Another Crewcab build

[66Z71]

Originally Posted by suicide 63

Its looking good.Just an opinion, you should radius the corners of you doors like Frizzle Fry did to his.I stole the pic from his build thread.

nope... I like it though, a lot. But it violates my prime rule of keeping it simple enough to actually finish it. Besides I want it to look stock

[66Z71]

Originally Posted by Strodder

That's a funny place to put the Master Cylinder & Power Brake unit.

That's for back seat drivers of course

[joe231]

that is WAY cool!!!!

[protrash64]

Nice work. That appears to be turning out really well...

[66Z71]

Obviously both doors are somewhat done, and the drivers side rocker is in place. But nothing is finished. I'll break this up into a couple of posts to try and keep it from getting too hard to follow.

First is the rear door. The factory put a lot of metal inside that thing near the hinges to keep it from twisting. I don't see how I'm going to make a window that rolls down. I think I've seen pictures of pickups with solid side glass, but I need to find some more details. Anyhow, I cut out as much support as I thought I could without compromising the structure of the door. I'm going to need a little room to at least install the glass. Even if it doesn't roll down.

Here it is with the inside front opened up like a book.


Here is what it looked like before and after I made some room for a window.



Here's the door sitting together. I couldn't see how I was going to get inside to hold it while I welded, so I gave in, and lapped it instead of butt welding. If it doesn't stay flat I will cover it with a full door panel. I saw that on another truck, and it looked nice.


I don't really know what to do with this area yet, but I'm going to move forward, and try to get it hung, and see what develops with the B pillar from inside.



I folded most of the doorskin back over the inner frame. I left the top unfolded until I decide what to do with it.


I wanted to make sure things didn't move around while I was fitting it up, so I did weld some of it up pretty solid. I left the door lock attached to the rear part of the door, and overlaped it onto the front. It'll all fit behind the upper bolt on panel anyhow, and I thought it should stay the same distance from the back of the door/seat, so someone in the back seat could reach it comfortably. It kind of screws me on where to put the window crank if I can get the window to roll down, but I think it will be electric anyhow if I can get it to work.


Gotta set them up and get some inspiration every once in a while.

[66Z71]

Here's the rear door clamped to the B pillar (a 3x3 1/8 wall piece of tube). I'll go back later, and form some sheetmetal to fill in the gaps, but this should a strong base to build on. Since the rockers flexed so badly I decided to put a piece of 1-1/2 x 1-1/2 1/8 wall tube full length inside them. It's welded directly to the B pillar, and I'll tie it into the A & C pillar when its all done. I want some kind of side protection, and strength for the long cab.


Here's the extra 1/2 inch that I need to take out of the rear rocker. Originally I was going to shorten the rear door 10", but after I started measuring it, I decided 10-1/2" made for less work. Luckily I just tacked the seam in the middle of the door opening, so I can cut it back apart and re-shorten it.


First chance to see if it will support the door. I'm startin to get excited now.

[66Z71]

So what's next? I really wish there was an instruction book with this thing. It took a while to decide what to do. I decided to clean out the rear half of the cab, and get ready to attach the new rocker to it.


Doesn't everyone wish they could clean theirs out as easily? LOL


You can't accuse me of ruining a good truck. I gotta start a list of patch panels I need yet.


Look at all that rust. Not to mention what had already come out of it.


One rocker removed. Things look pretty solid under there.


Don't you wish it were always so easy to get to what you need to do?


There she is all clamped in place.


I guess I was on a roll. I didn't get any pics of the front rocker. I'm gonna have to get another patch panel. The bottom of the front post is terrible. For now I just used some sheet metal screws to hold the rocker in place since I know it will be coming back out a few times.


Some blood was let in the name of progress, the gods should be appeased

[66Z71]

Here's some pics of the doors hanging. I knew the post was going to have to be narrowed on the top front. That's why the front door won't close all the way. I wanted to see the doors in relation to the body to make sure it really had a chance of working before I did anything more to it.

[66Z71]

Here are some more.

[66Z71]

Now that it sorta works, I think the next step will be to trim the B pillar so the front door will close, then tie it in to the roof, and mount the door latches.

If it stops raining long enough I'll go out and look at the 'burbon roof. I'm still undecided about how I'm going to close in the top. I see several possible ways to go.

1 - split the pickup roof, and splice in a piece of metal from the 'burbon. Both outside, and inside. There would be a 30" section inside that would have no pattern in it, but it would look most pickup like.

2 - drill out the spot welds in the rain gutter of the 'burbon, and use the roof skin. Could still do the same thing for the inner skin. Apparantly the roof would be a little taller than the pickup roof. I'm not sure how that would look, but it would only require one seam on the outside instead of two. That's a big plus.

3 - cut the pickup roof off thru the windshield pillars and splice the burbon roof on. No problem with the inner skin as there is none. But how do I attach the rear inner cab panel? I still have to do something about the upper door jambs for the rear doors.

4 - kind of like #3, but splice the pickup inner roof into the 'burbon inner header.

Any guesses on how the original coach builders did it?

If I use the 'burbon roof, would it be easier to cut a section out of it, or re-form the rear of the roof into the flat sheetmetal? I'm thinking I could make a hammer form, and cut, clamp, and pound the roof into submission easier than welding it.

I guess I'll start by getting some metal formed into a long piece of upper door jamb channel, and maybe a bit of rain gutter forming.

I'm open to any ideas ya'll might have.

[Dinos63]

nice work,

[Captainfab]

I would do something like #3, except don't cut the A pillars. Cut above and slightly behind them and drill out the roof skin spot welds across the top of the windshield. Then to make the transition at the rear to the pickup rear cab panel, graft in the rear upper inner Burb panel. I think that would work.

[64c20crewcab]

this is comin along nicely! cant wait to see more!

[nuke1]

wowzzers, that is just too cool, congrats on tackling that, sure gives me some inspiration.

[jason65]

Awsome skills. If I could do that I wouldn't be workin for the state any more.

[jonzcustomshop]

I go with capt. fabs idea...
also, you might think about turning the bottom of your new center pillar into a cab support to the frame, that should help strengthen things up a bit.

[Strodder]

I'm still blown away. Scary stuff to cut up the whole truck, and get it back together as a 4 door. Nice work.v

[Frizzle Fry]

You already have the piece you need to tie into the inner/rear roof. It's still attached to the front piece. I'd use 10-12" of that plus the Burb roof grafted in at the drip rails. As for the headliner you can just trim out the rear section to match the burb inner panel then use a headliner similar to the burb's.

[jonzcustomshop]

in the inside shot I can see the difference in why you might have problems with the rear window rolling down..
the front of the door comes in a bit to make room for the internal hinges...
this is probably why the coach builders went with the external/flat hinges.
maybe a small vent window, or a stationary piece of glass like a 73 - 87 suburban might work.

[Strodder]

What if you suicide the back doors? Just a thought.

[jrsmith_2010]

wow thats impressive, nice work

[toomanytoyz]

Originally Posted by 66Z71

Ok, here's the rear door. I'm starting to get better at window frames. So I decide to start there. Quick nip and tuck at the top, and the bottom swung back into place. I braced the top to the inside first so it wouldn't move around. The window frame is pretty floppy when its cut loose.


The door curves in for the front 4 inches or so. I split the door jam, and clamped the outter skin to a piece of angle iron to hold it straigh, then filled in the gap left. There's still lots to be done to get the inside jam to line up. The front pillar is definatly thinner than the rear. I'm still not sure what to do about it. The window channel is 3/4 wide just like the rear, so I can't just split the jam, and widen it. I either have to split it inside & out, and widen both sides, or live with a slight misalignment on the inside.


Well, time to quit for the weekend. Here it is clamped to the front door. There is still some work to do to line them up, but I'm feelin like its doable.

Just reread your entire Build thread & found you have a Broken link for the Pics in this Post, You are doing a Great Job with you Build & am Sure a Lot of us are Following along with your Creative Vision.......

Thanks, Rick

[Strodder]

Originally Posted by toomanytoyz

Just reread your entire Build thread & found you have a Broken link for the Pics in this Post, You are doing a Great Job with you Build & am Sure a Lot of us are Following along with your Creative Vision.......

Thanks, Rick

That's all the cars you have.

[66Z71]

Thanks for the coments guys. It might take me a day or two to get caught up on them.
I fixed the link to the pics.
Here's the latest from yesterday. I spent some time tapering the center post to fit the front door. Now, I'm going to step back and finish the rear door a little more now that I can see how it will fit into the jamb.

Here's the piece I cut out of the tube I used for the main part of the B pillar. Look at how much it curled up just cutting it free.


Here's a picture of it after I welded it back together.


and another showing the B pillar and the inside of the rocker


I took today off, and went to the roadster show. Hey I'm famous. That's my intake in the Portland Roadster Show. My car and motor are still at the shop, but they saw fit to steal the intake for the show motor. LOL

[jalopy45]

Now that you got the body lined up, if you still want a big back window my neighbor has one on a '63 with a rusted out floor that I can bring in to you. That is if you're bored.