I am finally getting my poop together for a 34 PU of my own. I just came into a pile of free steel tubing. They were going to throw it in a hopper and my brother asked for it - and it was given to him, now it's mine . There had to be about a thousand pounds of steel. It was one of those - right place/right time things. My brother works in a R&D department where they throw away goodies all the time. You can't keep it all, but this time was an exeption..... Anywho - my point here, or rather the question I have is are you pinching the front rails there or are you running them back perfectly parallel to one another? and if you would be so kind - any dimensions would be good. I am most interested in the space between the rails. I am going with a SBC and I am thinking about using a set of headers that dump inside the rails - maybe... I am planning on making blue prints for this (I am a drafter) and I would like to be able to create and refine the prints so that I may repeat the process and share it all during a tech week or something. It's all about helping the HAMB. ~Broman
Broman The chassis from the rear of the cab on back is still being determined. I drew it up in CAD (image below) as a reference and I will update it as I figure it out. The front crossmember is a JW Rod Garage #03-1705A. The frame horns are Brookville Roadster A158AB but, I am going to cut them off. I was going to run the spring under the crossmember but, changed my mind and will do a suicide setup now so, the frame horns need to come off for axle clearance. The rest of the chassis is .125 wall 2x4 rectangular tube stock. The tapered front rails started life as the .125 wall 2x4 rectangular tube stock with the bottom side cut off, tapered from 2" in front to 4" in the back and welded closed with a piece of .125 2" wide flat stock. Good Luck, Hope this helps.
Oddly enough - I am doing it suicide as well and frame horns are not a concern. I am going to have a different mix of parts, but I have a lot of the same stuff that you have here. Mine is a 34 cab as well. Steering may be from a modified 46 ford. Front axle is actually a modified Model A. SBC as mentioned. Rear end TBD. But I am kind of stuck with some pretty heavy duty tubing for the main part of the frame. Being free I can't argue, but I am using 3"x5" (3/8 thk) tubing. After the kick-up It will be a bit less stout 2"x4". At this point the front section (ahead of the Z) will be wedged sections of the big beef as it is what I have the largest share of. And this is why I have perked up as to what you are doing here. I have some general idea of how I am going about all of this - but it looked like your layout was looking really good. I was a bit worried about not having the chassis look too modern or too home made. You are doing a great job of keeping that balance. Thanks for piping up. BTW - I will share my CAD files when they become more refined. ~Broman
I use Vectorworks CAD and can output a multitude of file formats. What CAD do you use and what file formats can you accept and output? PM me if you would like the CAD file but, don't forget to tell me what format you want. Retrubution
I am a certified AutoCAD guy myself. Been doing it day in and day out for the last 5 years or so. I can probably handle a few file types as well. Of course the .dwg format is desirable but .dxf or ??? For right now I am having pretty good success at tracing your .jpg to scale and adjusting it for my tube sizes. When I get it more refine I will let you see it. Hopefully I will be getting help from one of my brothers friends on the fabrication. He builds dirt track chassis for open modified classes. I am not much of a roundy round fan, but I have seen this guy's stuff and it's almost a shame to see it get all beat up in a season. Anyway thanks for the help - laters.... ~Damion
Hello Everyone Wow, it's been a five weeks since my last post on my 34 pickup project, how time flies when you're having fun. The short block is now together after trip back to the machine shop to bore the cylinders another 20 thousandths. The cylinders ended up 60 thousandths over. The main and rod bearings ended up 10 thousandths under. I bought a new Isky Max 1 camshaft and bearings, Offenhauser 4 ring pistons, rings and heavy duty valve springs.
I've also been working on the bed sides. First, I bought a complete 34 bed kit from Mac’s but, after looking at it; I decided not to use it. I went online and looked at every bed I could find and decided to make it from scratch. As you can see in the photos, I drew it up in CAD, printed it out on my plotter and taped it to a piece of cardboard so I could get a feel for it to determine if I liked it or not. Please give me some feedback on the bed design.
I don't like it, it looks out of proportion to me. I think they look best when the axle centerline is in the center of the bed. Great little truck you're building, btw.
I like your truck ... I would bring the back body line on the bed down to match the front line... Your making great progress
Hello Everyone It's been a busy week. We've made some progress on the bed sides. First I drew what I wanted the bed sides to look like (previous post) in CAD and printed it out in full size. I taped the drawing to a piece of card board and laid it in position to eyeball it. Once it was good, a piece of plywood was CNC cut to the shape of the bead that was going to be pressed into the side of the bed, some 14 gauge sheet metal was cut to size and the bead was pressed into the side using a Pullmax and the plywood as a template. Here are some photos taken today.
As I mentioned in my previous post it was a busy week. In addition the the bed sides, I also made some progress on the flathead. You can see the bolt heads are painted red. This is not the finished look. We painted the bold heads so they won't rust and bleed out from underneath the acorn nut covers. As some you flathead guys may know, the Edelbrock intake does not come with a fan mount so I found a Vern Tardel part and had it polished and will use a stock fan. I included a video clip as well, Enjoy.
Bedsides look great, nice job! I have not done any 14 ga. on my Pullmax yet, looks like I will give it a shot. 14 ga. beads up nicely.
Tim, Thanks for the comments. I checked out your site, really nice work!! I am going to spend a little more time looking at some of your projects.
dude!! nice work i just picked up some new tools to do this same stuff thanks for posting the pics up and NICE project looks like its comming along