My ‘37 Chevy’s needed a tailgate for ... pretty much forever! When I bought the truck gee I dunno 30 years ago I remember the guy that sold it to me had fabbed the bed and he said that originally they are only 46” wide and he made it 48-1/2” so you could at least haul drywall or Sheetrock. Is that true? I dunno but it prevented me from ever really searching for a tailgate as I knew it’d be expensive and it wouldn’t fit. So I grabbed this beat to heck later gate so I could use the “Chevrolet” out of it. Since my truck has a dump bed I really wanted it to be able to pivot top or bottom. It’s pretty basic, no frills, but seems like it ought to work OK. I started with a couple pieces of fabbed U and slit it and rewelded it to make a “Z” for the ends. Then I took some old junk water pipe for the top and bottom. The Chevy gate I had was pretty whooped so all I salvaged from it was what I cut out of the middle. Wasn’t going for anything high end - just functional. My point in posting this is that this was a job I put off because I guess I thought it was gonna be harder than it was. The only thing that really went a little catty whompus was that I warped the upper pipe with all the tack welds. To fix it I took my TIG and simulated doing a bunch of tacks (no Rod) across the opposite side and the warp came right out. There’s an after picture I forgot to take a before showing the warp.
Looks great, btw is that a little American with carbs sticking out of the hood? Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The Jalopy Journal
