Area 46

My new Rat rod kit finally arrived.





62ChevyII and I are undertaking a project together with him being the brains and me the .... the voice crying in the wilderness......well I'm not sure about that. Primarily we'll be building at my place with maybe a trip to his or 2. At this point we plan on 2 trucks and are in the process of collecting all the components. Fenderless bobber style trucks with straight axles and most likely small block Chevys. Looks like we will fabricate our own chassis.

Stay tuned and thanks for looking!

Looks like a great starting place!

cool start [cl

Excellent!

Nice! Those are some awesome looking cabs.

You guys are lucky out west for cabs that aren't so far gone..looks like a good start.

definitely a good starter kit... we all wish our cabs were in better shape when we start..

Those cabs are a great start.

Are these going to be identical trucks, or???

2 brains can be better than 1 and 2 builds can be better than 1

Very cool, cant wait to see more.

-Chris

I took this picture the same day I was taking photos of the cabs on the trailer.



Never a dull moment in Kansas. It only touched down briefly and went back a little later.

Anyway I fashioned a couple of dollies to work on the cabs with.The 46 which is up on the scissor stand will be first. We'll call it Cab #1. It will be getting some rust repairs and dents pounded out shortly. I like the idea of having it up off the ground a ways. Much easier on my back for repairs. Once that is accomplished I will switch dollies for the chop to come.



I must like punishment.LOL!



The other side



Here is a shot of the 41 model cab. In many ways it is in better shape but is not without it's issues. We'll refer to it as cab #2. It is on the lowrider dollie at this time and can be pushed out of my way for the time being. maybe I can get my Future son-in-law to strip the goodies of this one.



As I said before the plan is to build 2 trucks. We have most of the body parts but still need to round up 1 drivers side door.

Good looking starting points.

A short update. Starting working on the rust in the left front. After cutting away the rusted area I fabricated the inner doubler.



Penny Pincher wants to know why I'm not playing frisbee with her at this time.



After fumbling with the bead roller for a hour I made this repair panel and welded it in place. This cab is really rusty and I blew though in a couple places. It would help If I would of checked my welder and set it appropriately.



I worked on the rocker panel and laid out where I need to cut to repair the left rear area. I also test fit our only drivers door to see how it was going to work. I'll post more pictures later.

I put a door on it to see how the fit was where I repaired the kick panel and rocker panel.As you can see from the photos the bottom is pretty decent but there seems to be a problem with the top of the door. It looks like it has been sprung out in the front.





Question: Because I don't know these cabs very well yet. Are the hinges adjustable on these trucks?

Spent most of the day working on the left rear cab corner.





I was pleased with the result. It would take very little Bondo if you're into that kind of thing.

Here is a shot of the rust just above the belt line. We plan on a 3" chop so this should all cut away when we lower the lid. But while it's up on the scissor stand I'm going to focus on the bottom of the cab.



This is the other side which will really be a challenge with all the dents and rust.



Thanks for looking!

Nice work man![

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to say 'Hi!'
I'm local to ya, live in Valley Center & work in Wichita.

Let me know if I can be of assistance, I could make some time to head down & help.

-Chaz

Thankyou Chaz! Keep your eye out for a drivers side door any condition. Or any 38 to 46 Chevy truck hoods, doors or beds. We might be interested.

I'm switching gears for a bit and working on the front axle. The axle and springs were still attached to a section of frame and was in my way of mowing so I decided to disassemble everything to make it easier to move. It took quite a bit of heat and some hammering to get the old backing plates off and the tie rods end apart.



As can be seen from the photo I found a power rack from a early 90's Plymouth Duster for the cost of repairing a mini bike for my neighbor. I would have fixed the minibike for free but don't tell him that. LOL! The rack is 53" and will need to lose about 2.5" per side in order to work on the AD axle. We wanted to use a manual rack for simplicity but it is what it is and the price was right.



Perhaps the toughest part was getting the old tie rod ball out of the spindle arms. I tried using my 50 ton press but got scared with the set up and stopped. I ended up drilling them out after cutting the end off flush.



I then used this 7 degree tapered reamer to ream the holes for the tie rod end from the rack.



The next step will be to design a bracket for the rack that bolts on.



We also plan on using disc brakes with the help of a Speedy Bill ( RIP) adapter kit. Although it's hard to see from the photos the mounting flanges on the rack will need to be angled some in order to rotate the input shaft back toward the cab more. The Duster set up it came out almost straight up which won't work very good with a straight axle mounted rack.



Here is a shot of the pump that came with the rack. Looks suspiciously familiar and I bet I can find a small block bracket that will bolt right to it.



It appears that the rack will set about 5.5" behind the axle. I think I'll mull over this rack bracket for a while. Thanks for looking! TW

Worked on the cab again some today. Filled in the filler neck hole for the old fuel tank.



Then I built the inner doubler for the right kick panel.



I'm hoping to make a push to get the bottom of the cab repairs done so we can move on to the mock up phase. Thanks for looking.

Doing some more mock up work on the front axle. We received the Speedway Front disc brake bracket kit. After installing the caliper brackets and bolting the steering arms on I mocked up the rack with the help of a couple pieces of angle.



The 1st issue is the turning radius will be pretty darn large. The rack only has 5" of travel. The steering arms will need to be shorter. Right now they are 6.5". The car that the rack is from they are only 4". I'm not very confident that we can go that short. I'm leaning toward trying to fabricate some new arms or adapting some from a different axle although shortening the existing arms is also on the table.



Since we don't really know our wheelbase yet we might need to do a mock up so we can determine the Ackerman if we make some of our own steering arms. If anyone out there has experience with this problem feel free to comment. There is about 46 degrees of arc from lock to lock. I did some checking and my 442 which will have a similar wheelbase has 60 + degrees. I can live with less than perfect tuning radius but it would be nice to be able to go around the block without taking up 3 lanes of traffic. LOL!