Stacks and fender repair

sorry it's been so long since I have updated - we are still plugging away and getting really close to it being really road-worthy. We did take it around the block again yesterday and did have some minor tire rubbing when the springs went under compression on a corner. Normal driving on flat road it didn't rub, but pulling through the grass, it did. We spent most of the spring raising the cab and all the tin up an inch for tire clearance. It was almost enough I guess. We also switched from 2'' wheel spacers to 1.5''. It was almost enough I guess. I think it is close enough we can live with it though, it's never going to have a showroom paint job in our lifetime. It WILL get paint though. We keep going back and forth. Something original for this truck would be an aqua/turquoise color - but it looks so good in black haha. Black goes good with everything. Then, we think - black cherry would be nice. Or a black/bronze color would be awesome too. Too many colors we like!

Anyhow - we worked on the rotten fender replacing a large section of rot and severe damage. We cut out a chunk from a fender with severe damage in other places and grafted it into the original fender.

20180605_170054 by Karin Vail, on Flickr

Brian is getting better at the sheet metal welding - this turned out the best of any sheet metal welds he has done. It is almost metal-finishable! It will need VERY little body filler. He did tack by tack and cooled each and every tack along the way and got almost no shrinkage. He also did it by spreading it along several days. I forgot to get a pic of the final welds, oops.

We got the exhaust ALMOST done too - just need to decide on stack mounts. Brian is trying to think hard how he can mount the stacks without a cab mount, but without a big ugly mount high off the frame. Any suggestions? 

20180624_134453-1 by Karin Vail, on Flickr

Headliner, overhead console, and running boards

Brian made a bracket for a momentary switch - this will activate the original electric horn.  It is installed on the inside of the overhead console.

The idea is to make it activated like an air horn with a pull of the cord.   The flash made the colors all weird, but the detail is easier to see with flash.  The brown is true-to-color in the pic above.

This cord is temporary, still deciding on the permanent one.  I would love to hear ideas if you have any to share!

We started on running boards yesterday - we decided to add a 3rd support for extra durability.

Brian fabbed brackets like the originals and they are going to work great!  I just need to pick up some more fasteners for these and we can finalize the install point on the truck and drill holes in the frame (oh joy, that means SIX overhead holes to drill).

build progress video update

https://youtu.be/kSkJyako6jg