Dave I've seen pictures of other '58 Dodge trucks with the single headlights but never on a Sweptside like this. I'd be curious to know if they were original to the truck or changed over later. Thanks @ccain! I've been going back through your thread on your '60 F100 and that thing is awesome. The new stance and the scallops really set it off. I also think the frenched Buick tail lights will look great. Man I sure appreciate that @SS327. The paint gave me a lot of trouble and I had to go back and redo some things before I finally got it assembled. I halfway figured it would all flake off when I fired it up but it seems to be sticking pretty good! The last folks that worked on the truck installed a proportioning valve inside the frame rail. I looked up the part previously and one of the main complaints was the pressure brake switch leaking. After riding around one day I decided to test my brake lights. They came on once and never again. I ran it up in the air and sure enough it had started leaking. There was no way to get it out without taking off all the lines and unbolting it from the frame. I figured I'd be better off doing away with the wet switch and going with a mechanical, so I removed the switch and plugged the hole. I mounted this switch on the floor between the brake pedal. It seems to be working out real good. I've been thinking about maybe replacing the gauges in my dash mounted cluster. I'm not sure why I went with electronic gauges, I reckon just because I liked the look of them, but I think I'd rather have mechanical gauges in it. The electronic ones were not cheap but I'm just not all that impressed with the construction of them and not sure I trust them. I've been looking at these Stewart Warner black face gauges. I think they'd match the stock gauges better as well. I just bought a Green Line SW temp gauge for my Coronet and was looking to see if I could run it in the crossover like I am the electronic one. I can't tell for sure if it would go or not as the bulb is kind of long. I might be better off putting it in one of the tapped holes in the intake plate that runs in to the water jacket. I put the flat tailgate back on this morning to keep the bedsides stable and drove it back and forth to work. I can't get over how fun it is to drive. I barked the tires more than a few times from first to second riding around today!
Last night I finished up rebuilding my shifter. Every once in a while if you didn't hold your mouth right when shifting out of second it would go into the neutral position but would still be in second. It's done this since I got the truck when it had the 318 in it. I thought maybe it was a linkage problem because it was kind of cobbled together so I bought a new Hurst mounting plate and linkage kit but it would still do it. I wasn't sure if maybe it was something to do with the transmission itself but the one I rebuilt to go behind the hemi is a completely different A833 so after seeing another thread about Hurst 4 speed rebuild kits and steel bushings I figured I'd try that. I think somebody has been in it before because it was missing some internal washers, the dust cover, and the bridge plate was bent from being over tightened. Also the 1-2 shift lever has had some grinding done on the bottom at some point. I cleaned everything up, stoned all the flat surfaces and reassembled it. I also noticed the 1-2 shifter rod and the reverse rod were in a little bit of a bind so I bent them some to make it a little smoother. I drove it back and forth to work today and it felt really smooth. The funny part is when I got home I noticed one of the steel bushings was laying where I park it under the lift so on one of my many trips back and forth to the vise bending the linkage I left one out somewhere. It still shifted good but I'll run it up in the air and see which one I missed tomorrow.
I didn't miss any bushings on my shifter linkage. Turns out they send seven to a pack and I just didn't notice. I was in a hurry to get the shifter hooked back up so I could drive it the next day and wasn't paying attention! I've been messing around with getting the tuning right on the engine. My catch can for the PCV system has been collecting a good bit of oil. I ran the PCV valve on the back of the carb so it would be out of sight but after some reading I found out it's not recommended to run it there and it's better in the front. After I moved it around I hooked up a vacuum gauge to the valve and it was pulling too much vacuum at idle. The M/E Wagner PCV valve I'm running comes with two springs for the idle circuit. One for 7-10" HG and one for 10"+ HG of vacuum at idle. I was running the weaker spring since I have pretty low vacuum at idle but it works a lot better with the heavier spring in it. It idles and runs a whole lot better now. I've got all my gauges together now to replace the electronic gauges I'm running now. A big thanks to @60Pioneer for hooking me up with this awesome vintage Stewart Warner tach. He reached out right before I was fixing to buy a new one and I'm sure glad he did. These are going to look so much better and I'll trust them a lot more. I bench tested the tach tonight with a TachMatch unit I got that's built to pair up any ignition source to any kind of tach. The vintage tach setting sends out a 3,000 rpm calibration signal and you use a potentiometer to make the tach match. They worked great together. Can't wait to get these in the truck.
Just found this, boy am I glad I did. This is the coolest pickup truck I've ever seen. We've all seen thousands of C10's and F100's slammed with this and that, but YOU hit it out of the park. I'd take your truck over any C10 any day and I'm GM to the bone. A rear distributer HEMI, OD833, and you ditched the 9" for an 8 3/4. Awesome. Just awesome. Your engine bay pics give me a chub every time lol. All the gold, polished AL, that air cleaner, gat damn you have excellent taste. Now it's time to bolt a receiver hitch on it and tow your rear dist. HEMI dragster!!
Thanks @benchseat4speed! I need to get back to work on it but I've been having too much fun driving it! I've drove it everyday to work this week and it's been running great. Need to get my new gauges in it and start finishing out the bed. My buddy cut the wild cherry boards for me a couple of weeks ago and I've got them curing. I like your idea about a Hemi dragster to tow behind! I've got another 331 and a 354 waiting to be worked that would be perfect!
And so it goes, one multi thousand dollar piston project after another lol. You can just kinda tell when someone has it in their blood, when they're addicted to this s--t for life vs. someone who just jumps on the bandwagon cuz it's trendy or whatever. Here today gone tomorrow. You sir, are a lifer. No question. Watching this to see what you do with that tailgate. If you can save those heads, and make your own emblems, a little sheetmetal graft oughta be no problem.
Washed the truck for the first time since I've had it on Saturday. The tip about using Simple Green and a magic eraser to clean the white walls worked great. Alot better than the Bleche Wite and a brass brush. Took it on its first "long" trip. Not really long compared to what a lot of members on here drive theirs but as I can count the times I've been out of Tennessee on one hand I don't ever go far! Went on a 140 mile round trip to look at an old Shovelhead project. All interstate travel. Cruised at 80, turning about 2,300 rpm, with no problem.
Haha it would look good wearing some fresh paint! Maybe some day. I have a lot of respect for people that know how to paint and how to keep them looking good. The Plymouth I traded for this truck was a super clean car that was painted by somebody that knew what they were doing. I never really took it out that often because I didn't want it to get messed up. The only thing I've spent a lot of time sanding and painting was my Harley which turned out pretty good but I still notice every imperfection. I can't imagine having to do a whole truck!
Truck looks great! I'll try to remember your tip about the white wall cleaning. My wide whites on the Harley need a good scrubbing. As a kid Dad would always make us kids scrub his white walls with SOS pads. There is a lot of freedom for keeping your paint the way it is. It's really great being able to park at the local grocery store, etc without having to worry about every little ding.
Haven't had any updates lately because I've been driving too much instead of finishing up the truck like I ought to! When I drove it to work yesterday it had been sitting for a minute and I noticed a pool of coolant under the nose. It looked like the radiator must of sprung a leak after I shut if off and it got a little hotter. I'm not sure if it's from running too high pressure of a cap or just age. It looks like the upper tank has been patched a couple times. On the way home of course the whole engine bay ended up coated in antifreeze. Luckily I didn't have far to go and it never got hotter than normal. I stopped once on the way home to see if the leak was any worse. The black paint on the fan was starting to come off and I was really worried that it was going to mess up the paint on the whole engine. Took me about two hours to clean up and detail the engine, inner fenders, hood and everything but it all cleaned up good. The only thing that got messed up was the paint on the fan and the timing strip I had on the balancer came off. I got the radiator out today and ran it up in the air to clean up underneath. I was planning on trying to see if a local shop would could recore my radiator tomorrow but after reading some past threads, some even ten years old, it looks like it's hard to find anyone that still does it and it's expensive when you do. Earlier today I found a new radiator made by U.S. Radiator for about $700. I thought this was awful high but it may be the best way to go so I don't have to worry about the patches in the old radiator starting to leak over time.
I've been using one of their three row radiators for the last few years in the Impala and so far so good. No complaints.
Yep Champion Radiators here too, but they don't look nothing like the originals. They come polished aluminum, all bright and shiny. Black paint might be in order. Might look out of place in your engine compartment, but at about 1/2 the price of the US Radiator.
Thanks for the tip @the oil soup. It does look like they make a nice radiator. On Monday I called around to a few local shops that advertised radiator repair and the ones that weren't shut down, of course only pulled and replaced radiators on newer vehicles. I decided to bite the bullet and buy the new three row copper and brass radiator from U.S. Radiator. They said it would be a minimum of 4-6 weeks before it shipped. Fingers crossed it doesn't take longer!
Hey MRW1994. Truck is looking better and better. I like the old curved top tank look on the rad. I'd do the same. Yours could even use the polished brass if that was an option. I'm considering going with the same basic design as your rear sway bar. Typical is to mount the bar to the frame with the ends back to the suspension on a Ford. How do you find the bar works with your configuration? I need the room back behind the rear end for a special project thus the reason for keeping the bar low and off the frame if it work ok.
Thanks @WhitewallWill! The rear sway bar seems to work very well so far with it turned around backwards. There's plenty of clearance where the bar runs around the front and under the snout of the third member so that it doesn't hit on bumps. Adding the sway bar to the front and back helped out a lot with the handling.
Finally getting closer to having the truck running again. I repainted the fan where all the black paint came off when the radiator started leaking. The black enamel didn't adhere to the fan good at all so I stripped it all off. I was just about to paint it solid black instead of dealing with taping off all the stamped places like I did the first time but it did have a pretty cool effect when it was running so I redid the whole thing and clear coated it this time too. My new radiator showed up last week and looks great. I was going to try and get it in yesterday but got sidetracked with other things and also decided I'd be better off installing my new mechanical gauges with the radiator out so I can step in there and have more room to work.
Finally got back on the road again yesterday. Monday night I got my new mechanical gauges installed then bolted in the new radiator which was a perfect fit. Last night I got the tach wired up to the TachMatch unit and installed in the truck. Another thanks to @60Pioneer for hooking me up with this tach as it looks so much better than the cheaply made electronic gauges I was running. Here's a picture with the lights on. And one with it running this morning. The mechanical oil pressure gauge reads way more accurately than the electronic one did. It's right where it was when I was running the engine on the stand instead of showing it almost always having 80+ psi of oil pressure. I feel a lot better with these gauges in there now.
Hey @pprather no big updates. I've been dragging my feet on getting started on the bed wood since it's been so hot. I've been driving it frequently though and have done a few things. One thing I decided to try was using some neodymium ring magnets to hold on my spider caps. The open lug nuts that were on the truck at first were large enough to hold the caps on themselves but I wanted to use these blind bullet lug nuts and they were small enough for the caps to slip right over. I started looking for some rare earth magnets to see if it would be strong enough to hold the cap on. I found some ring magnets that had an inside diameter of 20 mm (.787"). The cylindrical part of the bullet lug nuts were .800" so all I had to do was turn a little off of each one for the magnet to fit. In this picture the bottom three have the rings around them. The top two stayed on the cap when I pulled it off. So far it has worked out very well. They stick on real strong and I've driven over a hundred miles so far on some pretty rough roads with no problems. I went to empty my PCV oil catch jar the other day and it busted when I was unscrewing it which was disappointing. I was worried I'd have to come up with some completely different oil catch system but luckily it's the standard Mason jar thread that's always been used so I popped another one on there. Not as cool looking but it does the job!
One thing I've been having trouble with is the outside of the front tires wearing quickly. I don't have any experience in making front suspension adjustments so I don't really know what the culprit is or where would be best to start. I thought about posting about it before but didn't know if it would really be right here since the truck has been converted to modern suspension so if it needs removed I understand, but would appreciate any advice. To my eye it looks like with the wheels pointed straight that they already have a negative camber. I'm wondering if with the Hemi in there now if maybe the springs are too weak for the weight. I replaced the power steering rack with a manual one and it is fairly difficult to steer. Is it maybe wearing the edges in curves when the weight shifts to one side of the truck?
I'd take it to a local wheel alignment shop for a diagnosis as to what is needed to get it within alignment specs.
I think that'll end up being my best bet. There's a shop that restores classic cars I pass every day on the way to work that's highly regarded. I've thought about stopping in there one day to see if they do that kind of thing or if not who they'd recommend.
Did it wear the tires off before you changed the steering rack, or is that something that happened after the rack was changed? Its pretty unusual to wear the outer edge off both of the front tires, that usually points to the front wheels being toed in too much. Usually, worn parts, incorrect camber adjustment (generally not enough adjustment to tilt the top of the tire out enough to wear the outside edge off the tire), too much weight, or a toe out, would wear off the inside of the tires. That said, never underestimate how bad a screwed up wheel alignment can mess with the tires. What someone might have used as alignment specs could have an effect on tire wear as well, if it was originally aligned using the specs for the front suspension, which may have been designed for a vehicle with no where near the weight of your Hemi has, could be a problem as well. I've also seen alignment shops that will adjust a vehicle with too much toe in to compensate for worn front suspension parts they (or the customer) didn't want to change. Also, sometimes a wheel with a different offset (or width) will mess up the steering when turning.
Man I still love the colors and detail on that engine. That has to be be best looking engine on here.
Thanks @SS327! @gene-koning I drove it around a pretty good amount when it had the 318 Poly and power steering, and never noticed it wearing the tires like it is now. I might have toed them in too much when I switched the rack. It also has a slight pull to the right.
The Jalopy Journal
