"Spuds" the 1950 Ford pick-up

For the cargo box, what about aircraft cargo "E-track"?

You can get matching stud fittings for each corner:

In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :

Somethig along those lines might work. Besides just holding the box, Looking doe how to keep someone from walking away with it.

How about 4 weld nuts flush with the bed surface, then use some wing bolts (if tool less use is preferred) from the inside of the box down into the bed. Or some eyelets on the bed surface that fit through a slit in the bottom of the box with a bar through them inside the box? Maybe with eyelets that drop below the bed surface when not in use?

Painted parts are out of jail! 

Photo Dump.

Bit of a fiddle but front panels are going on. 

In reply to NOHOME :

bit of a fiddle. same words were spoken while cleaning up after that whole hindenburg snafu

In reply to NOHOME :

Looking proper! Looks close to road test 

In reply to java230 :

Very close actually. If I lived in a less busy area, it would have been around th block by now. The AOD is the only real technical risk to retire. 

To feed into your travails, note that when it came to the paint for the fenders and all, I punted and told the owner to go to a shop .

Wheels painted and on the truck. In theory, if we drop the thing on the ground, it should drive.

Next up...Tailgate and latching system. Door will not go on until the end cause they are just a PITA when working inside or walking around the truck. Same with the hood: it really impedes aces to the engine bay.

Plan was to fire it up today and run it through the gears.

"Spuds is a Garage Guest who needs to get done by the time the snow melts in 2021. Project creep and do-overs could conspire against that, well see."   page one 9/15/2020  No mention of the head gasket whatsoever?

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

. We had nothing to do with the engine or gearbox build/sourcing.

Ran the engine previously with no issues;.

Man, that thing is a bit of a mess.

In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :

I so much want to rip the flathead out and jam a coyote drivetrain in the bay. 

Failing that, a carbed 302 with a C4 could be in there in less than a day, and it would support the AC and PS that the owner wants and still have enough HP to move the truck down the road.

when it comes back for its first oil change we'll swap it then

Slowly  getting to the bottom of this barrel.

The PS door with most of the hardware is on and closing reasonably well. The biggest challenge is that keeping true to form, any part bought from LMC trucks does not fit or work as required. The door trim was way too thick and dense for the door to close.  Much work was required with a razor blade to get the doors to close. The nice shiny door latches that go on the B post likewise would not work and it was good that the original items were in the parts inventory.

The image is proof of progress and not of my photographic skills as the size of the shop and the lightng conspire against me when taking pictures. 

Speaking of dark, the interior was painted in gloss black and while it looks nice enough, it is one dark hole of a place to reside. The beige seat and carpet do try, but I feel the doors need some accents to kill the dark void. The dash is going to present some challenges when the sun hits it and reflects in the drivers face. Mustang  (aka Petey) did a very nice job of designing and building the drink holder to fit in the tight space.

The parts left go on the truck are what you can see on the tailgate and back of the truck; mostly just the trim fo the hood and the DS door. The plan is to flatbed the truck to the vehicle  safety inspection next week, get it plated and if god and the gearbox are willing, put a few shakedown miles on it over the next month.

Drove out of the shop under her own steam after 17 years. Hopefully first road test tomorrow

17 years later, first drive...

Drives nice. The electric power steering works really well. AOD does not shift ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And the AOD has been declared DOA for whatever reason.  TV cable is working and a pressure gauge shows the right pressures at the right rpm, but still no shift.

To top things off, the thing is gutless beyond belief. It only has one gear, and if it is first gear I would expect some reasonable acceleration, but it is not there. Drives like it is stuck in OD.

So the AOD has been replaced with a C4. The motherberkeleying TV cable no longer comes into play so that alone is a valid reson. The 31" tall tires will somewhat mitigate the 4.10 rear gear and on OD. 

There are now 3 dead AOD gearboxes in my shop. I am starting to begrudge to square footage they consume.

Two head scratchers in this side project. First relates to the fluid seen in the torque converter above. When it was removed and placed on the ground, the input shaft was empty of fluid; we could actually see the mechanism inside the shaft. A day later it was not only full, but had overflowed and pooled in the well on the converted. If anyone out there better versed than me in these things has any idea where the fluid suddenly appeared from, I would love to know.

The second mystery involves the transmission mount. The AOD was supported by a mount meant to go with a GM gearbox. Not only was the cross member/mount located furthers back as it would be for a GM, but the AOD was attached to a GM rubber trans mount. It was a really nice butterfly style crossmember/mount, but no way  it was going to reach the trans mount on the C4.

So we had to make a crossmember. Not a huge deal normally, but in this case a lot of other bits like the exhaust and the plumbing had already claimed the space that the crossmember wanted to live in. Bit of a Frankenstein stitched

together with the welder and pretty only due to the grace of the grinder. It will work.

The pretty looking Lokar shifter barely worked with the AOD despite its high end price tag. It worked less well with the C4 and got cut into its basic componentsby Mustang  in order to fabricate a workable shifter. A new C4 specific shifter was the better part of a month away and we don't care to wait that long to find out whats next on the adventure list  with this project.

Other than that, not much new.

The bad news is that the truck is still here. The C4 will shift, but neither predictably nor consistenly, so kinda at a standstill with that. 

On the progress side, the owner wanted woden bedsides so RePete who is our wood work guru got on the case. Like them or not, they are done. Can carry a lot of hay now. 

Stick a fork in it, cause it is DONE. 

Next in line is to end up something like this:

That's a victory!

Have you seen the Retropower Minor?

What was the shifting issue with the C4?

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Sent it out to a transmission shop to get fixed.