rebuild the 59d

some of you may recognize my truck....It has been around a little while but not always on the scene. It has been to the Salt, Viva, Hotrodarama, and lots of local stuff. A few years ago I smashed a deer. (the thing went under the truck {it is 3 inches}) No one was hurt except my pride and pocket book. Well life happens, I lost complete motivation on it and it sat in the ol garage until my good friends lit a fire under my ass and last winter got me going again and with lots of help we made some progress. Then recently sold some other ot stuff and shook out my couch and managed to find some cash to go further.

If you dont mind i will post some pics of the process

These are some before crash pictures

 

here are some pics of the crashed truck

 

as you can see from the pics. exploded an E&J headlight, bent the frame, destroyed original grille shell, orig radiator, fuel lines, etc. etc

 

tomorrow i will start to put up pictures of the rebuild

thanks for the interest

 

Glad you are fixing it. I know how it is to lose motivation.

 

Is it tomorrow yet?

 

first thing first.....

I got a older repop 34 grille from a swap meet (the one on the truck)
and my wife bought me a new walker radiator for christmas....it was time to get going

I took it down to muffin's shop and put er on the frame jig....the truck being sooooo low it was really hard to safely get it up there....then Loudpedal proceeded to pull, push, pry, and fanagle the frame back to square. Here it is with the radiator mocked up and all straight

 

I always liked this truck.

 

next we might as well mount the grille shell

 

another shot on the frame jig......needed to re-radius the bed sides for these buick drums, machined to fit over stock ford ones

 

it was time for a few upgrades.....like to finish the floor. I hate to say but I rocked some cardboard and duct tape for along time. we cut out some panels tacked em together and slapped some seam sealer all around

 

the next upgrade or two included a seat. Muffin donated some salvaged bomber sourced from the local army surplus that had many a mile already on em.....they previously lived in the original f bomb....we narrowed the seats up to fit....then made some custom brackets for mounts that double as mounts for the body

 

keep going man, get this thing back on the road

 

I gas tank and floor also needed some attention. here is what I had before. Literally a two gallon Moon tank that was meant to be temporary and ended up being there for five years....more to come later

 

LATER?!? Dude, I'm in suspense and I already know what happens next! You're a slow-poster.

 

so again Muffin to the rescue...he donated another cast off part off the F-bomb. with a little fab up on the mount...

 

well decided that a tonneau cover would be appropriate. We went down to a place that makes boat covers and so on and bought some black canvas and some snaps, then went to the craft store and snatched up some heavy thread and a few stange looks from the soccer moms. next off the Ace hardware for some misc bolts, angle, and rods to build the frame.

{also in the above Picture}

 

tonneau all mounted up

 

Well Jobcorp that looks like work. Looks like good work but work none the less.
Put her back straight friend. You and the ol beasty deserve it.

 

I painted up the inside of the cab with some POR 15 type stuff....(no pic) and was feeling pretty good about myself. When all of the sudden Loudpedal told me "to go pound sand!"

After I told him to go to hell, he kindly reminded me I had no headlights.

The only thing harder to explain to your wife why you MUST have E&J's, is explaining that you need to buy them twice.

Soooo we went over to Loudpedals garage and he brings out all this foul smelling, rotten, stinky, and heavy box full of casting sand. proceeds to tell me we will cast some new headlights for the ol girl! This is a very exciting process and he has posted an award winning thread on this procedure so I wont go into the whole thing. but we ended up with some extremely awesome headlight parts. ( with friends like this it is impossible to go wrong)

 

thanks man

 

Was the deer ok? I hope you took it to the vet. (Just joshin') Rebuild looks good. Tonneau looks great. Glad you went with a little bigger fuel tank. Can't believe you went that long with that peanut tank. You guys are having some fun up there in SLC.

 

Great rebuild, love to see the finished results of the light buckets

 

so that ended the 2010 rebuild part. we capped it off with a trip to viva....had a good time.

here is a pic of Loudpedals roadster and my truck. as well as a shot of the roadster, truck, and my coupe at the show

 

Well so it sat around for awhile and like i said before I shook out the couch cushions and have started to rock and roll again.

the crash killed the fan so I dug and dug around the house looking for something use. The original radiator had a recess in the top tank underneath that the fan passed up into. the new walker radiator I now have does not. A quick measurement later I decided a 13 inch fan is what I needed. all I had kicking around was a 17 in flex fan ( i know I know)

first I trimed it down one blade at a time and re doing the curve on each

 

ive always liked that truck, looking back years later, it was probably thee ONLY
knock off of "Rudys" truck to get it right. too bad the thousands of other 'BOBBERS'(such a stupid name) since ,cant figure it out.

 

the fan all cut down

 

Paint er up

 

mount it!!!! I was afraid it being so small that it would not move enough air. I decided to put a piece of paper in front of the radiator and see if she could hold er there. it did. ran it for 45 min and it never got above 170

 

In order to be move drivable I wanted some more sanitary exhaust. (before it was dueled out and ended just behind the cab) It resonated something awful. I took it down to the local muffler shop and they set me up with a removable 2 into 1 system with a tiny single chamber that exits out behind the bed. SOUNDS GOOD



I would have rather done this myself, but alas no tubing bender