I've not posted in a while, but have still been busy.  I'm looking for a few parts...

I am looking for a 1957 or 1958 Ford F100 Hood in decent shape, minimal dents or rust. Not worried if has the badges/emblems.

I am also looking for at least a drivers door and possibly a passenger door for a 1957 -1960 Ford F100 Not worried about hardware or glass.

Please be in the southern California area, willing to go as far as Vegas or Eastern Arizona.

I have quite a few 1960 Parts for trade, see below.

1960 Hood with badges/emblems.  No noticeable dents or rust.  Was originally white but got repainted at some point to a darker red color.

1960 Upper grille chrome with headlight buckets and bezels. I'll include a full set of LED headlights as well.

1960 Lower grille aluminum - this is intact but dented and bent. My truck had an adventurous life before I got it.

1957-1960 Chrome dash bezel

1957-1960 ABS dash bezel that fits 3-3/8 speedo and 2-1/16 gauges

Complete Big Job C900 gauge cluster that includes a 100 mph speedo, 4k mechanical tach and a vacuum gauge. It has excellent chrome and paint.

Bead roller dies... Print them!

So what if you need a unique die profile that you will only use once? Why not print them!


Today I designed and printed some custom bead roller dies that I will need to fab my tailgate on my F100. It only took numerous tries to both design the right profile, but also to get the print settings right to make a part strong enough to shape metal. Plus, it forces me to learn something new, which is generally a good thing, as long as it's something I want to learn or so my bosses have told me. For me, I will only need those dies once, so it was a better deal to buy an inexpensive 3d printer and get some free software that it would be to have a custom set of dies made. Plus I can make another set relatively quickly if needed to include any new shapes.


The profile shows v11 on it. That is the 11th version (after I started keeping track). I had a profile gauge that I was using, but it could not get tight inside radius accurately, so I ended using the tried and true method of creating a cardboard template and then making the digital version to print.

The small circle was the 4th or 5th try to get the inner profile correct for my bead roller shafts.

The two profiles are to create the body side profile on my truck to extend on to the tailgate I have envisioned.

I used the Creality Ender 3D pro with Hatchbox white PLA to print my dies.

Raising the bed floor 2 inches

So I have begun to do the work to raise the bed floor two inches. The original bed floor and wheel wells had suffered a truck's life and needed to be replaced.  Not to mention at some point in the trucks life it had a tool box in it and to make it fit they had bashed the wheel wells in to make it fit.

I started by removing the bed floor and wheel wells and then set about fitting some 16 gauge steel trailer fenders.  The bed floor will be replaced with Auto Metal Direct panels.  Basically I got some two inch square tubing and welded a length across the front of the bed on top of the original cross member and across the back.

Below are some pics of the progress so far.  I got the bed braced up before I got all the big pieces out  of the way and have begun to mock up the new wheel wells.  They will be widened several inched to accommodate a much larger tire and wheel combo.

I will add more pics as I progress through this portion of the project.  Enjoy!

Outer cab corner finished!

So here it is finished... Not the easiest thing I have done, nor the nicest. But it is all steel and fairly close the passenger side.

Outer cab corner repairs

So I got off to an early start this morning and decided to fix the passenger side outer cab corner... the easy one!

This is after I had fixed the inner cab corner.  Some time with card board to make some templates and then a little simple bead rolling got it looking like new.  Unfortunately my welder died during this and that's why it looks like unfinished welds on the right side.

Three months later I got my welder back and it seems to be working like new.  I decided do this repair using several pieces because I don't have the skills to make in a single piece.  I tried to hammer form the corner in  one piece and it took quite a bit of time and effort to see that I still need to work on these skills.

Here is it finished.

I started on the drivers side also... I knew this one was going to be significantly more difficult because it had more damage.

I got part of it done using the same techniques I used on the passenger side.

Neither side is perfect, but is all metal.

I still have the actual corner piece left on the drivers side and I be working on that soon.

Have a good one!

Drivers side inner Cab Corner repair

So here is where I started.

 

I cut out all the rusted metal back into the good metal a little ways both inside and out and this was what was left, for now...

Right now I am just working on the inner cab corners and these are the easy ones comparatively.

I made a template on some poster board to include the channels on the back that I am guessing are drains.

I cut some cold rolled 18 gauge steel to match my template although just a little larger to make a precise fit.

I used my bead roller with the 1/8" step dies to create the channels.  Below is a rusted piece that I used to see
where they went.  Turned out well I think.

Here is my bead roller.  It started life as HF unit I got with a 25% coupon.  I have modified it to strengthen it.  The single biggest change that was made for the better was getting rid of the hand crank that came with it and put the wheel on it.  The wheel was the bottom off an old chair.  It makes rolling a pattern so much easier.

Here is the easy part of the inner fender.  I also fininshed the other half, but don't have any pics right now.  I'll add it later.

Here is the inner completed.

Have a good one!

1960 F100 Radiator Support

So I completely disassembled my front clip and from what I could see when it was on the truck it looked good. I was really hoping that the radiator support was in good shape too. I was wrong!

Here are some pics once I got it removed.  Great googly moogly!






I removed the bottom in order to clean out the rust and check the sheet metal.  It was good with just surface rust, so I cleaned it, coated it with a rust preventative spray and then painted it inside and out. I prefer VHT products, both their Rust Converter and Roll bar and Chassis Paint.



Before anything was taken apart, I made templates out of card board for the missing/rusted pieces and cut them out of 18 gauge steel.





I removed a the two horizontal braces because the radiator I plan on using was a little wider that the original radiator and would not fit.  So I have about a dozen small holes to fill on each side.

Repairing rust is dirty work, but it must be done!  There were parts of the support that had what looked to be some type of coating on it.  The only way to get it off was to scrape it off with a scraper / single edge razor.

I'll post a few more sometime later.  It is currently mocked up on the truck right now.

I love my Fabricator 211i welder!  It makes me a better welder and I need all the help I can get!

But a quote by AvE (ArduinoversersEvil) on YouTube sums it up!  "A grinder and paint, makes me the welder I ain't!"