My little girls 1956 Dodge Pickup

Man , I agree totally with you . Put her in the dirt a little.

Lundy

 

Nice Work! That truck is looking good!

As far as the brakes go, 73RR is right on. Dan Babb has a thread on here where he uses a 50's chevy set up (under the floor) with a booster. I think all it needs is a modified bracket to bolt up.

And I'll mostly agree with everyone on the engine. It's definitely a late sixties to early seventies 318. Even in its current form though it puts out more power than the original flathead 6, depending on the year it may have as much as 230 hp. An edelbrock intake and 600 cfm carb alone will wake it up pretty well, and make it easier to start/warm up. I do disagree on the edelbrock cam, they're ok, but they use an old grind. Lunati and Comp both make cams with modern grinds that perform better than the edelbrock. I know you aren't there yet, but I'd be happy to help with suggestions when/if you decide to do some work to the engine. I have a couple of 318's and a 340 in my muscle car era mopars.

The flat fenders went away in '53 (as you can see from my '53 in my avatar or gallery). The '57 bed is almost identical to the 70's beds. In fact, Dodge pretty much used the same design on its step sides all the way up to '85 or '86. Subtle changes like the tailgate stamping were done, but the dimensions are all the same and the fenders are identical from '53 to the mid eighties.

 

Nice project, I used a pedal assembly from a late '80's Dakota pick-up in my truck in my avatar, works great, cheap, and Mopar.

 

Anybody got a link to Dan Babb's build? Specifically dealing with brakes?

Thanks.

 

Dan Babb's:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=455737

 

Thanks.

 

The box on the truck pictured is a 56 or older high side box. The sculptured stake pockets and angled top rails prove this. 57- mid 60s step side boxes also had the sculptured stake pockets, but the top of the bed rail was flattened out, as compared to being angled. After the mid/ late 60s, the stake pockets were straight tubes and the top rail was flat.

As stated, the rounded rear fenders went into production with the 53 model year and continued unchanged until the end of the step side production.

I suggest you at least put a timing chain in that 318 before your daughter starts driving it. Time and miles were not nice to the original plastic cam gear.

On my trucks, I've used a booster and master from a late70s/early80s Volare or Dodge pickups mounted to the firewall. Adding a modern colaspable steering column and seat belts would be a nice safety feature.

I agree, body work sucks, but what else can an underfunded guy do? Don't forget to use a dust mask. Be sure your daughter gets to get dirty as well, it will be a better bonding experience then reading the vampire books. Gene

 

Cool Project! I like that you are building this for your daughter! I Sure hope she lets you take it for a spin once in a while. My son is 6, so I am sure he will want my POS when I'm finished with it.

 

Alright, finally accomplished something worthy of a few pics (at least I think its worth it). Yesterday I got the inside, and most of the pieces I pulled out, of the cab primed.









However, what I am most excited about nobody will probably ever see.

After spending the morning once again hitting some parts stores, a junk yard and an industrial bolt and supply shop I had pretty much acquiesced that I was going to have to search on-line for a spring to fit my door latch assembly and just hope that whatever I found once I went through the ass pain of finding it, buying it, paying more for shipping than for the part (probably) and waiting on it that it would actually work (I so much prefer buying local).

Well, no shit there I was (that's how all good stories start) wondering the isles of my local Harbor Freight tool store like a kid at Toys-R-Us thinking "I need that, and that, and I don't know what for, but that". I was kind of in a daze and maybe a little stoned from primer fumes and was waiting on the wife to finish her shopping when there it was, a $0.99 plastic hand clamp.



And right there on the tag...SPRING CLAMP.

"Hmmm...it might just work, and for $0.99 what the hell. If nothing else I have a clamp."

And here it is installed.



And for all of you wondering what exactly it was I had been looking for.



The return isn't quite as strong as the original spring but it seems to work just fine. It was the one on the driver door that was broke, so I took the one off of the passenger side and put on the driver side putting the hand clamp spring on the passenger side. Made sense to me.

So there you have it. I have some ideas for today, but as always I will start with going around trying to find some pieces that I determined I need last night. It is one of the more frustrating things to me about this build. Before I joined the Army I worked for the family business which was industrial equipment sales and repair. My house was next door to the shop. I had welders, torches, lathes, and years and years of tool accumulation to choose from not to mention the bolt bins, wire carts, hose machines and more bins of misc. stuff than most parts stores.

Now if I realize I need a fine thread bolt instead of a course thread, it's off to the store. And my tool selection...yeah kinda lacking I hate to admit. Not to mention some dick head decided they needed my compressor and one of my tool bags filled with misc. tools more than I did and helped themselves to them from my carport. Which is really sad cause it's not like they were getting Snap-On or anything, and probably not worth near to them what they were to me. Anyway, enough ranting, it doesn't do any good...back to work.

 

Last night on the way home I drove by a truck like that in a field. I'm not sure on the year, but the grill looked the same as yours. I was thinking it may have some parts you need. If you want I can tell you were it is. It is not far from your house.

 

Looks great. Thats a really slick body style IMO. I'm currently working on my project with my 76 year old grandpa and its the greatest thing in the whole world. So I agree with the others, get your daughter involved with the project. Even if its doing little things you think nothing of, like bolting/screwing stuff back together, it will give her a big sense of accomplishment.

Looking forward to watching this project progress.

As far as the wheels, I would think you could probably list them on craigslist and make some money off of them. Then you could replace them with different, more traditional wheels. IF thats what you want to do of course.

 

Well ya'll, not allot to report. Not even a good story. Picked up some misc. bolts and steel yesterday morning then spent most of the rest of the day taping and prepping the interior and then spraying the floorboard, fire wall, roof and back of cab with rubberized paint. It's pretty much all the areas that will be covered with carpet or fabric when the interior is complete but figured it might help with sound deadening and longevity. Also worked on the door poppers a little bit and think (after drilling a set of holes in my door that didn't work) I finally found a place to mount the solenoid where it won't interfere with the window (when I get windows).

So that was pretty much it and I didn't take any pictures yet (figure I'll do that when I get the rest of the paint in the cab) but got a question: Weatherstripping? Any suggestions?

As always, thanks ya'll and stay solid.

 

Keep up the good work... I hope my kids are into these old rides when they are older... so far they like all cars,. I have a couple projects waiting for "us".... Have fun...

 

"Old rides" is a relative term I think. The other day our 8 year old came in telling us about "Back in 1992 in ancient times...".

So to me, a '56 Dodge is kinda old. To my son, apparently before 1992 is damn near ancient. And I'm guessing that to my 14 year old daughter, if its not a 2011 model it's probably "old".

All things come and go and unfortunately some come back again (VW Bugs and bell bottom jeans for example). But truly classic styling is forever. When the creator got it so right the first time that the more and more people tried to improve upon it, the worse they did. (Hence the reason any of us that had enough money would have a New Ford GT parked next to our original GT-40).

Just my quick thoughts on "old rides" and getting older. My age might change, but at the end of the day I was still born in 1976.

 

Got a little work done today but not allot and really nothing worth writing about. The damn weather here has not been conducive to painting at all, so I sealed up the cab and put a portable electric heater in there so maybe it will all be dry in the morning. Anyway, the best part of the day was when my daughter gave me the pictures she had taken when the truck first arrived at the house, so, for your viewing pleasure:

Sunshine and shorts...obviously not a recent picture. I believe it was early May 2009.


I still have these wheels and tires in the back of the truck for those of you who don't like the 17's.


Easy access to the rear end.


Me replacing some distributer parts trying to get it running right before I broke the key off the bottom of the shaft. Luckily I was able to fish it out, drop in a new distributer and it started right up.


Neighborhood kids passing by. All the boys thought it was a "cool old truck"...the girls, not so much.


The ventilated seat might have been nice for a warmer climate, but we are going with heated seats here in the great Northwest.




She really does have potential though...

 

looks better without those "plastic" wheels on it seriously tho good job gettin the kids involved. she'll be alot more careful with it if she helped build it. i got a 2 year old son, every time i go out to the shed he's right behind me and he askes every weekend if theres a hotrod show on. good to get em started young (i've also got a daughter due to be born any day now and i hope to hell when she grows up i never have to read something like twilight she'll be into cars no matter what her mum says about it)

 

Test

 

lol

 

Well, it's been damn near three weeks so I guess I should post some updates. I didn't spend my entire vacation working on the truck, but certainly the majority of it.

I also made several observations along the way:

Money doesn't go near as far as you think it should. I didn't make any what I would call major purchases, but the nickel and dime stuff adds up. And it seems no matter how small or cheap the part you set out to buy might be, you cannot possibly get in and out of the parts store/tool store for less than $20. There is always just one other thing you need to pick up.

Time doesn't go near as far as you think it should either. You get up in the morning, look at your project and think, "Ok, today I'm going to knock out this, that and the other." And as the sun is setting and you are just finishing up the "this", you realize that the "that" and the "other" are going to have to wait for tomorrow.

This one kinda goes with the time issue, but doing things right takes allot longer than just doing them. Whether its electrical, paint and body, or mechanical, to do it right takes a little longer, but is worth it in the end (at least in my opinion).

All that being said about time though, I did find that whatever I did to the driver side door only took a fraction of the time on the passenger side door. Unfortunately this only covered a small number of projects and really didn't make up for time lost on ordeals such as the following:

It was maybe a week ago and I had finished up installing a new wiring harness (EZ Wiring-All Black Wires). It all worked out really well and I have plenty of circuits and extra wiring for the extra electronics that will be part of the truck. (And I just realized I didn't get a good picture of it-So I'll do that later-This is the ONLY picture I got of wiring)-



Anyway-I get the hankering to hear it run. So, a few gallons of fresh gas, a jumper wire across the resistor (I hadn't replaced it yet), a turn of the key-



a couple of pumps on the go pedal and a bump of the starter button-



And the thing literly bust right off! I haven't heard it run in well over a year. I was so stoked. And after about five minutes it died. No spark. WTF? So, pop the distributer cap, and things look OK, but I have an extra set of points and a condenser, so I go to change them out. No issue. Till I drop the damn points retaining screw into the distributer. So, out comes the distributer. Get the screw, put everything back together, and still no spark. WTF? So, next morning (it's late at this point) off the store for a resistor and this other little part that went from the negative post on the distributer to ground (kinda looked like a large condenser) that I had no idea what was for but had started smoking the night before while I was messing with the distributer (and my father taught me that electronics consist of magic smoke trapped inside devices and if the smoke ever gets out their no good anymore). The parts guy looks at my piece, looks it up and says "It's some sort of noise suppressor, and about $50 bucks." Well screw that...I just don't need it. End state, the smoke got out, it was grounding my distributer and once it was removed (had I bothered to check) I had plenty of spark. So, back in business. The truck starts and runs but now I get to deal with point’s adjustment and timing again. Hours gone because of a problem that could have been remedied with a pair of wire cutters. So goes the joys of building your own hotrod.

But as you can see its black on the inside now.



A little bit of an improvement I think.

Power heated seats out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee-



The red button is the starter button. The toggle to the right is the wiper switch, the next one over is the driver window, then the driver heated seat, and then the passenger heated seat and lastly the passenger window. The wiper setup will likely get a second switch next to it for high and low. The heated seat switches aren't hooked up yet as I am still trying to figure out exactly how the heated control modules work. But the windows work great and are both one-touch up and down as well as remote up and down through the key fob-



and remote door poppers. It's all kinda cool as long as you have power. A manual cable will find its way somewhere to the driver door for the inevitable dead battery or when the key fob gets left in the truck with the windows up.

Some other additions where a new throttle assembly and matching brake and dimmer switch pads, a new steering wheel (which required modifying the adapter since I cut six inches off the column) and some fresh paint to the gauge cluster-



The temp and fuel gauges don't seem to be working but at this point I don't know if it is the gauges or the sending units and really am not that overly concerned at this time. Eventually I would like to replace the gauge cluster with a six gauge set up adding a Tachometer, but at this point in time am rolling with what I got.

I also want to replace the steering column with an old Chevy tilt column that is actually set up for an automatic transmission as it would give me a little adjustment, self canceling blinkers and a real shifter mechanism as opposed to the setup I hand crafted from plumbing and electrical pieces from Home Depot-



But, for the time being, it starts and runs. Shifts from park. The seats are adjustable and the windows go up and down-



But I think the tint might be a little dark. Should keep stray animals out for now though and maybe one day soon I'll get some of those new fancy see through windows.

Hell, the high and low beams and blinkers and brake lights even work-



Although getting my $10 tow lights to perform double duty took a little work. I picked them up on sale at Harbor Freight and it was actually a set of magnetic tow lights. So, I painted the amber lenses black and using a couple of diodes on each light were able to make them work for both brake and turn signal duty (and of course parking lights). The front parking lights where much easier as all I had to do was insert some two post connectors and slightly modify the bulbs for them to work as both parking and blinker. Eventually I want to find a set of round amber lights that will fit into the bed rail tubes for dedicated rear blinkers, but for now, I have about $12 bucks invested in tail/stop/blinker lights. At least the price was right.

But, she's coming along. Indeed the rear end that is in it is set up for parking brakes and I was able to acquire a parking brake pedal assembly out of an old Chevy van that I think will work. Eventually I'll get around to replacing the entire brake system (disc up front, all new plumbing, rebuild the rear and either a power system on the firewall or at least a newer master cylinder under the floorboard) but if I can get it so that we can at least move it around for now I'll be happy. But it is what it is and will get my attention when I can afford to give it to her. And as always, any suggestions or guidance from you experienced ones out there will be greatly appreciated. Or, if by some strange twist of fate there is something I might be able to help you with, hit me up and I'll see what I can do.

 

Could you add a second hand clamp spring to beef it up?

Great project and great writeup, really enjoyed reading it so far!

 

Actually I ended up replacing both latch springs with the hand clamp springs. The original spring was just a little too much for the door poppers to work regularly so...kinda one of those blessing in disguise things.

 

good luck

 

Please keep posting, great build going there. GOD bless family projects, awesome!!!

 

This is a great build so far! I look forward to seeing how it comes out. My 10 year old daughters comments about Twilight came up when I brought my truck home.

Post some more ideas that I can steal for my build!

 

from a 22 year old chick to a father with a teenage daughter : AWSOME BUILD! So glad she's into the old truck thing. any of the boys would envy her when that things on the road

 

has she been helping with it ? does she check it out at times?
thank you for your service. My dad wanted to redo a 50's Vette but we never got to - its great to see this project in all of its steps - great job

 

Thanks for the support guys. Had something pop up and won't be working on the truck for the next month or so but should have some connectivity to check in from time to time. Good luck on all your projects and may the Hot Rod gods bless you with full tanks and beautiful weather.

 

This is a cool project. Definitely get your daughter involved hands on for sure. If she has her own sweat & blood into the truck she will respect it more & likely be more protective of it. Have you/are you installing seatbelts? I think that would be a very good idea. Even if just to head off the police asking why she is not wearing her seat belt, let alone the safety aspect.

A low compression, low power mildly cammed engine is just the ticket for a new driver. Reliability is more important than brute HP. Handing a brand new driver a high powered car is a bad idea IMO. I started off with an old V6 Malibu that barely had enough power to get out of its own way & if it had been a fire breather I probably wold not still be around to talk about it. I think my dad was worried I would kill myself with a 300 horse SBC when I was 16. He was right, I would have. give your daughter a few years to get used to the truck & driving in general & them upgrade to a more powerful drivetrain.

 

There's a guy on Ebay that sells all kinds of door springs cheap. I just bought a couple for my car.

 

An edelbrock Performer with a small Holley or edelbrock 4 bl is a big improvement over the OEM 2 bl for drivability. 1st thing I do on a 318.