1966 F100 Short Bed Styleside Metal/Body/Paint Work

[theastronaut]

Getting started back on this one. I only quickly mentioned before that the old frame that Fatman built was done incorrectly; they welded the front crossmember in about 2.5" too far forward and missed that one of the front rails was bent. They unded up not being willing to make it right, so instead of trying to fix it the owner decided to start over with a new chassis from No Limit Engineering. The new frame has fully boxed rails and a very substantial center brace to increase torsional rigidity, much improved geometry and bigger/stronger components compared to the usual Mustang II based IFS, double adjustable Viking coilovers, huge Wilwood brakes, wrench flats on the eccentric upper control arm shaft for easily adjusted camber/caster... No Limit really knows what they're doing. We asked if they could build the front frame rails with bolt on bumper mounts with some adjustability made into them (it normally bolts directly to the solid frame rails) so we could dial in the fit of the bumper to the body,, and also asked that they leave off the filler neck flange on the gas tank so we could locate it ourselves with the hole in the bed.

Once No Limit had it finished the owner picked it up and swapped over the new Coyote and 6 speed from the old frame, and had the exhaust built and ceramic coated before delivering it to us. This will be a huge upgrade compared to the old frame, the increased frame rigidity will go a long way in keeping the panels in alignment over time. I spent a ton of time making the panel alignment and gaps perfect on the first C10 I ever restored but after driving it a bit the stock frame was flexible enough that the panels shifted slightly.



















The new frame required notching one of the floor braces, so I cut out a section for clearance and boxed it back in with matching 14g. It also has electric parking brakes now, so the hole and brace I made for the Lokar e-brake handle won't be needed.















Extra long filler neck with separate flanges to build our own neck. I'll wait until the bed, cab, and front end are all back on and everything is shimmed/leveled an in their final position to make sure the filler neck is centered in the floor opening.











Adding door jamb switches. I measured from a hinge bolt hole out to the door edge to see how close the door would fit against the jamb, then hung a plumb bob from the matching bolt hole in the hinge arm and found a spot that would stick out enough to contact the switch.