36 Ford truck on Ranger

[Shea Laking]

WOW!!!

One of my uncles had a '36 peek-oop back when I was a young lad. Was metallic green with black fenders, 350/350TH, open drive, stock front axle and unsplit wishbone (tranny pan didn't like the contact ).

Looks like the Ranger underpinnings fit quite nicely under there.

Thanks for sharing!

Regards,
Shea

[MercuryMac]

Thanks for the visual Shea Laking. I remember old Fords of any colour having black fenders sometimes but I didn't know how far back that went.
The '36 to Ranger fitment was pretty good but not perfect. Another little glich was the rearend width, or lack of width. I put 1" spacers behind each back wheel to make some clearance between the tires and the box.
Keep on tinkering.

[MercuryMac]

The wiring went quite slowly but usually forward more than backward until I got to wiring up the Ranger steering column. The frustration got to me then, so I put sound deadener in the cab and the upholstery. These seats were out of an old Mustang ll of my daughters that I had cut down shorter and had recovered. I got back at the wiring after the interior was in only to learn that you should finish the wiring under the dash before you put the seats in a small cab. The exposed wires were covered with axe handle tape [called hockey stick tape now] or in places old looking loom or there are some cloth covered wires. The wiring is done except for the front lights. Sorry guys, of the four pictures I tried to bring over I got four failures. They are in the mega bytes and that might be too big. I went out and took some more pics with another camera and they worked.

[MercuryMac]

When you're doing bigger things you can have a sense of accomplishment sometimes because you can see your progress. Well, I started mounting the fenders recently and I can see some improvments. I started on the right side at the back and got up to the front fender partly. It's half bolted on in the right place and half propped up.
Keep on tinkering.

[440Clark]

This is coming along nicely. I have a 35 so I'm watching intently. Yours looks like a truck already, mine, not so much.

[MercuryMac]

Hi 440, I want to encourage you to keep plodding along. It's slow progress. The reason I'm further along than you is I've got a head start on you, of quite a few years. I have to push myself fairly hard now, because of the bold promises I've made over the last few years to be at the next show season, with bells on. O.K. so I've lied to them the last few years! Pretty soon my honesty will be in question. So you should keep on tinkering and keep your optimism contained in your shop. Oh Ya, post me a picture please.

[skull]

it's looking good,

yep keep pluggin' away, my 2 year dodge truck build took 15 years to get running and another year to finish all the little stuff

Later

[MercuryMac]

I have to get you to look back for a moment. In the wiring part of the story I forgot to mention that the fuse box is mounted on a tang and is easily removed. It has reasonably long wires so it will swing down for easy access. That's the good news. It is a rotten bugger to get back up there and latched in. The next look back will be a before shot of my righthand door. I finally found the picture in the old files. As previously stated, the doors that I found had been in a bad roll-over and should have been thrown away. This is the better of the two by far.

[MercuryMac]

Hi Scull, You mentioned taking a year to finish up the little things, so I started thinking of the little details I've done. They've probably added a year or maybe two to my build, but I like them and I like tinkering on them. Examples are; homemade banjo steering wheel, old looking gearshift, artillery wheels, heater and defrost system, power brake unit under the floor, old looking headlight buckets that no one in their right mind would fix up [ I got them a little cheaper], and making the exterior door handles sit in the horizontal position. These are all little but time consuming details.

[MercuryMac]

I haven't shown you any progress lately, but I have a good excuse. There hasn't been any, until today. I reversed the regression, finally. I found out that to place the right front fender exactly, it had to fit with the grille. Oh, O.K. Oh , now the grille has to fit with the rad, and the rad has to fit with the fan, the hoses, the alternator and the fenders. The mounting brackets can't be in each others way. The solutions to some of these problems triggered other problems but I got things going my way now, I think. The first picture is just the open front with the AC pump taken off and the alternator moved from over the distributor to the old generator site, a new tightener for the powersteering pump and all new belts. Now the rad hoses should go on. The next pics are the drempt up brackets and their placement. It looks like the bumper is too low in this mock up.