46 pickemup in NJ "the Rebuild"

[UncleMatt]

Love the build! I'd say you're doing great for a guy that claims to not know what he's doing! Lol, keep up the good work. I can't wait to see it go down the road.

[paintman]

Ok guys just a small update to keep my build thread from falling into the internet abyss. I finally finished welding up all the holes in the frame that had accumulated over the years from previous owners. At last count I think I patched 42 holes that I didn't need. This of course took me some time because New Jersey has been under a deep freeze as of late and I just couldn't get myself up to going out to the garage when it was 2 below. I guess I should get some heat out there.

Any way my sandblaster friend finally got off his but and picked up my frame after promising me for 3 weeks he would do it for me.

Should have it back by the end of the week!


Only other news to report is the engine shop continues to gather parts for the motor and has finished up the machine work on the head and installed the lumps in the intake ports. Things are moving kind of slow on my motor because this is the busy season for Larry's Power rebuilding race engines for the local circle track guys.

For those of you not familiar with lump ports.......The inline six head was designed from the factory with the head bolt passing directly through the center of the intake port, thus restricting air flow. What the hell were the engineers at GM thinking when they designed that?????

Soooo the fix is to cut the bolt boss out of the port and recess new shorter bolts into the lumps mounted to the floor of the port. Then insert a pipe plug in the hole at the top of the port where the old head bolt was. Here's a pic of my head showing the center divider removed and the lump installed. Supposedly all the dyno tests show a 20-30% increase in airflow through the port. We'll see as dyno day for this engine will be sometime in the spring.


Here's the facebook link to Larry's Power if anyone in interested in a lot of cool pics and videos.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Larry...68904043122881

[paintman]

Ok lets see if this works...................A little eye candy for all you machinists
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=736140556399224

[paintman]

So I got the frame, brackets, bumpers, and floor board back from blasting. The frame has some minor pitting in spots, but it looks pretty good for something that is nearly 70 years old. I just have to go around and weld up some pin holes that I missed. Now I f I can only figure out a way to heat my garage I could move forward with painting before all the rust returns.

[egarage]

Paintman, I,m installing a 292 engine and a frame mount power brake conversion kit in my 46 also and have been trying to find out about excessive heat from the exhaust and have found out that we should leave 4 to 6 inches space bt exhaust and conversion kit. I thought of using some sort of heat shield. Have you given any thought about this and what are you going to do? Don

[paintman]

Originally Posted by egarage

Paintman, I,m installing a 292 engine and a frame mount power brake conversion kit in my 46 also and have been trying to find out about excessive heat from the exhaust and have found out that we should leave 4 to 6 inches space bt exhaust and conversion kit. I thought of using some sort of heat shield. Have you given any thought about this and what are you going to do? Don

I know what your saying. In fact that's one of the reasons I designed my headers the way i did so one of the tubes could go to the other side of the truck. I'm not so sure that one tube being fed by only 3 cylinders will make all that much heat to be concerned (at least in my case).

I don't think there's any way you could fit both exhaust tubes in between the tranny and a brake booster. I have also seen (a V8) where guys have run both tubes under the motor to the other side of the engine to avoid the booster. I will say this, there sure are a lot of trucks on the web that have made this conversion and I see they run the tube right along side the booster or on the outside of the frame..

It's been in the back of my mind but i figured I would deal with it once I started laying out my exhaust with the cab off. In fact once I start putting the chassis back together I may still have to make a change with the brake booster itself and move it further back under the bed to get it away from the heat. I have seen it done keeping the pedal assembly where it is, and then running a longer push rod back to the booster. In fact Progressive makes a kit. Heres a pic.

As far as progress on my truck I am kind of at a stand still. The last few weeks have been kind of rough around here with a death in the family and a boat load of snow. As of right now I have about 2ft. of snow laying on the ground and it has been wicked cold. I have been able to finish welding up some of the pin holes in the frame but that's about it. UPS delivered the paint for the frame last week (KBS Coatings). Unfortunately I don't have heat in the garage.

[egarage]

Thanks, looks like I may have to move mine back. BTW I used Langdon headers. Don

[whiskymaker]

ive thoroughly enjoyed reading this here thread of yours....

You American folk not only have some cracking trucks,but your houses are amazing too.....wish we had something like this here in Scotland..

Good luck with the rest of your build. Tis looking great so far..

[1963c-10]

very cool build!!!

[solidaxel]

Originally Posted by paintman

So the ole girl got her nose and back side lowered 2" thanx to a set of drop spindles from Justin out at Scott's Hot Rods and some lowering blocks from Speedway. I think she looks pretty good although here I go again opening up a can of worms. When I dropped the rear it puts the tires a little bit to close to the fenders for my comfort. So its either widen the fenders, raise the fenders, get a rear that's about 2" narrower, smaller width wheels, or keep the same width wheels but use a different back space.



Heres a shot showing the new fuel tank. It doesn't look to bad but maybe a rear roll pan to hide it is in order.

I am so close to being able to tear this thing apart for sandblasting!

Paintman,
Can you get some measurements from the bottom of the frame at the spindle and the bottom of the cross member (front) to the ground.
Are you going to have any trouble clearing "speed bumps" or maybe you do not have any where you live!
What size front tires are you using?
Thank for the help

[paintman]

Originally Posted by solidaxel

Paintman,
Can you get some measurements from the bottom of the frame at the spindle and the bottom of the cross member (front) to the ground.
Are you going to have any trouble clearing "speed bumps" or maybe you do not have any where you live!
What size front tires are you using?
Thank for the help

Hey Solid! Unfortunately I can't give you any measurements because the frame is still all striped down and leaning up against the wall in my garage. Its definitely going to be close but this truck is just for putting around the back roads on a Sunday afternoon. If It becomes a problem I can always ditch the 2" inch drop spindles and take the blocks out from the rear to pick the truck up a little. All the pics I have posted of the truck are with the tires that came with the truck. Fronts-195/75R15 Rears-235/70R15

My wife and I have had the winter from hell here in NJ. First off every week we were getting dumped on with snow which necessitated getting my work truck into the garage so we could get our driveway plowed. 10 times at $65 a plow kind of takes the spirit out of you. The only way I could do that was to lean my 46 frame against the wall and squeeze my truck in.

Then came a February that we would like to forget.....First off my Mother In-law died on the 3rd of Feb. and then 10 days later my Father gave up the fight. So the entire month of February was consumed by going to Virginia to take care of all the usual things, and then no sooner getting home and having to go up to Northern Maine. UGHHHH!!!!!!!!

The good news is I finally got back out into the garage and set the frame back on jack stands, and finished up welding the pin holes. I am now waiting on some warm weather to start painting the frame.

[solidaxel]

Hey, thanks for the reply, I feel for you folks up in that parts of the states.
Every time the weather report comes on the TV we feel so guilty we have to turn the TV off, as we have had no winter this year and it has been great here for the last 2 1/2 months.
Sorry to hear about your loses, both of us have been there with our folks.
Stay in touch.

[solidaxel]

Do you have a web site for "Progressive........."
I am looking at power brake booster set ups for the 46

[paintman]

Originally Posted by solidaxel

Do you have a web site for "Progressive........."
I am looking at power brake booster set ups for the 46

ask and you shall receive.............
http://www.progressiveautomotive.com...ake-lines.html

[solidaxel]

Any more work on your truck?
Thanks for the link.
Exhaust/brakes/ transmission/K member........................... !
These 46"s are sure different than the AD frames!

[paintman]

Has anybody seen or heard from the Paintman??????????..... The Paintman?Hmmmm......OOO that guy, he's still around. He's still plugging away at it. It's just that he gets lazy, bored, or to busy to post the progress.

so the paintman got the frame painted as soon as the weather got nice enough. I used KBS and prepped the frame and suspension parts as per the instructions, and then just brushed the stuff on. I used their color called galvanized on the frame, and satin black on the running gear. It turned out alright I guess for a brush job. It certainly didn't lay out like a spray job like they claim in there advertisements.


As you can see I started to hang all the parts and pieces back on the frame. It sure is nice not having them laying around on the garage floor.


I also started to work on the brakes. I decided to go with thru frame bulkheads on all 4 corners instead of welding tabs.. At first I thought it would be somewhat of a challenge getting the holes in nice and straight, so I took a scrap piece of C channel I had laying around and made a half assed jig. I just put it on the drill press and bored a 1/4 inch hole all the way through to both sides. This would give me 2 holes perfectly aligned so I could bore the counter bit holes.
Clamp it to the frame and drill your holes in from each side of frame.

Perfectly aligned!

I then took the clamp and jig off and opened the holes up to 9/16 and bingo perfectly aligned!

I also put the gas tank back in so I could finish up the support straps and run the fuel line and mount the filter. I probably didn't have to make top and bottom straps but I was concerned about the stress on the bottom of the tank when it was full. If you look close you can see that everything kind of sandwiches together on the 2 cross members. I'm sure the tank has to come back out to mount the bed wood, so once I do the final install of the tank I will put rubber padding in between all the pieces to prevent chaffing.
I know I'm probably over thinking all this, but I guess it comes from my racing days. One thing is for sure. if I ever drive this truck down into the first turn full loud pedal, hook a rut, and barrel roll it out over the wall and into the hot dog stand....... at least I won't have to worry about the tank coming out.



In other 1946 pickup truck news........ I have been pondering what the hell I was going to do about my inner fender panels. If you go back to page one of the thread you will see the half assed AMC Pacer front end that was originally in the truck. Well who ever did the install realized the panels wouldn't clear the control arms and he would have to cut holes in the panels. Well instead of sitting down and taking his time and cutting 2 nice holes, it looks as if he just set them up against a tree and fired a bazooka at them. I had thought about trying to repair them but there's just to many angles and factory form marks I would of had to deal with. Fortunately I found a pretty decent stell set of Ebay for less than the cost of new fiberglass ones. So at least i got that going for me.


I also rebuilt the rear brakes. And of course here we go again, Who ever did the brakes the last time put the 2 small pads on the drivers side and the large ones on the passenger side I ordered a complete kit from...............

The kit comes pretty mush complete with all kinds of dodads, gizmos, and watchma callits.

[solidaxel]

Thanks for the updates, nice to see the frame in final color, how about the exhaust tabs are the welded on the frame?

[paintman]

Ok so I posted this question over on the suspension forum but I thought I would give it a try here as well.......................................
I may have shot myself in the foot a little bit. Does anybody know if there is a fitting available that will screw into my wheel cylinder that will allow me to screw a 3AN fitting to it for a flex line. I put these thru frame bulkheads in the frame with the hopes of some day switching to discs. but in the meantime I was hoping to use the same set up with my drums. I have looked around but can't seem to find the right thread size for the wheel cylinder. I have seen this done on hot rods and race cars with discs. Why can't I do this with drums?? The rear doesn't know whether it has discs or drums on it. I guess I can use the conventional hard line across the rear if I have to, I was just hoping for a cleaner look on the rear.
here's a pic of what I am looking for.............

[NEWFISHER]

Like this?

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/ea...FQqCfgodvyEAxQ

Love the build. I'm collecting parts for my 46 Suburban LS conversion and am trying to stay with the straight axle and mount an outboard style powersteering gear and the pitman arm is giving me head scratcher right now. Keep at it!

[tune_1]

Paintman I like what you have done. Keep up the work and the posts.


Dwight

[paintman]

Ok so the paintman has been taking a crash course in bending and flaring brake lines. I have to admit this has been worrying me for some time. You see, i have been a house painter and paper hanger for the last 30 years, AND I LIKE THINGS STRAIGHT, EVEN, AND NEAT, to the point that it borders on me being somewhat OCD. At first I thought I was going to go through about $500 worth of tubing until I got things looking just the way I wanted it.

First off having never done this, I didn't want to have to worry about trying to make flares that wouldn't leak so I bit the bullet and sprung for the good Eastman flaring tool.

I have to tell you this damn thing is worth every penny and then some. It makes perfect double 45's every time.

[paintman]

I started with connecting the master to the prop valve and worked my way back. I'm not sure I really needed the back flow valves as it looks as if the master is above the calipers and drums...but it's REAL close so I figured it wouldn't hurt to put them in.

Then I worked my way back to the rear. Seeing as how I went with through frame fittings in the back, I decided to use the crossmember to run the line over to the passenger side. Now I know you guys are going to ask why didn't I just line run twisted up, funky bent single line across the rear the traditional way. Remember.......... OCD

[paintman]

Then I shot 2 lines up to the front calipers.

And now it's just a matter of waiting for 2 more lengths of tubing from Inline tube to arrive to finish the piece that goes across the front cross member, and the small piece that connects the prop valve to the rear distribution block.

[paintman]

And of course on more thing to add. It looks as if the paintman is going to be a poster over on the "Go For A Ride?" thread as this came home with me and the family today. Although in a years time I don't think a 200 pound Great Dane will fit in the cab, I guess he'll just have to ride in the back

[Troy Sr]

Aww what a cute lil guy, you might have to build a trailer to haul him next year!!!