It’s Just A Pickup

[Bruce88]

Making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, OK a imitation leather hand bag then.

It’s a good thing that I’m building a work truck with some personal custom touches and not a showroom custom. I can live with some minor flaws that will exist after I’m finished or I would just pick up some new bed side panels from MAR-K. All the dents and less than strait inside panels will be straitened generally but not perfect and a bed liner material will be used.

With all the welding that I’m doing lately and just picked up a new tool to help me with the tasks, (some would call it a crutch) thought some would like to see how I’m using it.(it’s defiantly a keeper in my tool box). Magnetic Hole Plug Welding Tool

I’ve seen some good welders that could weld up the holes without a backup plate and have a perfect small rosette weld with good weld penetration minimal grinding and finish work required. To them my hat is off and I’m really in aw of their abilities but before the good welders find fault with what I presenting it’s just my best attempt with my limited skills as a backyard mechanic and less than a good welder.

I use a product called Picklex 20, it’s a rust converter, helps with cleaning and welding and leaves a protective finish to prevent flash rust if the part is kept in a garage out of the weather for months. One drawback to the product is you can not use self etching primer over it and some of the epoxy primers are also self etching. But when I’m ready for paint all the panels will be sandblasted to remove the rest of the paint before epoxy priming and I think this should take care of that problem. I just scrub it on with a red scotch bright pad for about a minute and wipe area with a clean cloth, no rinsing required.

You can see in the picture below the welder that I use and the copper backup plate or copper tubing that I use. The only problem with using this copper backing is I need another hand to hold it in place.



Laid out the steps I accomplished in welding up the holes in the pictures below. It was kind of like being on a assembly line with all the holes to weld up in the side panels. 18 holes done and another 18 to go at last count but the others will wait till after the bed is disassembled. I prefer to weld down letting gravity work for me when possible.



Was out welding up the holes and guess who showed up, it was Santa claws he sure looks thinner, dressing in brown and driving a UPS truck (must be his off season outfit and look) more parts for the truck hooray.

It’s a custom intermediate fuel filler tube made out of 304 stainless steel. When I made the decision to use a blazer fuel tank for the truck build there was one problem with the installation that I wanted to address. The fuel tank has a 1-1/4 inch diameter inlet tube, the tube on the filler cap that will be used is 2 inch diameter and there is approximately 2 inch high area between the frame and bed to feed the line thru. So I wanted a reducer tube to couple the inlet and outlet together made out of stainless steel to minimize any rust problems (the hunt for some one to make this custom part was on).

Didn’t find anybody locally that was working in stainless steel tubing so onto searching the web and found Heartthrob Exhaust Accessories http://www.heartthrobexhaustinc.com After looking thru their catalog and abilities generated a drawing of what I was looking for and e-mailed them to see if they could do it and after some minor changes to the design to align with their manufacturing capabilities, they said they could (you can see the finalized drawing I sent them below). But there was a small problem about price, If I need it right away there would be a $200.00 tooling setup charge plus material but if I could wait a undetermined number of months until they would be making a production run of the stainless steel tubing in the size needed they could slip my custom tube into the line and there would not be any tooling setup charges. I went with the second option, knowing that I would not need this part for a number of months down the road and placed the order total cost to me $78.00 plus shipping (a good price for a custom stainless steel tube) you can see a picture of the filler tube below.

It’s always good to find a company that will work with you on custom parts without charging you an arm and a leg (and planning ahead for the parts definitely helped me). Thank you Heartthrob Exhaust Accessories the part is exactly what I wanted and the input on design and options for purchase is well appreciated.

For others that might be looking for a 6 inch long reducer tube from 1-1/4 inch OD to 2 inch OD in steel or stainless steel they have it in their catalog as one of their stock items.



You will definitely be seeing the installation of this custom fuel filler tube in future posts on this build.

Being a new be to this forum and still figuring things out. I just figured out what the little white boxes to the right on the index page for this thread mean and how they got there. Thanks to those for the vote on this build it’s appreciated by me.