1957 Chevy 3100, meet 1994 Dodge Ram 1500

[Purcell69]

Things have been a bit bogged down this week. My wife has been in the hospital since Wednesday and I have been driving to Tulsa daily to be with her. I did manage to get a little bit more done before she went in, crossing a few more items off the list as it were.

To start with, I put the front sheet metal back on again for winter storage after applying a coat of clear over the primer on the firewall. When spring comes back around, the sheet metal can come back off and I can finish the firewall once and for all. Also, with the sheet metal in place, I can see what I need to do with the brake lines coming from the frame and going to the master cylinder. Right now they are the stock length Dodge hard lines and will need some extra length to route them neatly between the cab and frame. No pics of any of this yet.





I also started cleaning the cab out in earnest one more time. I had accumulated tools, parts and containers of hardware inside while I worked on the outside of the truck. This was handy, up until things moved to the inside of the cab. Now I am looking at a patch panel to repair the dash and one for the passenger side floor as well as steps and rocker panels. The tools and parts need to go someplace else. Also I found some rust issues starting along the back wall of the cab where it meets the floor. Over the years, water has gotten in through a small hole in the original rear window seal and where the fuel filler came through the driver's side of the cab. I took some wire wheels to this area, cleaned it up, treated with Afterblast and then a coat of POR-15. I still have a bit of rust repair to accomplish on the back wall, but for now the rust is contained.



The last item is the rear frame and bed. I extended the rear frame rails last year to match up with the bed, however I did not account for the rear sill. I found I needed to trim about 1" off of my extension to allow the bed to tuck up closer to the back of the cab. Out came the framer's square and Sawzall again.

Once the frame was trimmed and the bed slid forward, I found the crossmember that hold the spare tire winch has a bulge that interferes with one of the crosssills under the bed. I needed to trim off a half inch of the sill in a notch so the bed will sit flat on the frame. After completing this extra trim, I was able to redrill holes to mount the bed to the frame, in their new locations.







-Joe

[Kim57]

Looks real tough all together.
Kim

[lower50's]

Looks great. Just read your build. It's funny how you set out to finish one thing and end up checking off another. Keep up the good work.

[Purcell69]

Originally Posted by lower50's

Looks great. Just read your build. It's funny how you set out to finish one thing and end up checking off another. Keep up the good work.

Thanks you and Kim for the encouragement. With the wife being down for the past 10 days, I have not accomplished much. I did manage to get measurements for the brake lines so I can replace and reroute the hardlines coming from the master cylinder. I want to reroute them a bit for a cleaner look. Right now they come off the booster, dangle in midair and eventually meet up with the frame. The rear line was cut to shorten and match the frame length, but seems to want to mushroom evertime I try to double flare it. Given the 1990s Dodge brake lines are notorious for rusting through, I figured new steel lines would be an improvement.

I picked up some assorted lengths of 3/16" hard line and unions the other day. Yesterday I pulled out the tubing bender and started shaping the line from the rear axle, following the contours of the stock line. When I tried to affix it to the hose at the rear axle, I found the nuts on that piece were metric thread, and the hose fitting was SAE. I got practice anyway.

I started with another piece after confirming it had the proper nuts on the ends of the line and bent up a new piece that was the right length and followed the original tube contours, stopping just past the bottom angle of the firewall. I cut the stock line from the booster back past that, to make a shorter piece to work with when I make the new line from the booster to the firewall and down to the frame.

Just about the time I thought I would get the brake lines done, I found out the fitting for the rear wheel ABS motor is a different size. It has 3/16" line coming off it to the rear axle, but the tube nut was larger than the tube nuts on the new 3/16" line. I ended up taking the pieces to NAPA, figuring I could get an adapter for the 3/16" nut and step it up to the larger size, which I found out is for 1/4" line with SAE threads. The problem was the male end going into the ABS motor needs to have the 45* taper cup that would seat inside the ABS motor like the 3/16" double flare line. No such luck finding anything like that.

Now I am going to reuse the piece of factory line from the ABS motor with the funky Dodge fitting, reshape it with a new double flare on the bottom end and splice it to the new hardline with some 3/16" unions. Fortunately, the front hardline is pretty straight forward, just some new bends and extra length to go between the frame and firewall. No pictures of all of this yet, but some housekeeping that needs to be done.

-Joe

[lower50's]

I'll be building my brake lines next week am expecting some fun like you had. Hope your wife feels better soon!!

[Purcell69]

Originally Posted by lower50's

I'll be building my brake lines next week am expecting some fun like you had. Hope your wife feels better soon!!

Thank you sir! If you are planning on doing a whole system from scratch, I would recommend investing in one of these:

http://www.eastwood.com/professional...ring-tool.html

I don't have one and have not used one, but given all of the fun I have had with the basic flaring tool available at any auto parts store, I would go with the Eastwood tool if I were doing it all over again.

I did manage to get the rear brake line piece flared with a loaner tool from Autozone, on the second attempt. I got a good double flare that was factory quality, and broke the tip off the 3/16" mandrel at the same time. I have my own flaring tool that I have used for years, which also has a broken 3/16" mandrel. Replacement mandrels are cheap, but not having one on hand, I used the loaner tool.

I will get some pics posted up later today. After looking at the front line Sunday afternoon, it should be as much fun as the rear. The fitting at the proportioning valve is a 7/16" NF flare nut on a 3/16" line, which normally uses a 3/8" NF nut. There is a short piece of line that is mated to the line that runs to the frame. The short piece has a female tube nut and is 7/16" NF with an inverted flare on the 3/16" line. The long piece that runs to the frame has a male 7/16" tube nut on the top end with a bubble flare that seats into the inverted flare in the short piece. The bottom end of this piece of line has a traditional 3/8" NF flare nut with an inverted flare on the end of the 3/16" tubing.

I am thinking I will reshape this line to follow the path of the rear hardline, down to the frame, rather than trying to make a new line reusing the oddball tube nuts and my own flares. I could reuse the short line with a new flare and 3/8" NF tube nut, run in to a standard brass union fitting, and match it to a new lower line, but that is one more flare with the loaner tool and a new mandrel. At some point, I will buy the Eastwood tool and build new lines based on the reshaped lines, but for now, it will all be routed neatly and sealed up.

-Joe

[Purcell69]

This is the first bothersome fitting I ran in to on the rear brakes. The line is 3/16", which normally has a 3/8" 24 NF tube nut, however this nut is 7/16" 20 NF and threads into the ABS motor for the rear brakes. 7/16 tube nuts are normally used on 1/4" brake lines, but this one is bored for 3/16".



This is the larger 7/16" NF nut next to the standard 3/8" NF nut for comparison. Aside from the length of the larger nut, the diameter is the issue.



The 7/16" NF nut and 3/16" line go into this port on the ABS motor for the rear axle. I needed to make a line that ran from this port, back to the firewall and down to the frame and was going to use new 3/16" line, until I found out the issue with the 7/16" NF tube nut. My first thought was to get a brass adapter from NAPA, but there is no such animal.



Since off the shelf line would not plumb to the ABS motor, I needed to harvest part of the stock brake line or at least the tube nut that fits into the ABS motor. Since the section of rear line I saved from the ABS motor to the frame had roughly the right contour, I kept the line intact and flared the bottom end with the 3/8" flare nut from the back end of the rear line, where it goes into the axle hose. This way I could join the two pieces with a brass union.

I used a loaner flaring tool from the local parts store. I have the same tool at home, but broke the tip off the 3/16" mandrel a while back and have tot obtained a replacement mandrel yet.



And here we are with the newly flared line end, ready to mate to the brass union and plumb to the rear axle hose. I got a good flare on the second try, and broke the tip off the loaner mandrel as well. The guy at the parts counter didn't seem to worried about it when I told him. He said it was a warranty part.



I thought the front line from the proportioning valve would be easier, but no such luck. This little line goes between the proportioning valve and a longer line that runs down to the frame. The male end is the larger 7/16" NF nut like the ABS motor line, but there is a female nut on the other end, also 7/16" NF that mates the inverted flare line to a bubble flare on the longer piece that runs to the frame. Of course, the frame end of that line is standard 3/8" NF.







Yup, so much for easy. Since I broke the mandrel on the loaner flare tool, I reshaped the two pieces of line for the front, to parallel the rear line to the firewall and down to the frame. The lines are not nice and straight, but they are not kinked and are sealed tight. At some point in the future, I will get a better flaring tool, harvest the oddball fittings I need from these lines and make some nicely formed lines for the engine compartment to frame runs. For now, I just need some separators and a mounting tab. The basic shapes are there, so I have a foundation to work with now.



-Joe

[lower50's]

OMG glad you got all that figured out.

[Purcell69]

Well now, things are back on track. The weather has been remarkably good for February in Oklahoma and I managed to get a few hours of time to work on the truck before work yesterday and today.

A few weeks back, I sold one of my motorcycles and managed to get some room to move around in my shed without having to empty half of it out to get to goodies in the back. This meant I could get to the Jeep Cherokee seats that were given to me some years ago. I'm not planning on using them in the truck, other than for a template for the Grand Cherokee seats I want to use. Both seats have the same mounts and the same adjusting tracks.

Yesterday, I made four tabs to mount the front of the seats. The front mounts on the tracks is designed to bolt through toward the back of the cab, with the bolts parallel to the floor. I needed to make an "L" shaped bracket to bolt through the floor.







It's not much, but any work done in February is a small victory. I made four of these yesterday.

-Joe

[Kim57]

Came out nice.
Kim

[Purcell69]

Thanks Kim. I'm not quite done with them yet. I want to gusset one side of each of the to provide extra strength in the event of a collision. Today, I made the anchor plates to go under the floor where the seats are mounted.

I've decided on using cloth seats from a 1993-1998 ZJ Grand Cherokee. I have found them to be very comfortable for me, even being behind the wheel for hours on end. My plan is to get the 8-way power bases, so the seats can be raised or tipped, which helps to offset the lack of leg room. I'm 5'11, and with the seats all the way back, I'm flat footed on the toe boards. I also want to cannibalize the folding feature from the seats that are in the cab now. They are from a 2 door Cherokee, so the can fold forward to access the back of the cab behind the seats.

-Joe

[lower50's]

Sounds like a good plan with the seats.

[Baldeagle SR]

Joe progress is coming along nicely. I hate doing brake lines. Rich

[Purcell69]

Me too Rich, but it needs to be done. I'm toying with the idea of getting some AN adapters and running braided line from the master cylinder down to the frame and mating it to the hardlines there. I think it will look better in the long run and still function like needed.

-Joe

[lower50's]

I used stainless braided hose for that same thing looks good and you get rid of the spiral of hard line.

[Purcell69]

Part of the trick with using the Jeep seats is the mounting locations are now where near the ribs in the floor where the stock bench seat was bolted down. This is good and bad. Good, because the area where they will bolt to the floor is flat and easy to work with, but bad because the floor is only a single layer of sheet metal. To combat this issue, I am going to weld in an extra layer of 18ga sheet metal under the existing floor, once i have all the work finished on the bottom of the cab. Behind the extra metal, I am adding in the anchor plates I made yesterday.

I used pieces of 3/16" plate stock cut to 2"x3" with the mounting holes drilled offset, for a cam effect when snugging things up. It will be less of an issue once they are finally welded in place.



With my holes drilled, I used flange nuts to weld to the plates, to bolt the seats down.





Once the nuts were welded up, I dog eared the corners to keep from having a sharp point to potentially slice the cab floor in the event of a collision.





With the seats bolted up and the gas tank out of the cab, there is a wealth of space to be utilized behind the seats.





I think this will be a good place for a small speaker box with concealed locking storage. I'm not big on the whole box speaker thing, but to camouflage the locking storage, it will blend in nicely.

-Joe

[Kim57]

Seat brackets came out nice.
Kim

[lower50's]

I like the speaker lock storage idea.

[Purcell69]

Originally Posted by lower50's

I like the speaker lock storage idea.

Kind of a two birds with one stone idea. I figure 3/16 plate steel for the lock box would defeat most screwdrivers, and disguising it to look like part of a generic speaker box with grey cloth and visible 6x9" speakers instead of some flat-billed, teenager's subwoofers.

-Joe

[Purcell69]

I've made a bit of progress this week, nothing earth shattering, just little things, but stuff that needs to be addressed. First of all, I reassembled the brake pedal and have it hung now. Back last fall when i was fitting the pedal brackets under the dash, I found it was easier to fit in place with the pedal cut off about midway. Also at that time, it became apparent that the pedal shaft would need to be longer, so sectioning it served two purposes. The other day I obtained some 3/8" bar stock to add in the 2" of additional length needed and added some angle to the cut for a bit better pedal placement. With it all welded back together, I have good pedal travel, the placement feels right in conjunction with the driver's seat, and there is no conflict with the steering column, though the cell phone pics I took don't really show the 1 inch of space between the shaft and the column.





This morning I began cutting and welding in my 16ga reinforcing plates to go under the floor for the seat mounts. I have half of the passenger side plates welded in, along with the anchor plates for the seat to be bolted to. Since the seats are being bolted through the single wall floor pan of the cab, it seemed necessary to add some extra plates to spread the load for the seats and give the anchor plates some extra support in the event the worst should happen.

I was in a rush trying to get things done before work and did not have a chance to take any pictures of this work today. I am hoping to have the remaining six plates added in tomorrow.

-Joe

[Kim57]

It's the little things that seem to take forever to get done.
Kim

[Purcell69]

Very true Kim, and goodness knows a project like this has a lot of "little things".

-Joe

[Purcell69]

I finished tacking in the floor reinforcements and anchor plates today. There is still finish welding to be done, but for now I am just going to clean things up and shoot some primer and clear coat to keep things clean. Once I have all the floor repairs done, I will lay the cab on the back wall and take care of the finish welding, then coat the bottom of the cab floor in Monstaliner. They have a product that is similar in color to the original turquoise paint that was on the truck from the factory. This will be the color I am going back to, so the Monstaliner under the floor and inside the fenders should be a good match, help to protect the metal, and cut down on some of the noise inside the cab.







I also took another picture of the brake pedal in relation to the steering column. There is actually quite a good gap between the column and the pedal shaft.



-Joe

[Purcell69]

I know it has been months since I've made any progress on this project, but rest assured, I haven't given up.

Between a lack of funds and uncooperative weather, things with the truck were put on the back burner. I was toying around with options for getting it running, either swapping over to a Chevy drivetrain, since I already have the motor built, or going to a carburetor set-up over EFI, but the reality is I already have a good MPFI Dodge engine that will bolt in to the existing frame, transmission and transfer case, so there is nothing to purchase there other than the factory service manual needed for the wiring schematics to pare down the existing Dodge wire harness.

I still need patch panels for the passenger side floor and rockers/steps, but I can start with the cab floor for now.

I also got to thinking about the battery box being relocated under the cab. With all the rain we get in Oklahoma, I'm not 100% certain I want to cut an access hole in the passenger side step to get to the battery. My next thought was to just muscle it up in place from under the truck, with access from the rear side of the box, toward the back of the cab. This morning another idea crept into my head to make access relatively easy...a hoist system.

The battery would still be on the passenger side frame, under the cab, but the box could be raised and lowered with a repurposed scissor jack. The cables would have to be long enough to accommodate lowering the battery enough to remove the cables, and when stowed, the box would bolt to the frame to keep the load off the jack when the truck was being driven.

I still need to hang my gas tank and reconnect the plumbing to the fuel pump, but the weather is finally supposed to clear and dry out for a while, so I should get started on working with what I already have again by next week.

-Joe

[Nut Case]

I think that your battery box has great potential, I'll be watching.
Great progress

Keep on keepin on

Nut Case