Hot Rods The Hot Rod Hooker: my first real build

Despite you being totally right on all accounts, I most confess: the drivetrain is a individual call.
I would always state, removing the 2 gearboxes and two speed rear, would ruin the truck feel. But on the other hand if it improves the drive ability, so what.
To each his own, but I would love it with 4x3x2, but that's just me and about five others.

But if you have no experience in driving a Truck/Rig, it can be a lot to handle. But a 5 speed nv4500 with two PTO will give you a more simple and fun rig to drive, full as well as empty. That 454 give you a lot more torque, even with lesser gear.
But looking at the way those shifters are positioned, it look like the shifted it like a 4x4. Low for towing, direct for drive and overdrive for highway and empty. But I might be wrong.

The complete driveline swap will give you a more modern feel, but I would keep the rear spring, to keep the payload up.
But you could swap the front, and go true the springs and shocks all around, to gain better comfort. Giving all leafs a run over with flap discs, and 100-180 grit paper and grease/Teflon between would raise your comfort a lot!

And running disc brakes, makes it possible to stop when loaded. Because the brakes are just adequate for a stock truck, but not for a stock truck doing highway speed with a car on the hook.
Modern tires also help, with modern shocks.

But I'm not a patina lover, so I would get stencils made up for the lettering, but be carefully not offend the previous owner, if alive and well. And then paint it DYI, there is not shame in brush painting a work truck, give it a scuff up and spray the cab. That's how work truck been done the last 50 years. Maybe not all the new one, but all the old ones is/was.

But almost regardless what you do, it will come out great! And kudos on the name, the more I think about, the more I like it!

 

Imagine the stories that old wrecker could tell! Can't wait to see what you do with it.

 

dont worry im not doing any paint work other than touch up and or add some lettering and the mobil pegasus

 

got a few things done today.
1 i removed the 2 old winches. damn that rear one is a heavy bastard that required a hoist.
2 i took a bunch of pictures that show the routing of all the cable on the boom!
3 i just bought 14 patch/replacement panels to rebuild the cab! im not gonna fix all the rust but i dont wanna fall through the floor and or the cab to fall off going down the road! so i got the rockers, the front half of the floor pans, the lower section of the foot wells, both the rear inner and outer cab corners, the front floor braces, and the lower section of the front door jambs.
that was a chunk of change i didnt like to let go but its necessary and since theres no way imma getting them axles/tranny any time soon due to the fact that i gotta wait on the owner to move a bunch of cars to get to it i gotta do something productive in the meantime and the cab is the place to start!
so expect work to commence by next weekend! (provided i get the damn parts by then! i hope i do!)

oh and since i would like to post at lest one picture i will post this....
and you may be wondering why!? and heres the deal. when i cleaned up the truck the other day i noticed the hood ornament had a couple holes drilled into it and i figured they must of put some kind of topper on it back in the day. well just when i finished cleaning i saw something behind the seat in the center and lo and behold its a rare accessory hood ornament for the 53 bel air. and i lined up the holes and it matches the ones in the other hood ornament. while its got some corrosion damage (theres a couple small holes all the way through the wing!) it cleaned up very nice and i will try and get that mounted back on someday just before i start driving it.

 

Looking good. Where are the other photos?

 

got my new tin parts just in time! i think $515 is a decent good deal for all these and they are very hefty solid feeling.
im supposed to be up early tomorrow morning so as to tear into the truck!

 

wow! was one hell of a day. started just after 7:30 this morning and called it quits around 7 tonight.
we decided to shoehorn the truck in the garage which ended up fitting way better than i thought.
anyways after we shuffled cars and tractor around the first thing i did was remove the rear axle. then we got it up on dollies and i used my truck to push it in the garage. once in i first removed the front bumper assembly. then i removed the front clip which was quick. theres only like 18 bolts that hold it on. we decided to leave the hood on so as to not have to deal with the 2 piece hinges.
after that was done i discovered that the sides of the would are a lot worse than i anticipated and i will have to buy more patch panels. i not sure if anyone reproduces the fender spacer the big trucks used to connect the fender to the cab. or find a decent set of used ones.
next came the engine and tranny. boy was that the toughest job today. the engine is easy with just 2 bolts. but on these older trucks the tranny cross member is riveted in and your supposed to drop the trans.....lol that aint happening. so after i cut all the linkages for all the pto and controls stuff i just cut the trans cross member as it wont work for the new trans. and after a bunch of fighting (and accidentally cutting my friends fancy prybar with the torch, oops) we were able to pull it out. then it was pretty easy to drop the front axle. and then i finished the day by dropping the secondary transmission.
so after a long day i got the front clip off and all of the running gear stuff. and needless to say after all that and manhandling all that big crap out and into my truck, i'm tired and sore. LOL
so anyways i took a bunch of pics and the next step is to removed a bunch of the small stuff thats either unneeded or has to come off anyways. and then start mock up.

 

That's what a good and productive day looks like!
I like to See progress, so this makes me happy.

Did you take some pics of the O-D-U box?

Are you gnoms get it blasted?

At least the heavy stuff, all the truck, fram, axles, bed and front bumper, wouldn't mind.
And your body work will be so much easier when it's blasted.

And it looks manageable with the patch panel yip have avalible.

 

MY TRUCK HAS A HAND OPERATED WINDSHIELD WIPER!
im gonna get this out of the way before the update cuz this is funny!
okay so today as i started working in the cab i noticed what looked like an old wood handled ice scraper hanging out of the dash and i went to pull it out but it was stuck. so i looked up to see the end was electrical tapped to some metal rod...... so i started moving it back and forth and the drivers wiper started moving! thats some some ford model T shit going on right there! LOL


okay so now that i got that out of the way heres todays update.....well it was a late start. i woke up and was so sore a stiff from all the work and all that heavy lifting so i stayed in bed till 11am. LOL
well after a bunch of pain pill i forced myself out of bed and went and started working at NOON. it wont look like i got much done compared to yesterday but it was a lot of little stuff and getting the cab squared up and in place.
so anyways i started by stripping all the little stuff off the frame and firewall. man that pedal assembly is a pain in the ass to remove! i cut the steering box off from the column as i want to retain the stock looking column. then i scraped all the grease off the frame. then after i cleaned up the mess i used the engine hoist to lift up the front of the cab so as to get it level. well because the front lower section was all rusted out and because the sides of the cowl were in terrible condition in that they were all rusted out the front of the cab was all out of whack!
well first i got 2 pieces of angle iron and welded them from the firewall down to the frame so as to keep it up where it needs to be. but then after looking at door gaps that there was another serious problem. because the sides of the cowl are rusted out quite a ways up and the the rocker is rusted away from the door jamb it was at least 1/2 off so i cut the weld and pushed it back till it lined up and welded it back down.
but then there was another issue. the doors were still to far forward especially the drivers door. well turns out even though the firewall was where it needed to be the door jambs being completely loose meant that they were twisted out of place. so i took a ratchet strap, put one hook on the door handle and the other an the wrecker unit and pulled it over to where it needed to be then i took a piece of angle iron for each side and welded one end to the footwell area and the other on the inner panel behind the rear door jamb. so now that cab is more or less rigid and i can open the doors when needed and i just have to work over the angle iron which wont be too bad. then i cut out a majority of the lower front section of the floor pan.
so the next step....or rather first step of reassembly will be mounting the front floor pan braces right where they need to be then set the new floor pans into place and then go on from there! i am ordering a set of new cowl extensions and the lower outer cowl sections as i will need them ASAP. and if all goes well and i get them piece by friday i think.......or rather hope i can have most if not all the cab patching done! one can only hope though! but to be fair looky at all i got done mostly by my self in just a weekend! (though i can tell ya now i will be feeling it again in the morning!)

 

welp they always say the first step is the hardest!
monday it took me 7 hours to get the drivers floor pan tacked into place!
well first had to patch the frame brace as the pedal assembly/master cylinder bracket caused it to rust out. then just because there was nothing to go off of and being super ultra conservative there was a lot of taking the pan in and out and lots of cutting and grinding. the biggest thing was making sure the floor brace was where it needed to be, and making sure all the points of the floor pan were in the correct position. and while theres one or 2 minor things i will have to adjust later overall they went in great! and today i got the passenger side tacked into place in less than half the time as the other. im just so happy i have a floor now! and to have something to work off of! now i wont be working on it till sunday but once im back on it i should have all but the rear cab corners done within 2 days id like to think/hope. the cab corners i cant do untill that wrecker unit comes off which wont be till the whole front half is pretty much all done. and starting sunday is a 12 day work-a-thon. and what i have/get done by then will determine weather or not ii have a shot of getting it done by back to the 50's!

 

well another day in the books. even though i didnt get as far as i would have liked today, i will say it feels like it. basically it took me 6 hours or so to put in the rockers. the thing that made it take longer than i would of liked was trying to find all the spotwelds....... im still waiting on a few criticle patch panels that i hope show up tomorrow as i will need them ASAP!

 

Hookers always look good till you get up close to them. Just kidding cool truck!

 

well it ended up being another took-more-than-i-thought day! also my patch panels have not showed up yet and i NEED them tomorrow!
so today i did the front lower door jambs which i thought i would have done in like 2 hours tops..... well one i forgot to realize that the bracket that the door hinge mounts to is welded to it. also had to fight a bit to get the doors off!
so first i set the new one over the old section and mark where i need to cut the jamb. the next part is to get the bracket off. which was very time consuming due to the fact that not only you gotta find all the spotwelds but that all the bolts were junk and thus had to remove the pressed in nuts so i can weld new ones on later. and each had quarter sized hole that i had to just fill in with weld as i didnt want to cut it and try and make a new piece as it would take longer and make it really hard to put it back together right!
so after i got the nuts knocked off and the rust out taken care of i welded the bracket onto the patch panel. then got it all squared up and tacked into place! then i got the door back on and bolted up the top hinge right were it was before. then stick new nut and bolts in the lower and get it adjusted as need be then tighten it up and weld the nuts to the bracket. i did the passenger side first and after firured out how to go about doing everything overall it went into place perfectly! though i did have one issue in that the floor pane was way too high. so i ended up cutting 2/3rds across the line where the floor pane bend upwards becoming the toeboard and pulled it down to where it needed to be. and will just have to fill in the floor gap later.
the drivers side overall went a little faster no that i knew what needed to be done. and overall it went into place perfect as well except for 2 things. one the floor was a bit high thought i didnt need to cut it. i just used a C clamp to pull it down to where it needed to be. but the second issue took me a few minutes to figure a solution. the new patch i tacked in lined up with everything as it should except it had a half inch gap from the floor pan all while the cowl/fender extension panel was touching as it should and i was like wtf!? at first i thought well maybe the new floor pan was off. the biggest problem was that there was nothing to measure off of. finally i just measured how wide the floor pane was from the rocker edge to the tranny cover edge and both were 18 inches so i new the whole thing was off half an inch. at that point i knew what was going on. at one point the door was over extended as the cowl side was creased in fairly far which must of caused the whole side to twist, and once the bottomed rusted out it went where it wanted to go. so i just put a large ratchet strap on the 2 angle iron that i welded to the door opening and pulled that side in right where it needed to be! then after tacking it in good and strong it was the same thing as the other side. and all said and done after 8 hours both sides turned out great! way better than i thought they would have...............now i just wish my patch panels would show up!

 

[/QUOTE]and starting sunday is a 12 day work-a-thon. and what i have/get done by then will determine weather or not ii have a shot of getting it done by back to the 50's![/QUOTE]
cool build, will be following to see if you can make it, hope you can!

 

welp time for a massive update! i wanted to update more often this last week but was so busy and tired that i was unable till now. and while overall ive made a lot of progress i feel like im 4 days behind where i would like to be at.... but beggars cant be choosers. and i was out for 2 days due to having a piece of metal in my eye! ouch that sucked!
so anyways since the last update i started off making a bunch of small patches for either rust or holes that i was not going to use. then in the back of the cab i ended up having to do more rust repair than i had hoped. but when i started hitting the floor with a hammer which caused more holes to appear i knew i had better just do it all out now and right. then after that i went to install the lower footwell patches in, but ran into a small issue.... for the most part all the replacement patches have been fitting pretty decent but these not so much. the lower curved part (which is the most important part of the patch) was all correct but was a the wrong angle in the sense that when lined up it caused the upper portion to tilt forwards and downwards. but i just winged it and made it work out anyways. then i finally got my lower cowl side sections and fender extensions so first i made my own patches in the upper side cowl area so i had something to go off of for the lower section. so after that i got the extensions into place and then the lower cowl sides into place. and tat all went together rather well. then the latch thing to do was to make patches for the upper footwell areas. then after that i spent at least 5 hours of welding all the panels fully into place. so now other than the rear cab corners i have a solid cab! man that was a lot more work than i was hoping but oh well they always tend to do that. so then today i finally got the donor parts truck! and so far today i got the front and rear axles out as well as the driveshaft which i found out was bent badly by the frontend loader. but i hope its still good enough for a shop to fix it. so then tomorrow i got to drop the 5 speed tranny and a few other bits then i can start putting my tow truck together! cant wait!

 

Looking good. Are you gonna media blast the bottom of the cab?

I like the progress you made!
That's gonna be a nice truck!

How is the pics of the second gearbox comming? patiently waiting.

 

i dont have a pic of it

 

Did you leave yet out because you forgot to take picks or you threw it out?

 

welp its been awhile since last update. well i got some big stuff done. so after i got everything i needed from the parts truck the first thing i did was just bolt the tranny to the 454 and try and set it in and see what the damage would be in regards to the firewall and floor pan. but holy crap! we set it in there and it fit in there perfectly! its nuts to butts tight but thats ok! theres just enough room for the distributor on the firewall and the bell housing and top of trans just barely clear! and also the ebrake at the end just clears as well! i mean thats pretty much unheard of in any major swap like that! so anyways the next thing i did was drill new holes (which was kind of a bitch) in the front axle and mounted it and the draglink. for the most part it all just clears. tight but clears. there is a couple things i will have to change and that is i will need to make the front spring shackles longer and extend the threaded adjuster for the steering by about 6 inches. so then it was onto the rear and that all i did was i had to remove the perches and move them out 1 inch and reweld them. so then i got 2 wheels and tires in and got the rear on the ground! looks friggen awesome already. then it was determined the there was only 67 inches between the tranny and the rear end i only needed a one piece driveshaft. though it will need to be a slider. so then i got the tranny mount and the engine mounts tacked into place and also got the steering box (which is from a 70's-80's chevy truck) mounted on the outside of the frame tacked into place. and thats where i got after a week and a half of work. so now im taking a bit of a break to catch up on other things and also so i can get some more parts ordered and figure on how to get some things done like the exhaust and steering column.

 

That's a damn fine looking truck!

Those rear tire looks a little small in them wheel wells. But other then that it looks good!

Looking forward to your next update!!

 

Going to be a hauling ass wrecker.

 

welp time for a much needed update. not gonna have it done for back to the 50's......oh well but it still will be done this summer. anyways from where i last left off...... first thing was to the the steering all taken care of(except the column). so i had to to have the end rod piece that goes into the pitman arm drilled out...cost me $160! to drill a flippen hole! then i had to extend the adjuster buy cutting it in half and stick a pipe in there. so i got that put together and wouldnt you know it turned out pretty much perfect! i also had to make new front spring shackles that were an inch long for clearance reasons. the steering box goes lock to lock at the same time the hubs hit there stops! the only thing i notice is when turned all the way left or right the drag link touches the leaf springs, but since it travels with the leaf spring and that your only doing parking lot speeds when having fully cranked i dont think i have to worry about anything though i will keep an eye on it. then i got my custom slider drive shaft in and man does it look great! then it became time to install the pedals which i though was going to be a bitch.... but it was stupid easy! the brake pedal/booster is from an 80's auto chevy truck. and other than having to notch part of the bracket it fit in there just perfect! pedal travel and location are perfect as is steering column clearance.and the bracket lines up with the bottom of the dash perfect. then came the clutch pedal from the donor truck. it to went in very good. all i did was make the bracket have 4 studs going to the firewall verses 2 so theres less stress on the firewall and it fit up in the dash perfectly and the pedal is in perfect line with the brake pedal! then i quickly tossed in the steering column. so now it was time to put the engine tranny together and install it permanently. so first i had to replace the rear main on the engine. then i installed the flywheel and clutch and the stick the tranny on. then before i put it in i had to drill and tap the lower engine mount holes. i bolted on the passenger side exhaust manifold because during mock up it would not fit because of the frame. so having it on there told me exactly where i had to cut out the frame in order for it to clear and a small notch for the fuel pump. then after that i bolted it all in for good and installed the exhaust manifolds. on and i test fit the slave cylinder and it had enough length to mount there on the firewall, so provided it was never tampered with i wont even have to deal with bleeding it. oh and i also got the rest of the wheel and tires for the truck. so the next step is to install drive shaft and finish the steering column and do the brake lines...... then after that its time to reinstall the front clip and bumper!

 

That is one cool truck No matter if you totally do it or leave the patina it is going to be great.

 

Interesting project and great progress so far. I'm surprised so many of the swapped parts fit up so well, that's great.

 

Killer build I love it. This is going to be awesome.

 

Next year for sure, the build is looking good.

 

I came close to doing a 1 ton '48 F1 Ford hooker, '53 Olds powered, F1 4 speed, PTO.
A bud gave me a '52 F1, so I abandoned my Tow Truck for some $$.
Sure like them hookers...no matter what they cost!

My F1 will be a tall 16" lite truck- tired Service truck, like you'd see out of the Ford Dealership for customers' service calls back then.
Or a nice semi-resto with another set of Romeo Palemides 2 piece aluminum wheels that match the ones on my F100.
Love those wheels!