Project: Over My Head

[yossarian19]

Hey, thanks.
When the primer is cured, hopefully some time this afternoon, I'll roll on some more under coating.
If I get some energy (more coffee) I can start work with tin snips and welder to fix up the toeboard. Went to the hardware store for a bit of 22ga steel - left with wheels for the bench grinder, a respirator for lead paint dust, some stainless screws & a bit of steel.

[yossarian19]

Got a rudimentary column pass-thru shield made & installed. Also laid down the last of the floor board's coating.
Once I've got the toe board patches all figured out and I'm satisfied with the column mounting / covers, I'll be moving on towards that.
Theoretically I should have had the seat back ~4 weeks ago. Oh, well.
Might even clean off the rust in the headliner area & seal that up while I wait on the bench.

[Mjminino]

Have pics of the shield? I am going to have to buy all of that stuff for the 64. The PO did me no favors

[yossarian19]

Heh, picture 22 ga steel with tin snips, a grinder & a drill hastily applied to it.
I'll get a picture when I'm feeling less lazy

[yossarian19]

I got away for a few more minutes today.
Headliner:


Personal Protective Equipment worn while I had the 6" sander attacking the rust:


Column dust / pass thru shield :



I also got as far as primer on the freshly-cleaned headliner, some time tomorrow or on Saturday I'll put under coating up there to help deaden sound. It's pretty cold in the garage, though, so primer is taking a long time to cure.

Last Saturday, I made it to the local car club's cruise-in. Took a picture of Clay with a much cleaner '57...


The Upholstery shop is continuing to take it's time. Ideally, I think the sound deadener on the roof will finish curing about an hour before I pick up the seat & bolt it back in. Maybe next monday?

I considered welding a little more patch metal into the toe board but just didn't feel like it. Shrug. It's nothing I can't access with the seat in place.

[Kim57]

Cute pic.
Keep plugging away at it and you'll get there.
Kim

[yossarian19]

I didn't get a picture of the headliner area sanded, primed or painted. If you're reading this, I'm guessing you know what bare metal, Rustoleum and black under coating look like by now.
I did stop by the craft store & pick up some 3/16" paper-sided foam board + some spun polyester batting, though. I found a utility razor worked well to score the foam board, a glue stick stuck the batting down well enough & a heat gun + some windex did wonders to get the headliner rubber back in place. It was shockingly difficult, actually, to get that rubber in place.
Pics are self explanatory. Fit wasn't so hot along the front edge but I'm happy enough. Also, a rap on the roof used to make a tinny "mallet on a steel barrel" sort of sound. Now, it sounds solid. Should help with interior noise.


Once the seat is in we'll start thinking about carpet & headliner colors - so I'm content to leave it white for now.

[Mjminino]

That's bad ass. Good job!

[Kim57]

Nice job.
Kim

[yossarian19]

Finally got the seat back from the upholstery shop. Took home the extra fabric from the project, too - in case I want to do some matching accents. Got the seat bolted down & installed the seatbelts again. Still need to tether the shoulder strap to something but I can now take my wife for a spin around the block in this thing - been a long time coming!'

[Mjminino]

Ohhhhhhhhh yeah! Congrats!

[Kim57]

The seat came out real nice.
Kim

[yossarian19]

Went ahead and fabbed up some shoulder belt hangers. 3/16" thick 1 1/2" angle iron. The plug weld holes proved to be totally optimistic - there is no way I could reach them with the welder.




Ugly at the moment, still need to grind and clean it a bit. I'd have liked to have tied the mounts into something sturdier than surface sheet metal but there isn't anything. All I can come up with would be to drill through all 3 layers of the B pillar from front to back, put a sleeve in there & through the belt tab and weld the sleeve into both sides. Sounds like too much work, though, and I'm sick of grinding / welding near old paint.

[Mjminino]

Here ya go bro. Remember how I said I have read a bunch of build threads? I save everything anyways maybe this post will be able to help you.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...487100&page=18

Post # 444

I know it's not the same year as yours BUT maybe something can come from it.

[yossarian19]

Cleaned up the welds & mounted belts. Replaced rear shocks w/ some cheapies from Amazon. Reattached bumper & hood support with new hardware (sick of twisting rust). Got it up to 50, noted improvement but room for more stability. Really thinking about a sway bar kit but the wife has informed me that it's time to stop spending on the truck - presumably unless something is broke or we are moved into a house we own.
BUT - for the first time, I took the wife around the block in the truck.
She loved it.
She even likes the noise it makes downshifting to second & winding out to, I'd have to guess, 4500 RPM on it's way to "too fast for the neighborhood".
Clay, who was riding along, was kind of confused. Hell, he's only 4 months - I'll just have to be patient...

[Mjminino]

Hell at 4 months i was sitting in a car seat in the stands while my dad drag raced at a local strip! At least that's what I'm told

[mrvette]

Tomcat, got your email and link to here this AM, been reading whole thread, I can't believe I been missing all this for nearly 3 years now, at one time I did sign in/register on this forum, but somehow the browser or me or something happened and the link got dumped.....and I forgot about it....

Well, at any rate I happy to get caught up and see the pix of your work, looks decent, far better a welder than I ever was....

Only one comment, the p/s pump pressure line goes to the HB and then from the Booster it has a port to feed the steering pump, and a return to the pump tank/sump I could not see from the pix for sure that was done....

[yossarian19]

I ordered ES416-R & ES416-L from Summit the other day. These are the tie rod ends used in CPP's power steering kit. With less than 75 miles on the TRE's supplied in the kit, though, they were sloppy. Unacceptable. So here I am, replacing them with MOOG units.

Moments later, I checked or play and found that the pitman arm was loose on the shaft. The nut had backed off. That makes the third time in life I've wondered "Why is my steering so loose?" and the answer was "Pitman nut". I don't know what to make of it but I'll be using loctite & a torque wrench to square this away - for the moment, I just heaved on a big-damn crescent wrench until it was goodentite.

I think I'll take the truck down to work tomorrow, see how the re-torque & new TRE's change things.

[Bangkok Dean]

I have been following this link thanks to your Dad passing it on to me from a Corvette web site we both frequent.

Your 57 is progressing quire good, I will be checking this link from time to time.

BTW here is my updated build link, that you had visited before. Cheers, Dean

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=636474

[mrvette]

Tomcat, you gotta spend some bux for AMERICAN made Moog, and all sorts of stories about Moog boxes and import junk parts, I dunno who guilty of what on that one.....

as for the pitman arm nut, YES, Locktite RED, and you tork that ***** to ~100 ft lbs anyway.....they maybe say it has to be tighter, but 100 worked fine on several cars including the goat.....you DO remember the GOAT, don't you???

[yossarian19]

Looked at the box : Made in USA.

Took the truck in to the shop when I returned from lunch. The new, USA made rod ends did improve steering. When I grabbed a torque wrench to get the pitman arm down to spec, I got another 270* or so from "bastard tight". Lord willing, it doesn't work itself loose again. 60 MPH on the way home felt... better. Definitely best yet.

Talking to the foreman, he threw a few ideas at me for front suspension. Coilovers on the beam, 4-link + pitman & coils, swapping the shackle to the rear, etc. It got me thinking - I've got a lot more options than "Crown Vic // Mustang II // C10". Next time I'm under the truck, I'll look a bit at how feasible moving the shackle to the rear end might be.

[mrvette]

EH, still think A arms are better....but you going to obviously have to fab your way into that.....no bolt on's.......

[Bangkok Dean]

Originally Posted by mrvette

EH, still think A arms are better....but you going to obviously have to fab your way into that.....no bolt on's.......

Independent front suspension is the only way to go. With all the work already done why skip a very important step from the beginning.

Ever wonder why they don't use straight axles any more.....

[yossarian19]

A arms are obviously better. If I'd known of the Crown Vic option, I'd probably have done it from the outset.
At this point, I've got a fair amount of money tied up in the leaf springs / I-beam setup and don't need much more out of it to be totally happy with how they perform.
I'm also a little short of spare time so an IFS would see the truck stuck in the garage longer than I'm willing to leave it there.
I'll give it a little thought but expect to continue on with the front I-beam, tweaking it a little at a time. It's fun, it's relatively cheap and I like the overall feel of the vehicle. I mean, fergodsake, I made the bed out of a blown-down fence... let's not get too fancy.

[yossarian19]

Been picking at the toe board during spare moments. Welded in about a dozen holes and a handful of patches over the larger ones. Used a 5/16" Rota Broach on a 3/8" drill to cut the spot welds that held the old pedal brackets / pass thru ports down. Scrubbed a ton of dirt off and found that it's not actually rusty - it just had a hard layer of silt on top of the paint. Score!

So now I'm waiting for the thing to dry off before I can put down some paint. Don't mind the wiring, either - I'll clean that up (someday)