Project Fargolet

[NorCalGal]

I love this build! Can’t wait to see it running down the road.

[Gregski]

s!ck Fab Skillz

[8man]

Amen!

[G&R's57GMC]

Now that’s cool … lol

[6DoF]

so many great little details!

[Tempest67]

What great problem solving, thanks for sharing.

[olcarguy]

Nice!

[Father&son56project]

Thanks everyone! This build truly is a ton of fun.

I realized that I was about to have a period of forced down time while I wait for door latches to come back in stock, so I figured I’d get going on the interior. These trucks had very simple interiors. The panels were just cardboard, and were screwed into place with self tapping screws and trim rings. The interiors came in only one colour-brown. I took a bunch of measurements and then made a road trip to a place that has cheap vinyl and other interior materials (for those of you in Ontario, it’s Len’s Mill Stores). The issue was now going to be how to make the backing for the panels. Some of the panels are flat (and therefore easy), but the area in the upper corners where the headliner, rear panel and filler panels meets was going to be a bugger, as it’s compound curves.

I had a sheet of Masonite (also called hardboard) on hand and I decided to try it, despite the curves. My first panel was going to be the giant area behind the seat. As far as I know, these trucks didn’t have an interior panel back there (the premade interior kits don’t come with this panel and I couldn’t find any internet pics of one). This panel is flat behind the seat, and then curves at the ends (matching the curve of the cab corners). There were some convenient support brackets that run vertically up from the floor, but when I checked them out I realized that:

-they are not flat
-they are not parallel to each other












Just when I thought my fabbing days were over on this truck, it started again. I made these sheet metal caps to put over those supports in order to provide a flat surface, and added a horizontal strip to screw down the bottom of the new panel:











Next came a cardboard template:








Now I had to deal with the masonite, which is a wonderful, cheap material BUT it does not like to bend into tight curves (it actually bends nicely, but then it will suddenly surprise you by exploding into 2 pieces!). Thankfully that back panel has simple curves (not compound), but it was still looking like it might be tough to get the bend I needed. To get the bend without snapping the masonite, I found a big piece of plastic pipe that has the same radius of curve that the panel will need, and I clamped the panel to the pipe. I rolled the pipe along the floor just a little bit, then left it alone for an hour or two. I then repeated the process. By rolling it just a little bit at a time, the material would slowly sink into a curve without snapping. Once I had the curve I needed, I left it all clamped in place for a couple of days. And…….it worked!!!!

Here is the masonite bending tool in action:





And here is my new curved back panel:








The headliner was done in a similar way, but this time I clamped the masonite in place on the big tube and then added strips of steel slowly over time to bend it. Once I had the curve I wanted (it took a few days) I left it alone while I did other stuff. This method worked better, and produced a more permanent “set” to the masonite (I have no idea why).













I set it in place and the curve fit nicely into the steel strips that I fabbed and welded in to screw the headliner onto. Doing this interior was going to involve installing and removing panels constantly, and setting that headliner panel into the exact right spot each time by myself is a total PITA, so I riveted in 4 little tabs so that I can pop the headliner into position in a second and it ends up in the exact same spot every time:








This now seemed like a good point at which to deal with soundproofing. I installed some butyl rubber vibration damper, until I had about ⅓ coverage, and then I topped the entire area with jute for sound absorption:









Next came the tricky part: the filler panels that run along the top of the doors and go into the corner. These panels are curved along the door tops, and then curve inwards as they reach the rear corners of the cab, creating a bowl shape at the rear of the panel. There was no way that masonite would work, and I have very limited access to plastics here so I opted for metal instead. I started by making a template out of heavy craft paper, and then tracing the outline onto some 22 gauge sheet steel and cutting it out:





In hindsight, 22 gauge was too much. This panel is merely a form onto which I would glue some vinyl, so it would have been much easier to work with a lighter gauge of metal. I have an english wheel, and in the hands of an experienced craftsman these things can form beautifully curved panels. Needless to say, my skills on the wheel are limited so there was no way I was going to form this panel using only the wheel. It was however a nice, easy way to form the main curve that runs along the top of the door. Here she sits in the wheel as I form that main curve:








For the other end however, I had to resort to the old slice & dice to get the metal to curve into the corner. After a bunch of slicing, pressing and banging with the heel of my hand, I added a few welds and I had the steel filler panels made:







Now it was just a matter of fine tuning all the panels to get them to fit together with small gaps. Here’s the cab as it sits now:









There are still a few more panels to do (windshield pillars, kick panels, door panels), but these are all flat and easy to install so I will get to these later. I’ll likely let everything sit for a bit before I remove the pieces to adhere the vinyl. The hardboard will uncurl a bit, but the longer I leave it locked into a curve, the more it seems to gain a permanent “set”.

More to follow!

[olcarguy]

Perfect plan and execution, I have the same E-Wheel..... I'm, not that good with it either....but fun to play with.....Princes Auto is my friend..

[NorCalGal]

That interior work looks awesome, can’t wait to see how it finishes up.

[Father&son56project]

Thanks Jan! It’s coming along OK so far (see comments below!)

Olecarguy, I’m with you on Princess Auto being a good friend. It’s not high end stuff, but it’s super affordable and perfect for light use by hobbyists like us. And I have to say that I have always been happy with their return policy if an item failed.

Progress has been slow for the past month as I have been working on clearing buckthorn trees (an endless task here), as well as getting the property ready for winter. I learned some hard lessons a while back after being caught by surprise by a sudden dumping of snow, so I now do the prep in September/October. Once I was ready for the white stuff I had a chance to get back to the interior work on the project truck.

While the interior is looking OK, I have learned a lot while doing it. The biggest lesson I have learned about making curved panels with masonite is “DON’T EVER DO IT AGAIN”! I used masonite on my last build, but those panels were flat. These curved panels take a fair while to bend into shape, and they will tend to uncurl with time. If you let them uncurl (for example you remove a panel but don’t reinstall it for a day) they can crack when you force them back into the tight curve. Thankfully this only happened on one small panel. If I were to start over, I would make the long drive to the city to pick up some 4x8 sheets of black ABS and use that instead (I wouldn’t even cover them with vinyl, I’d just be happy with a black interior). Alas, I already had the vinyl so I continued with the masonite & vinyl interior. I also finally got out to a cruise night (first one since covid started!) and saw some of the original cardboard interiors on ‘40’s trucks. If I’d seen these earlier I could have used a far simpler approach on my interior and saved myself a ton of work. But that’s the great thing about these forums. Not only can you see cool ways to do stuff, but you can also learn what not to do. So, enough griping about the course I took. Here’s an update on doing the interior with the masonite & vinyl method:

After finishing the headliner and the huge board behind the seat, I made templates for the doors, kick panels and A-pillars. I made the backer boards out of masonite for the kicks, and used metal for the A-pillars. I then cut out the vinyl for each backer board and got ready to do some glueing. Here’s a pile of templates, backer boards and cut vinyl:









Adding the vinyl was simply a matter of using spray glue on both the vinyl and the backer boards and sticking them together.








I was pleasantly surprised when I removed the headliner and rear cab backer boards prior to adding the vinyl. I had left them in place for about 5 weeks, and it appears that this is enough time for the curves to take a permanent set. My brother happened to be up at my place and he helped me out as it is nice to have a 2nd pair of hands when glueing down the vinyl. For a strong bond it is best to spray both the masonite and the vinyl, and once you start to lay the vinyl down you had better be in the right spot cuz there's no going back!

The glueing process was quite easy, and the only weird spot was the deeply dished areas in the panels that run along the tops of the doors. To get the vinyl to stretch and form properly, we simply hit it with a heat gun. I still had to add a couple of slits with a razor blade and do an overlapping tuck in order to get the vinyl to sit flat in that deeply dished area. My goal in this build is to make things presentable, so I think this will be OK. Here we are, getting the warmed up vinyl into the deep dished panel.














And here we are in the rear corner of the cab on the driver side, with the vinyl panels getting screwed down using trim screws:









There are seams between the various panels, and they would be a bit unsightly so I sewed up piping to use between the panels and to trim up the doors. I had lots of off-cuts of vinyl, and a couple of rolls of different sized cotton piping cord, so this step was easy. I bought an industrial sewing machine a few years back, and it is a very sturdy machine. The electric motor is massive and runs continually, and the needle engagement is done via a foot operated clutch.








It will sew through anything, however it has one big limitation: it is not a “walking foot” machine. This results in the folded over vinyl feeding through at an uneven pace, with a resulting twist:










To combat this I had to add a walking foot attachment to it (the big white thing that surrounds the needle in the pic below). As a result of the size of the walking foot attachment, when doing piping I can’t get close enough to the cotton rope that’s encased inside the vinyl. To get by this, I simply sew the vinyl without the rope inside, then use a wire to fish the rope through the vinyl and voila, my piping is all done (see pics below).














In spots where interior trim meets the piping, I just slid the cotton rope up the piping so that the trim piece would crush the hollow vinyl flat (rather than have the trim piece sit on the thick cotton rope):










Once installed, it filled the gaps between the panels, and dressed things up nicely (I also painted the trim).














There are a few things I would change next time. First, I’d use ABS plastic. I would also switch to a firm foam instead of the soft cotton piping rope, as the cotton seems to ripple when bent into curves (you can see this in the pics). I’d also switch to a thread that matches the vinyl, so that if it shows it won’t stick out as much as the white thread I had. The good news is that I can change the piping any time I want, as I have lots of vinyl offcuts on hand, and each piece of piping is simply held in place by 2 or 3 pop rivets.

The results so far are fine for my purposes, and it's been fun learning stuff about interiors. The remaining interior stuff should go quick, as I no longer have curved panels and long mating surfaces that need piping.

More to follow!

[olcarguy]

Nice work, You are making good progress.

Roy

[8man]

That is looking good. Thanks for posting.

[Tempest67]

Looking good.


Glad to see you are still making progress.

[oldman3]

Nice job...Jim

[6DoF]

freakin proper! not something I've seen before and i really like it.

[Father&son56project]

The interior work continues…...along with the vinyl & masonite, I also did a quick & dirty temporary job on the dash. I had welded in the various patch panels and couldn’t leave it that way as rust sets in awful quick here, so I did a quick filler & hand sanding job, followed by a rattle can spray of black paint. I’m a dummy for not having finished it when the cab was stripped bare, and I had unlimited room to work and the dust wouldn’t have mattered. I suspect I will eventually do a steering column replacement along with another big thinning out of unnecessary wires, so at that point I will strip the cab and do a decent job on finishing the visible metal surfaces.


I worked my way towards the front of the cab, doing the kick panels and A-pillar pieces. This involved masonite backed kick panels, sheet steel A-pillar covers, and windlace strips. The windlace strips were a little weird as they start off at the floor and trim up the edges of the kick panels, then cover the tiny gap between the dash and the door opening, then trim up the A-pillar covers and then finally disappear under the steel trim pieces that run along the top door edges. The A-pillar covers I made were sheet steel as they required a bend along the windshield edges. Here are the pieces, ready to install for one side of the cab:







And here are all the pieces installed:




























The wiper cover plates that you see in the above pic are temporary (they are version 1.0 which was an initial shot at getting overall dimensions correct). Version 2.0 will cover the exposed wiper motor ends, and will have some spiffy raised ribs like the originals had. My son Brian is doing the 3d printing of these covers for me.

Overall I am pleased with the interior. I still have to do door panels and the firewall cover, but for these I will use ABS plastic. I also need to do one small curved panel that sits over the passenger’s shoulder (I cracked the masonite backing board on that one). I will do that small curved panel out of ABS to see how it is to work with ABS on curved stuff. After that, I think I’m finally going to have to deal with the door latch assemblies. They have apparently been on backorder for close to 2 years now, so I think I’m gonna have to order some bear claw latches and do a bunch of fabbing (will the fabbing ever end on this build?!!!).

More to follow!

[8man]

That interior looks great!

[_Ogre]

nice work on the interior panels

[Father&son56project]

Thanks guys! This interior is actually turning out to be more interesting and fun than I expected. I made a little more progress, and I finally got my hands on a sheet of ABS plastic and here are the results.

The very first thing I worked on was a firewall pad. The good news was that a couple of years ago I got my hands on a cruddy old Fargo firewall section. I needed one tiny stainless steel loop that holds down the rear of the hood, and found an entire firewall section that still had the loop on it. I scooped it up for 20 bucks, removed the stainless loop and then forgot all about the cruddy, rotten firewall. I remembered it as I was getting ready to make a cardboard template, and dragged it out of the meadow and into my shed. What a delight it was to use that scrap piece to make a template without crawling around under a dash!

Of course that old section of firewall didn’t have all the stuff that I have attached to my firewall, and this is where I learned a valuable lesson about planning ahead. I had given absolutely no thought to installing a firewall pad when I modified and installed that monstrously over-gussetted S10 steering column support & brake booster/pedal assembly. I also wasn’t thinking about firewall pads when I welded a bunch of studs and little brackets onto the firewall in order to easily secure the giant S10 wiring harness. As a result, my pad would not cover the entire firewall and had to deal with a lot of protrusions. Lesson learned!

Here is the cardboard template sitting in that old section of a firewall:







Here is the ABS piece (prior to cutting all the required slots & holes):









Forming that ABS piece turned out to be a bit of a challenge. The ABS sheet I got is ⅛ inch, and while it does flex nicely into large gentle curves, it is still quite strong. The only way to form tight curves is to heat it (which I knew I would have to do). The slowdown in this process was due to the fact that my heat gun only puts out 1300 Watts, which is really not great when bending such a big piece of plastic. Here is the ABS piece, clamped in place and resisting my efforts to bend it:








I was finally able to do it, but it took a combination of heavy pressure and putting the heat gun right up close to the ABS to get full effect of what little heat my gun would put out. I wanted it to conform fairly tightly to my firewall curves, so I made this little gizmo:








And now it was just a matter of getting the plastic as hot as possible, while at the same time applying heavy pressure on the forming tool:









I also had jute padding under the ABS while I did all this so that the dimensions would be correct when I formed it. Here is the pad after forming and cutting to match up with obstructions/protrusions, and adding the jute layer:






And here it sits in place:














I also used ABS to replace the small masonite panel over the passenger shoulder area that I had cracked. What an absolute treat it is to work with this stuff! If I was to do this again on a future build I would:

-Make the firewall pad when the cab is completely stripped and access is easy (I won’t likely have a convenient scrap section of firewall like I did on this truck). I’d make it full sized as I could always trim it to fit later.

-Put more thought into how I mount stuff so that the pad is easier to install or remove

-Use a far stronger heat gun

More to follow!

[8man]

Looking good. You picked up working on that ABS fast.

[oldman3]

Nice job, thanks for posting...Jim

[olcarguy]

Nice job as always.....Keep at it...I'm sure you will be done by spring.

[joedoh]

your attention to detail is great!

[youngrodder]

That formed ABS panel looks great from here.

Marc