Frankentruck

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by C10matt

Love the trailer that's an awesome setup

Thanks, it's a lot of fun to haul around. Great for parts storage too!

Originally Posted by Getter-Done

Just a suggestion
You need a spare tire and a toolbox in the tongue area of Half-wit.

This is on my list of 2 of my trailers that don't have spare tires on them.

You're right, I probably should pick up a spare for it. My plan was to put the spare tire carrier from Frankentruck under Half-Wit so that the tire can stay somewhat out of direct sunlight and be out of the way. I have thought about a tool box, but every time I take a trip with the pair, I bring my regular tool box for the truck and have a jack and lug wrench that works for both under the seat in Frankentruck. Same lug nuts all around since I'm still running the stock Dana 44 under the trailer

[TJ's Chevy]

Glad ya found the issue! $30 bucks is a nice fix haha

Diggin that trailer for sure.....might have to make me one now so I can be in the cool group haha!

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by TJ's Chevy

Glad ya found the issue! $30 bucks is a nice fix haha

Diggin that trailer for sure.....might have to make me one now so I can be in the cool group haha!

Yeah, it's definitely better than having to dive into the fuel tank
If you can, you should build one. I've gotten tons of compliments on it.


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On today's adventure, dad and I went up to the farm to try getting the old John Deere up and running again. Unfortunately, the engine is stuck. Had to leave it with some ATF in the cylinders and we'll try again another time.

On a happier note, I gotta give a huge thanks to member Unclebrad. He did some photoshopping for me on Frankentruck and Half-Wit. Now I've got some great inspiration for the next phase of this truck.

https://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/...1&postcount=15

Top pic is the original, bottom pic is the inspiration.

[cwcarpenter98]

Because of the cost and lack of planning in advance on my part, I decided not to go on Power Tour this year. Instead, I decided to start fix the passenger fender this week.

No problems with removal, of course, since I pulled the whole front end off 2 years ago.
I have a donor section cut from a wrecked 60 to repair the upper portion where it mounts to the inner fender.
I have a new, lower patch I bought last year. I'm hoping to get by without needed the entire inner piece. Looks like I'll be able to from the initial dissection.
I'm trying to use as much of the original fender as possible, but as you can see, there was a bunch of red, Georgia clay packed in over the past 59 years.
The plan is to work on the fender every morning until around noon when it starts to really get toasty outside. The afternoon will be my CPA exam study time.
Hopefully I'll get it done by the end of the week for a cruise in on Saturday, but I don't want to rush the repair and have a bad end product. I can always drive the truck without a fender

[Johns 66]

Originally Posted by cwcarpenter98

Yeah, it's definitely better than having to dive into the fuel tank
If you can, you should build one. I've gotten tons of compliments on it.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


On today's adventure, dad and I went up to the farm to try getting the old John Deere up and running again. Unfortunately, the engine is stuck. Had to leave it with some ATF in the cylinders and we'll try again another time.

On a happier note, I gotta give a huge thanks to member Unclebrad. He did some photoshopping for me on Frankentruck and Half-Wit. Now I've got some great inspiration for the next phase of this truck.

https://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/...1&postcount=15

Top pic is the original, bottom pic is the inspiration.

Ove the inapirafion...thats gonna look cool.!!!

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by SkinnyG

I'm feeling some PTSD coming on....

I'm taking it slow and steady in hopes that it will turn out decent. I've already made a slice on the bottom of the patch panel to make it fit the original inner brace better. Hopefully won't have to do too much of that though.

Originally Posted by Johns 66

Ove the inapirafion...thats gonna look cool.!!!

It will probably be a few years before I get there, but yeah, that's the end goal. I'm looking forward to it though!

[SkinnyG]

I'm feeling some PTSD coming on....

[cwcarpenter98]

Made the initial cut on the patch panel this morning. So far, it's turning out good.
I have a couple spots I need to fix on the inner brace, but it's decent enough to work.
I did hang the fender on the truck loosely, and it's looking ok so far.

My plan is to take my time and not rush this repair, so I threw on a rough 64 fender just to make the truck look complete if I want to drive somewhere.

[TJ's Chevy]

Take your time on body work for sure. It's worth it haha

That'll look sweet with a paint job!

On a happy note for me I just landed a truck bed trailer to pull behind Crustine so I'm pretty stoked. It's been sitting for awhile but it's a 66 bed and complete so I'm excited to be in the cool group! haha!

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by TJ's Chevy

Take your time on body work for sure. It's worth it haha

That'll look sweet with a paint job!

On a happy note for me I just landed a truck bed trailer to pull behind Crustine so I'm pretty stoked. It's been sitting for awhile but it's a 66 bed and complete so I'm excited to be in the cool group! haha!

I don't have a deadline to meet with finishing this fender, so I've been plucking away at it for about 3 hours each morning this week. Steady progress each day and still have the afternoons when it's real toasty out to keep studying. Congrats on the trailer! There's a thread in the 60-66 message board with a bunch of pictures of bed trailers. You should post up a couple pics there
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Here's progress from yesterday and today. The outer patch is getting close to fitting up decent enough. Definitely still have some trimming to do though.
I also need to patch the rear section of the flange that bolts to the inner fender. That blue donor fender is exactly what I needed to fix my fender, and it came off a truck with heavy front end damage, so I didn't have to cut up a good fender to fix mine.

My approach on the bottom might be a smidge unconventional, but I wanted to save as much of the original curve as possible since the patch piece isn't an exact match in that spot.

[LostMy65]

That green is so nostalgic.

[SkinnyG]

I drilled a big gaping hole in the bottom of my fender supports, just to help drain out anything that got in there.

Also seam-sealed the snot out of it, to help limit how much garbage gets in there to start with. Epoxy primed inside and out as well.

I hate rust.

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by LostMy65

That green is so nostalgic.

I agree. I didn't know the original color of the truck was 505 when I bought it, but once I found out, I decided to keep it that way.

Originally Posted by SkinnyG

I drilled a big gaping hole in the bottom of my fender supports, just to help drain out anything that got in there.

Also seam-sealed the snot out of it, to help limit how much garbage gets in there to start with. Epoxy primed inside and out as well.

I hate rust.

I also drilled a big hole in the bottom of the inner brace last week on both fenders. That reminds me, I need to pick up some more seam sealer

[LostMy65]

A bigger hole in the bottom of the fender support? Brilliant!

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by LostMy65

A bigger hole in the bottom of the fender support? Brilliant!

I'm fairly certain the first time I saw someone do that was when SkinnyG did it on his fenders, so it made sense to do the same to mine. And with all the crap built up over the years, it was obvious the small, factory drain wasn't enough from the beginning.

[LostMy65]

Originally Posted by cwcarpenter98

I'm fairly certain the first time I saw someone do that was when SkinnyG did it on his fenders, so it made sense to do the same to mine. And with all the crap built up over the years, it was obvious the small, factory drain wasn't enough from the beginning.

The first time we cut it open, we should have taken a picture to see all the layers of time.
Mine was up about 3 to 4 inches of 50+ years of history.

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by LostMy65

The first time we cut it open, we should have taken a picture to see all the layers of time.
Mine was up about 3 to 4 inches of 50+ years of history.

I didn't think about it until now, but it would've been cool to have done a soil analysis on what was inside. Frankentruck was used on a small farm in Jasper, GA for many, many years, so I bet that's where a lot of that Georgia clay came from.

[SkinnyG]

Originally Posted by cwcarpenter98

I'm fairly certain the first time I saw someone do that was when SkinnyG did it on his fenders

I did. Looks like this:

[LostMy65]

Originally Posted by SkinnyG

I did. Looks like this:

Thanks

[cwcarpenter98]

A lot has happened since last Saturday, but not to the truck.
I got to move all my stuff. Yay.

Two trailer loads of stuff that all fit in a 10x10 storage unit until I get a house of my own.

When I went to a car show last Saturday, the truck was running terribly. Seemed to start off ok, but laid over hard and just had no power. With life happening this past week, I didn't get a chance to check on anything until today.

Sure enough, the vacuum advance canister that I replaced 4 years ago has already failed. I can't pull any vacuum on it. I'm fairly certain that's the problem, so I'm going to track down a new one and let y'all know if that fixes the problem whenever I can get my hands on it.

Yeah, I know, I still need to finish my fender. Now that the move is done, I can get back on that. Happy wrenching!

[cwcarpenter98]

I took the trailer I borrowed back to Milledgeville yesterday, so didn't get a chance to install the new vacuum advance can. Got it installed this evening. Started off on a test drive and it was still not running good. Verified that the spark plugs were routed properly, checked the timing, checked operation of vacuum advance, but still was wrong. I backed the initial timing down from 12* to 8* BTDC, but that didn't change anything. During that last test drive, the truck started to act a little better, and then suddenly, it started running perfectly. Was able to get full throttle again without any bogging down or stuttering. I'm guessing there was a piece of trash plugging up something in the carb, and it finally worked loose, so everything seems back to normal.
I reset the initial timing to 10* BTDC, and the engine seemed to like that a little better than the 12* BTDC.
It got dark, so I'll take the truck for a spin again tomorrow to see how it does.

[350TacoZilla]

Sucks about having issues right when trying to move stuff, glad you got through it ok and truck worked itself out lol. One thing to think about with you having a truck and being on lookout for a place, an older RV could be a decent stop gap for place to stay while saving money. Bonus points for an era correct one to go with the truck ;p

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by 350TacoZilla

Sucks about having issues right when trying to move stuff, glad you got through it ok and truck worked itself out lol. One thing to think about with you having a truck and being on lookout for a place, an older RV could be a decent stop gap for place to stay while saving money. Bonus points for an era correct one to go with the truck ;p

I'm actually glad the truck was having issues while trying to move stuff because it meant I could use my dad's 02 Silverado 1500HD that has A/C

The RV is a good idea, but I would still need a piece of property to park it, and around here, most pieces of land already has a house on it. I definitely want an old camper to pull with the truck one day. It would make going to multi-day truck shows more fun

[cwcarpenter98]

Back on the grind today.
Made a bunch of progress on the fender over the past couple of hours. It is mostly welded in, but I still need to weld the inner brace onto the bottom of the fender and also bend the flange over and weld the cut up.
The fender looks to match up pretty well with the line I drew on a piece of cardboard from the uncut fender.

I still need to do some body work to the weld areas, but cleaned the paint off under the emblem and wanted to see how the rattle can I'll be using to blend in will end up looking. I'm fairly confident the fender is still original paint, so I'm quite pleased with how the rattle can matches to the paint under the emblem.

I'm going to do some more body work on the fender tomorrow and get that repair finished up. Then on Monday, I'll start repairing the top side that bolts to the inner fender.

[Braunschweiger]

Nice job, another piece that makes the truck even better.