Your an AMAZING fabricator & seem to be very , very smart.........
.I am in the process of patching up my floor pans !!! The part directly below your cab mounts the pieces with the 3 or 4 channels that are open on the end . I think water gets in there and rust the floor pans . Do you think it would be OK if I plugged the openings . I wonder if they will fill up with water from another area .
Oh I just remembered I may try to spray paint of rust converter in there as far as I can . What do you think
Also , what is your opinion of J B weld ? I have used it a little & it seems to be like steel . I did a few small areas 6 months ago over some very small expanded metal .
Is it long lasting ?

 

For those taking notes, what would you do different if you had to start over?[/QUOTE]

The next truck or car I build, I am sand blasting the whole thing. Sanding sucks. I still havent sanded, primed, and painted my truck bed yet on my 72 f250. Thats the biggest obstacle that was slow going for me. If mine would not have been painted over, I would have like to keep the original patina paint.

 

The next truck or car I build, I am sand blasting the whole thing. Sanding sucks. I still havent sanded, primed, and painted my truck bed yet on my 72 f250. Thats the biggest obstacle that was slow going for me. If mine would not have been painted over, I would have like to keep the original patina paint.[/QUOTE]

I haven't gotten to really the final body/paint part of this build yet and I'm not sure if I really want to do it or not. I want it done correctly and here in northern NM I just can't seem to find a shop I trust to do any work at a reasonable price point. If people out here see that you might have any semblance of money, they'll charge you for it. We get quotes on our home and because it's a nice home, they have that 'rich white guy' up-charge on the quotes. So I end up doing it myself, generally.

But so far, I probably would have gone with a crate motor for one as piece of mind instead of building this one out. I'm glad I went with the 6R80 for this build so far, but I will probably send the transmission out to be rebuilt as it's as I purchased it off of Marketplace. Not sure how good it is and I'm sure the guy I bought it from toasted it. For a crate motor I think going with the 7.3 Godzilla with a cam and then later on supercharging it would be fun. I may end up gong that route with my crewcab as there is a company doing trans mounts for the SBF to Mod motor now and I can put a NP435 with a doubler and NP205 behind it for amazing strength.

2nd, I probably would have looked for a shortbed to begin with and just boxed it in from there, but I would have gone with 1/8" sheet instead of 3/16". The frame is quite heavy, but at least it's strong.

We'll see how it goes once I get a driveshaft made and the exhaust fabricated. Still working those out. Hope to have those finished in the next few months as I'm currently working to re-vamp my garage with cabinets and wall mount cabinets for better storage solutions and a cleaner area.

For current work, it finally warmed up enough so that I could paint the driveshaft clearance modifications. So those are coated and I've purchased an exhaust kit and flanges to mount a driveshaft (to be ordered next month). The 6R80 flange yoke is on backorder and hopefully going to ship later this month from Summit. We'll see... Once it comes in, I can measure for the driveshaft and get that ordered.


Flange yoke to get a driveshaft mated to the IRS. This is for 1350 U-bolts.


P/N for the flange yoke if anyone is interested. Make sure you measure as there are two sizes. One for the aluminum auto transmissions (this one) and one for the cast iron manual transmissions.


Exhaust kit off of Amazon for $180. after measuring it seems to be actual 18 gauge SS. I believe it's 400 series SS, but SS non-the-less. I got a few other things as well, but didn't grab pics yet.


painted bottom of the cab area where I clearanced for the driveshaft.


painted cross member. Will repaint after it dries a bit as the undercoating was still wet as well.

 

Well, I've been pretty busy since the last post. Not really on the truck, but in the garage. I decided to add paint to the walls and ceiling along with adding cabinets to the walls. I went mainly with the Husky standing cabinets (36"w x 72" h x 18" d) and wall cabinets (28" w x 28" h x 12" d). I also decided to get the Harbor Freight wall cabinets that are only 8" deep and then started getting the walls ready for paint. Here's what the garage looked like before starting... it was a mess.



Side my wife gets to park in. This was the best looking at this point in time.


This is the back of the garage. Needless to say I didn't have much space to really work anywhere.


And the side where all my tools were located. Needed quite a bit of work.

Also decided to go with the wall rail system to hold all the yard tools. For $100, you can get a set of the Rubbermaid wall rails and several attachments. I got two sets that allowed for a 96" length. For the wife's side I put three of the standing cabinets up and one of the harbor freight wall cabinets up along with the rail mount system. This is what it looks like after I got the wall painted and everything back on the walls.


Getting the wall ready for paint.


Painted! I hate using rollers. While cleaning my paint sprayer that I was given I lost a part and it wouldn't work right, so I had to roll the paint. ugh....


Getting the wall mount system up.


Wife's side of the garage put up. Still lots of organization to go.

It's not perfect, but it looks 100% better already. For the back wall, while cleaning everything up and moving it, I found the ball bearing that I lost for my paint sprayer. So I got that back in and back to working. This made painting so much faster. Instead of 2 hrs for painting a wall, it took 10 min for two coats. So much easier!!!! Here are a few pics of what it looks like now.



Here are the harbor freight cabinets I'm going to mount.

Here's the corner of the wifes side of the garage. You can see the 1x2's that I will be mounting the cabinets to. Makes it easy to make sure the cabinets are level.

Back wall is painted.


Another image of the back wall painted. Again, you can see where the cabinets will be mounted on the 1x2's. You can also see the 1st Husky wall mount cabinet bracket that I just painted over. No one is going to see it unless the cabinet comes off the wall, so I just left it and painted over it.


Getting things put back together on the back wall.


Cabinets and benches are back along the back wall.

For benches, I have a DIY bench my grinder, drill press, and vice are on, It's 7 ft wide by 2 feet in depth. Works great! I also have two adjustable Husky benches. One is 8ftx2ft and the other is 6ftx2ft that will have craftsman tool cabinets from Lowes that were only $150 below them. After getting this wall sorted, I started on the other wall.


Here's the before corner of where I'll be putting some of the under bench cabinets. This was before I got everything on the wall removed for paint.


Wall is painted and I'm starting to get things back together. You can see all the benches in their spot here. Along with the stereo moved over to on top of the wall cabinets.


With the Husky cabinets no longer on sale, wife got me the Craftsman cabinets for the same price as what the Husky cabinets were, $150 ea. Now to get thing organized.

So now I need to get the garage fully organized and then paint the ceiling. But here are two panoramic photos to show what it looks like now.


This photo is from the middle of the garage. Still working on getting things organized.


Only the ceiling left to paint. Looks 100x better. This was taken before I added the craftsman wall cabinets to the left side of the garage. Finally got all the cardboard out. Only took a full truckload to the recycling to get it all from the new cabinets.

So that is what I've been working on this last month. I also found someone to do a driveshaft for me. I'll need to send my flanges to them, and then they'll get the drive shaft made up for me.

I also got the oil filter location finalized. I made a mount to hold it out a bit so the lines won't rub on the frame and then bolted it in. I'll need to remove it and paint the mount, but this is the location of it.



Oil filter location mounted.


Another view of the oil filter location.

I also ordered the AN fittings for the power steering line to mount to the power steering pump. So once those are here I'll get the lines cut and fit for the power steering rack. A bit ago I ordered the AN fittings for the transmission cooler lines. I got that fit up, but now I need to make some lines and get a cooler for the transmission. I'll figure that one out in a bit.



Transmission oil cooler line adapter.

I also decided to start practicing my TIG welding on Stainless exhaust tube. It's def. not going to be perfect as you will see, but it's been a bit and my eyesight has started taking a poop. So I started wearing glasses while TIG welding. First welds I tried using a back purge, but it wasn't working, so I went ahead and practiced without it. Looks like it to. The last one I used a different tungsten (ceria doped) and a #16 cup with 30 cfm purge. Worked much better along with my back purge kit I updated with better plugs.


Starting to practice Stainless exhaust TIG welding. I have a bit to go... Welds go from left to right and as you can see, I was getting better...


I made my own back purge kit. First with the purple ends, but those kept blowing out, so I ordered some smaller ones. They work much better.


Most recent exhaust weld practice. I'm getting there.

Once I get my driveshaft in, I can start laying out my exhaust. I also got my oil pressure safety switch and wire harness ordered and I just need to get a 1/4 to 1/8 NPT adapter in and that will be mounted. Also ordered the Painless dual fan relay harness so I believe that will be all the wiring that I need to order here. Once that driveshaft is in, I will finish up the exhaust and finalize the fuel and brake lines. Then get the cab back on the frame to finish it up.

 

Looking good! Nice work on the garage organization!

 

Wow, lots of progress!