hinges, doors, and floors, oh my!

Well, we have decided to send the door hinges off to be professionally restored......

While we were able to get the pin out of this hinge, it was very dificult....  The '36 originally had 3 hinges per door.  But the '40, that we got the doors off of to use on the '36, only had 2 hinges per door.  We have 5 intact hinges, but one  is bent....  We are SO lucky that the previous owner of our '36 somehow managed to acquire those hinges - because ALL of the original hinges from the '36 AND the '40 were ruined/unusable.  Anyhow, the restorer will drill out the original brass bushings, insert *bronze* bushings and new pins.  Our shop is just not set up to do this with precision.  It really is critical that we get these door hung right - and we didn't want to drill new holes in new framework for old saggy hinges, then have popping and creaking and hard-closing doors.

We worked on squaring up the door openings and getting things tacked into place this weekend.......

 The upright body panel pieces (on the hinge side behind the vents) Brian had to make - the driver's side was missing, and the passenger side had 3 notches cut in it for the 3 hinges of the original door.  Since we decided to go with 2 hinges per side, we figured it was better to remake the piece than to repair the old one.

We got those new pieces tacked into place, then got the under-door panels tacked into place too - squaring up the lower portion of the passenger side went pretty smoothly, but the driver's side proved to be a little tricky.  We will have to work on the upper portion of the openings another time.  We have one piece (door reveal piece above the door) that missed the last round at the sandblasters and we didn't want to tack in the rusty icky piece, so we decided to move on and work on the floor instead.........

We got the basic structure of the flooring in - 1x2 tubing, very rigid stuff.  The rear cab mounts will be near the intersection of the 1x2 tubing - there are holes already on the top of the frame there that we will utilize. We will frame the trans/driveline tunnel area with 1x1 tubing.  We started on the trans tunnel, but we'll wait to show pics until we decide if it's what we want to go with.  We bent a piece in our brake (we originally wanted round, but the 18g steel proved to be a challenge to bend that large of a piece!).  We are still unsure about the bends on the tunnel, although I have a feeling we will probably just go with it since it will be covered anyhow.  Maybe next weekend, we'll be able to get some flooring in!  *Hopefully*!

We have decided to make part of the flooring out of wood - the part right by the door opening....  we have lots of maple, and originally we were thinking quilted maple, but our quilted maple is pretty light in color.........  our maple burl is much richer/darker in color, so we might go with some of that instead.

This project has definitely challenged us along the way - and many more challenges to come!  I have NO idea how guys build hot rods on their own!  Some things take more than 2 hands for sure!

 with the windshields in temporarily:

 This truck sings to me......... ''You're gonna LOVE me'' :)

door nightmare continued

We were able to work on rebuilding the first door this weekend.  The bottom panel was a bit tricky, but we did really well I think (only had to recut a new piece once!)

We were able to put the inside bend in with the new brake, but the flange end had to be bent the old-fashioned way.  With 2  pieces of plywood cut to the curve, sheet metal clamped between the plywood and sheet metal flange hammered over.  It is a very gradual curve - only 2.5'' towards the corners, but 3'' deep at the center.
The outside edge toward the bottom, we used a piece from the original doors that was near the latch to patch the rusted corner and 'terminate' the layered bend also.  It worked out really well I think!

After replacing part of the steel where the top hinge was, we realized that more needed to be replaced when Brian started welding and the original steel was just too thin, so we cut out more rotten steel.......

I forgot to get a pic of the repair on the upper hinge, but this is what the bottom looked like at the end of the day Sunday....

 The hinge dimples might be a challenge in this thick steel.....

 This pic shows the curve of the bottom a little better.......

Hopefully by next Sunday, we'll be hanging this door.  New skin from the beltline down will be done at a later date.

door nightmare

We decided to use the doors off the '40 parts truck since the innards were in better condition than our originals.  The buyer for the '40 wanted the window openings for his project, so we cut  apart the original doors to salvage parts we might be able to use to remake doors.

Looking close, I do believe that this truck was green on the bottom and cream on top!  The previous owner slathered on some POR15 at some point....... Don't know if the green/cream was original or not, but I didn't see any sign of red on these doors at all........

We saved what we could from the old doors........ We got a lot of screws out, but a lot of them had to be drilled out.......

 And this is what was left.  Parts we are saving 'just in case'......

and the two door tops for the buyer of the '40........

Speaking of the '40.......  that left the yard Sunday morning........

We also started disassembly of the donor doors from the '40.........

UGH.  LOTS of rot in these too........  They will be easier to move around without the window mechanisms and latch mechanisms inside.  We are going to partially rebuild these for now - just get the framework stable and secure so we can hang the doors and get on with other things (like the floor!)  I made a patch panel for part of the door edge - the rest will have to be a wider section replaced (and obviously part of the inside/bottom and the whole underneath/bottom).  We will worry about the skin at a later date.

After making that patch panel with just the edge of the work table, a piece of angle iron and clamps and a hammer, we realized we needed a good metal brake and soon.  So, with the money we got from the sale of the '40, we turned around and spent it on tools the same day......

A 48'' metal brake (box brake) I found on Craigslist........

and the seller threw in a freebie.......  a HF bead roller (that we will be revamping to stregthen and make it more usable and get rid of the Chinese bolts that are obviously bad!)  It has a bunch of dies, but I think I'll need to find a tipping die for this too.........

Then, he mentioned that he also had a shrinker/stretcher set he'd be willing to sell too.  So that came home with us too!

Next on our list of tools to get will be a BIG vice.  We have one, but it's too small........  After work yesterday, Brian built a stand for the vice-we-don't-own-yet.....

 An old truck brake drum, a piece of framerail, and a section of the old pipe from our wall tent.  Now it just needs a plate on top and a big vice.........

ventilation springs

The vents on the sides of cowl/firewall section needed work - we need to add the spring pieces to keep them either in the closed position or open position.....  The ones we have were (are) in pretty sad shape......

One of them, the plunger completely disintegrated, the other one was stuck in so badly, it took me a couple hours to get it loose!  I ended up hammering it in so there was more tension on the spring, and then heating the brass part up until it 'sprung' loose......

This one I am going to try to do on my own, unless they need welding, in which I'll need help from Brian then!  I think maybe I will remake the plungers with a section of a bolt.  I need to get a little bit longer one that we have though - we have a long enough one in grade 8, but that would be hard to cut/grind.  One end needs to be flat, the other end needs to be nice and rounded to fit in a pivot hole.

Then, there is that one brass piece that the nipple broke off the end (it goes into a small hole on the handle of the vent so it doesn't slip out of place).  I am thinking maybe drill a hole and put a small screw or (?) from the inside, but that I will have to mull over for a while......