existing hinge and the longer door-side from one of the others to give me even more “reach” into the door for mounting.

Just a couple of bolts to check the fit and alignment before I commit to drilling more holes that may just need to be welded back in if I didn’t get it right on the first try:

And what do you know? It works!

Now I can tear it down and spend some time sitting comfortably over it to get it all as nicey-nice as I can. Ron Fournier I am not, but I want this to have a look that’s reminiscent of one that might have been done in the forties or fifties (Hey, I’m in my 40′s. Is there a correlaiton?) by some guy making it as good as he can make it with what he has in his own garage – no hidden hinge “kits”, door poppers, or billet - with his friends and with his own hands & his own tools, in his time away from his ‘real’ job so he can drive it around everyday tearing up some road and making some fast runs down the local track.

I imagine most of what I’ll be doing over the next little while will be a lot of finishing what I’ve already shown and another “rinse and repeat”  for the other side (aka: Norm’s Nemesis). I’ll post pics of whatever comes up that I think might be of interest.  

Thanks again for visiting.

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.

The second piece to get formed and installed makes the [you guessed it] outer edge of the window channel. It would be easier to show if the door weren’t closed but since I’m building the whole assembly in place, that isn’t an option. All that will be left after welding this in is to hammer out an outer skin and put it in place.

I just happen to have a router bit with a radius that matches the window reveal. To make the curve, I made a buck by routing a piece of wood somewhat larger than the sheet metal, clamped the sheet to it, and used a wooden mallet to form the metal around it. It worked nicely and required only a little trimming to fit before welding and cleaning.

Still held in the opening by the welded tabs, the door has a little more structure with the upper window frame in place. The front of the frame still has a good size high spot at the weld at the time this picture was taken. The insert still needs to be welded the rest of the way in and the bottom, rusted out metal still needs to be removed and replaced, but none of that affects the structure. It will be much easier to do a nice job when I can take the door out of the hole without it changing shape and put it up at a comfortable height on some saw horses.

The lower window channel is also together now and I’ve started on the outer lip that will hold another piece of weather-stripping. The piece that goes here stops the rain from running down the window into the door and used to be felt. The front and rear sections of the door at the chop are still untouched, but I won’t be able to get to these areas until I’ve removed the door from the opening. It’s solid, just not looking the way I want.

A full inside view shows the beginnings of the inner structure, obviously still quite cut-up at this point. I’ve tacked-in the old latch supporting framework (without the old latch) but still need to make a pattern and cut-out a center filler panel. I don’t like the idea of running a flat piece across that lower right corrugated diagonal area that had to be cut to stretch the door - even if it will eventually end-up behind a panel. I have a few half-ideas but haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do here yet. Nothing a couple of sitting-and-staring sessions won’t fix.

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: 

But it turned out to be the right thing to do as this view down the side shows a clean curve top-to-bottom and front-to-back with good, straight bodyline. The wood sticking out underneath is there to hold the bottom edges between the three pieces in place while I’m welding them and will be there until I get the inner door structure fabricated and in. The top pieces are very lightly tacked in place so I can step back to take a look at something:

I’ve been wondering since the beginning, how much this one’s roof crown was going to be accentuated when chopped and potentially exaggerate that “bald forehead” look; so before I did the chop I measured up from the windshield base and drew a line across the top of the opening. When I still had the top separate from the body (seems like forever ago) I ran the saw up both sides of the opening while it was easy to get between the pieces… intending to raise the top of the windshield opening about an inch if necessary. Since I wasn’t sure about the proportions compared with the side windows it all had to wait until I did the doors and is the reason I haven’t done anything but basic work on the “A” pillars. 

I don’t think it’s disproportionate the way it is, but am still leaning towards lifting the top of that opening a smidge. I’ve got time to consider it while working on both doors and finishing the back. Besides I can always blow it back apart just like the doors if I don’t like it