So I've been building a 1940 Ford Pickup while attending school at WyoTech in Laramie, Wyoming. I picked the cab up from a guy close to the school and so far what I have done to it is chop it 1.5 inches while in my Street Rod and Custom Fabrication Class. Now I am in Motorsports Chassis Fabrication where I am going to build a full custom frame to set the cab on. I am not quite decided yet on if I want to go completely traditional with the chassis and do a dropped axle and monoleaf suspension or if I am going to go more modern with mustang 2 and four link. I am going to build the frame shorter than factory so that I can move the wheelbase forward a foot or so and run a shorter bed to get everything back in proportions with the chop. I am not quite decided on how much to shorten the wheelbase and bed so if anyone has any pictures of truck with this modification please share. It make take a second to get pictures loaded so please bear with me.
This is the pickup cab as I bought it. Can anyone tell me how to post full size pictures? I loaded this one from my phone but will upload the rest to my computer
Easy Breezy Lemon Squeezy! The new HAMB is about the easiest forum I have ever seen for photos. 1. When you start a post you will see three boxes below and to the right of the text box: POST REPLY - UPLOAD A FILE - MORE OPTIONS... Place the cursor in the text box where you want the photo to go, click on the UPLOAD A FILE, choose the file from your computer. After it uploads it asks you if you want full size, click that button and Bing....your photo is in the post and is full sized...
Okay, so I finally got the chance to upload all the pictures and get this thread up to date. Here is the cab after i got it into class and got the tape laid out with 1" increments laid out down the tape so i could get a few pictures and cut the cab up on paper to decide how much i wanted to cut it. I decided on an 1.5" chop. Here my instructor and I are heating up the striker plates so i could remove them without snapping the heads off. Interior of the truck cab before my partner and I began sanding on the interior before cutting. Here my partner is sanding on his half of the cab getting it down to bare metal for cutting and welding Here is after we sanded everywhere we were going to cut and weld and made templates for the chop. You can also see the paper cut out of my chop on paper and the a picture of the truck i want my chop to turnout like. Welding bracing into the truck for the chop. After the door tops were cut off with a sawzall. Here you can see i didn't brace the driver side from the a pillar to the b pillar, because the cab was tweaked from sitting in a field so when i cut the roof off i squared up the cab and braced the driver side before re-aligning the top. After getting all the lines laid out for the chop! Starting the chop! The a pillars and the b pillars were cut with a hacksaw and the back of the cab was cut with a plasma cutter and a guide!
Doing some more cutting on the cab! We had one more guy jump in on the project at this point because he needed something to help with. The top finally came off! We found some lead in the passenger side a pillar so we had to get that taken out before we could continue with the chop. Some more pictures of the roof off of the truck Getting all of the lead melted out of the passenger pillar! After we got the top set back on just to see how it looks! Definitely looks a ton better already This is where the truck is sitting now. It is about 75% final welded now and I hope to have the chop done and metalfinished by the time i get to bring it into my next class to build a custom chassis to set under it. I am really happy with how its turning out for my first chop. Me standing next to the truck with it sitting on the ground.
Your bed length is going to be determined in part by your fenders. You want the bed to be a bit longer then the fenders for aesthetic reasons. IE you don't want the fenders to be rubbing the cab ot sticking past the bed in most cases. So ideally what you want is to get a pair of fenders (or at least one and set it in line with the cab then build your frame accordingly. Bed wise the chassis doesn't need to reach the back of the bed but your axle will want to be centered in the fender so your frame in most cases will extend past the axle center. The chop looks good by the way, the perfect chop on a 39/40 cab or car leaves it looking like a thug with his hat pulled down low over his eyes and you nailed it.
Excellent! Auh, life in Laramie. My old stomping grounds. Thanks for sharing your build, I look forward to following along! Go Pokes!
Love these 40 pickups, don't like chops on them, but you've made me a fan....that looks really sweet, great work, I'll follow this post for sure...
Olskool32 that's a bitchin truck! Do you know how much overall the bed was shortened? And did you shorten the wheelbase also?
Go with a traditional frame and suspension design. Drop axle and springs. There is no reason not to. And done right and engineered properly you will learn more and have a truck that stands the test of time, rather than another street rod that looks dated in a year. Nice job and keep going!
How come you didn't lengthen the cab by adding to the roof and doors? Four to six inches wouldn't have been all that visually different and considering that most of us who are adults in this century are a hell of a lot larger than the men who drove and rode in those pickups back in the day. I have a basket case Forty and damn if I'd cut on it without thinking about how I'm going to squeeze myself inside even with the unchopped top, and have seen some well designed long door pickups that were chopped that you would have spent time pondering what had been done to them to make them look so good. And, as to shortening the wheel base. Come on. If you're going to be inside a teeny cab with the slump of concrete Freeways and sways where big trucks have pressed melted tar into swales and that sucker is moving up and down like a rubber ducky in a bath tub full of kids, you are going to hate it. Don't they teach thinking about the bigger picture up there at that high dollar school? Think about what kind of ride you're building and not how it's gonna look. Looks are what come after you deal with function. That's howcome I have no respect for schools, and damn if I didn't go to a few. Yeah, I'm your worst nightmare when it comes to liking someone messing with a Forty and not having a clue about the results. Next thing I'll see on this will be you wantin' to get rid of the drip rails. Har Har. Keep up the good work and live with your mistakes. That'll make a man out of you, or maybe not.
Great job! The cab you chose was actually a '42 - '47 cab. Looking at the side of the cowl area you can see the higher bolt holes where the larger '42 - '47 fenders bolt up. You'll need to fill those holes if you use the '40 fenders. Here's my '46. Same cab as a '40. I chopped the top 3". Used two roofs so no filler strip was needed. I'm 6'6" tall. But not morbidly obese. The only regret I have is I only chopped the seat riser 2". I should have chopped it 3" too. Otherwise I fit in there fine. As a former adult ed instructor (welding and auto repair) I applaud your career choice. You have a great start there. Another tip - the '37 - '39 fender is the same shape as the '40 but is 1.5"wider, since the box was widened in '40 by three inches. I used the earlier '37 fenders for greater tire clearance. It required I flared out the rear of the running boards to match. Good luck with your build. Subscribed.
Cheerios and piss come to mind. Not everyone is 6 feet tall checking in at 270lbs. I’m near 60 and 5’8”. I could have the roof dropped on my ‘36 Pu 4 inches and it wouldn’t bother me a bit. Ever think he built it for himself and not the next fella?
Just a 'heads-up' here...If you go dropped axle, avoid the Monoleaf like the plague! Breakage is common, I broke the right front one on my F100 2 years after installing them. (2 front springs, semi-elliptic) Many reports of broken Monoleaf springs, if you want 'low', order a Posies front spring, "In-da-dirt" by name. Reversed eyes and flattened, with anti squeak pads installed. (cheaper than the 'Mono', also...)
EDIT: Upon further consideration I think it was in '41 when the boxes got widened and the fenders got narrower, when Ford went with two parallel leaves in front and bigger frame. If that's the case then what I told you can be ignored - your '40 build will use the narrower box with the wider fenders. My bad.
The Jalopy Journal
