Dan's 1956 GMC

[Goldengophersax56]

Back in June 2015...

Twas the night before Back to the Fifties and all through the garage...

Over the spring, my brother picked up a 62 Austin Healey Sprite. It runs and drives which is what he wants until he can finish his Model A. He does plan to do a few small upgrades over the winter, but for a now he is going to just drive it.

[II_Slow]

Did you add fishplates or box the frame where it is butt-welded in post #4?
I would be very hesitant to trust just a butt-weld on the frame.

[Goldengophersax56]

We decided to weld a plate on the inside of the frame. I was toying with boxing the frame in entirely, but I liked the idea of being able to run the fuel and brake lines on the inside of the frame and being able to access them. It worked out real nice so far.

[Goldengophersax56]

So continuing on with my update from last summer...

Back to the Fifties was a bit more...interesting this year than in past years. We had a beautiful drive out to the MN State Fairgrounds (20 min from home). We arrived in the line and hung out until the gates opened.

When we went to head into the fairgrounds, the Caddy wouldn't start (vapor lock again). Dad sent my brother and me in without them and said they would catch up when the car cooled. We got to our usual parking area and waited. About an hour later, the Caddy was parked right across the street from us (we lucked out there).

Friday night when we went to leave, the Caddy died again in the middle of Snelling and Larpenteur which is a very busy intersection outside of the fairgrounds. It took a small army to push the car to safety. We eventually got it running and nursed it back home. When we got home and parked the cars, we noticed a bad smell coming from the Healey. The generator fried.

Long story short, we put a better insulator between the carb and the motor on the Caddy and ran it the rest of the weekend, and we ran the Healey off a battery and recharged it at night and during the day at the car show. Hectic weekend, but still enjoyable.

I scored some new ceramic coated headers and a new distributor out there.

[Goldengophersax56]

A few more pics from the car show. I love the vintage plane flyover that they do during the National Anthem. The last one is me picking up my new headers (in the way back).

[Goldengophersax56]

Ok, back to work on the truck. Sometime back last summer...

I was still working on replacing body pieces over the summer. The driver side was done being patched at this point and I moved on to the passenger side. Here is a shot of my girlfriend doing some of the welding. She didn't do too bad!

[Goldengophersax56]

Late August 2015

I headed up to a junkyard about an hour north of where I live to look for an overhanging pedal assembly. I originally wanted to do a frame mount, but there were too many issues with it interfering with the tranny cross member, exhaust, etc. I managed to score one out of a 70ish Chevy pickup. While I was at it, I decided to get the master cylinder and booster too so I had something for mock-up.

I ended up adapting my steering column mount that I built and the pedal to get everything in the right spot. I still have some cleaning up to do on it, but that will happen after everything is set up. No sense in making it pretty yet in case I have to go back and change something.

[Goldengophersax56]

Fall was spent welding up and grinding all the patch work that had been done since April. Unfortunately I only have one so-so picture that I took in the middle of the process.

The family also took some time to do some camping. My parents bought a '57 Pathfinder camper that we did some work on and took up to Lake Superior in early October. Late November turned into the busy Christmas season which had me working on a bunch of music stuff at Church.

[Goldengophersax56]

From early January up until now I shifted from cab work over to the plumbing on the frame for brakes and fuel system as well as helping my dad do some extensive work on the Caddy.

All the fuel system parts were from Summit. I went with 3/8" aluminum fuel line, braided stainless hose and -6AN fittings. I also purchased the Edelbrock mechanical fuel pump. The '70 Mustang tank and fuel sender came from a local place (Auto City Classics) up in Isanti, MN.

The brake line parts came from Speedway. All the lines and the AN fittings are stainless steel. The flex line from the frame to the front disks and rear axle are Russel braided stainless lines from Summit as well as the stainless adapter fittings. I also bought a 37 degree flaring tool from Speedway to do all the flaring for the AN fittings.

To get the fuel tank in there, I had to move the rear cross member back behind the tank. I will keep an eye on the top frame rails above the leaf spring mounts and if I see any flexing, I will make some braces for it. I had to grind about a half an inch off of each lower frame rail to fit the tank down in the frame. It sits on top of the lower frame rail. It's not ideal for removing it from the truck, but that was the best fit. It's bolted to a cross member in front of the tank and a piece of angle iron behind the tank.

I made one small modification to the sender. I decided to cut the bubble flare off of it and put on an AN fitting so I could screw my flex line directly to it. This way I would avoid having the end of the stainless line start to come apart and stuff like that.

I still have to run lines from the master cylinder down to the lines that go to the front and rear of the truck, but I am going to hold off on that for a now until I have the actual master/booster that I am going to use. I also still have to throw in a few more clamps here and there.

[Kim57]

Looking good.
Kim

[Advanced Design]

Nice work! Back to the 50's sounds like it was a fun time even with the car issues. Thanks for sharing.

[Goldengophersax56]

With the shop tied up for a big cabinet project, the truck is being stored in the back room (no heat or space to work on it). I decided to take the alternator off the motor and paint the case for it and clean it up. My girlfriend also bought me a new bracket for it from Summit. I like it because it has the turnbuckle to tighten up the belt instead of having to slide the alternator and tighten the bolt. It was a good thing that I decided to do this project because when I went to take the guts out of it, I discovered that the brushes were pretty much shot.

[Kim57]

It came out real nice.
Kim

[Goldengophersax56]

Thanks Kim!

[RockinKees]

Bracket loods good!
Never opened an alternator myself, doesn't look to hard to do....

[Goldengophersax56]

Just take pictures of each step. Makes it real easy to put back together.

We have another 2-3 weeks of cabinet work for church still. The first batch of cabinets are done so we are hoping to spend Saturday getting the transmission put in the Caddy and get it back on the ground. It'll be a stretch but we'll see.

Once the second batch of cabinets are done, the plan is to finish up the Caddy and bring the Plymouth and our boat home from winter storage. I'm guessing it'll probably be about May before I get back to anything big on my truck. I hope to have the last few patch panels done and have it in primer by mid may. We'll see though.

[Goldengophersax56]

Well, life got in the way of progress once again. We were able to get the transmission and carb work done on the Caddy and the car runs like a dream. As summer progressed, we started to develop a really bad vibration in the Plymouth which turned out to be the torque converter. Work for both my dad and I took a lot of the spare energy for evenings so not much progress was made. We also started a bunch of home improvement work replacing windows on the house, re-siding our shop (part of it) and replacing garage doors. On the upside, Dad retires in May and he is planning on adding onto the shop, so that'll be exciting. Enough babbling though.

The only thing that I was able to accomplish in the sparse time that I had this summer was to get the steering box hooked up to the column. I had to take my custom mount and cut it apart and tweak it a few times to get a better angle. I ended up going with Borgeson components. I apologize for the poor picture quality, my camera was messed up.

I also picked up lower door skins and the door bottoms because those were shot on both doors. That is going to be the next major step.

[Goldengophersax56]

So, more things to get me sidetracked from my 56 Pickup project. This one is really cool though.

I stumbled on a 56 GMC 650 COE a few years ago on a yearly fishing vacation. The last few years I've driven past it wondering about it. I finally called the place that it was sitting outside of and got a hold of the owner. She said make an offer. $800 bucks later I now have two 1956 GMC's. This one won't get touched for a handful of years. I plan on making the two trucks match someday. The hope is to build this one into a motor home. We'll see though. Still a number of years off. Metal-wise, it will need a new floor, cab corners, and door bottoms.

[Az. Hank]

That is cool!

[Nut Case]

Hey Golden

Fun build, love the cab on a rotisserie, it gave me some ideas for my cab work.

Think about making the COE into a pro touring 1/2 pick up. Bet no one has done it that way.

Just a wild a$$, outa the envelope thought.

Good on ya.

NC

[buggy5872]

Your 56 GMC 650 is really a F650. The "F" stands for forward cab. The chevy versions of them at "LCF" Low Cab Forward. When you gat to it look me up I can give you some pointers. Being a 650 it probably has an Olds 371 engine. GMC calls it a 370.