47-55.1 Project "Bickle" 1948 1/2 ton 4.3 4l60e

[OutlawDrifter]

Take three steps back and punt...I know the maneuver well!

[layinrocker65]

Fancy stuff going on over there

[joedoh]

thanks all. last day of schoolie school for my stay at home girl, might be a later update.

[joedoh]

http://youtu.be/XFX8S9aAgvw?t=33


a little celebratory music, V6.2 did it. everything fits, and best of all it is not finish welded yet and missing two bolts and the damn thing is so strong you can STAND ON IT. ~5 weeks, 6 major redesigns. once the firewall angle plate was installed the rest snapped together like legos, and it took literally 10 minutes. I need the bottom steering column mount cut and installed and I am going to drink all the beer in the house.

[Father&son56project]

Very slick design! Let me know when you design one that will bolt into my S10/Fargo swap project!


Stephan

[olcarguy]

Nice job....

[Palf70Step]

Excellent work!

[twinshadows]

So, staying at home - - - ain't too bad after-all . Really smart mount … ….
( kiss - that - thing - square - on -th' - ? . . . . . lol ) .
I like the "Kiss" method, a lot , looking good .

And, Thanks for your time - taking those photos & describing your
progress .
Keep going , later , jim .

[oldman3]

Russ, nice job...Jim

[8man]

Great job Joe.

[joedoh]

thanks all!

father&son, I designed it modular so that I could use it on other trucks, so maybe if you told me the distance from your dash to the firewall in a straight line I could make something up.

twinshadows I stay home anyway haha. contract engineer.


I had some time between rainstorms and rental work so I started working on the front clip again. remember the front clip? a month ago I cut the windows in it. it was REALLY floppy, this is a great reason NOT to take your front end all completely apart, firstly keeping it together means it will all line back up when you reinstall it and second it doesnt get all floppy when you are working on it. I didnt have a choice though, the front end was already taken apart when I bought it.

I dug out a chrome grille from the stash and cleaned up all the holes that were full of either broken bolts or full of rust.




I assembled the bottom side first after getting a single bolt in each side of the grille. I didnt have the speed nuts or the bolts for the bottom so I used some self tappers. it was held pretty tight by the 3 lower bolts and the grille brace, but if you ever drive and hear the front end squeaking it is 100% this area here.




I will reinforce those grille bolts when I test fit and check if it needs more trimming. when I flipped it over it was already pretty solid but I still kept adding bolts.




then a hood latch plate from the storage too.



after all of that (seriously about 20 bolts and 14 screws) it was super solid, ready for a trial fit tomorrow. I threw the hood on to check out the color combo I have going.




I like it!

it was originally going to rain all weekend from thurs night to sunday, but it started wed night and now its done, so I have sat and half sunday, going out to hopefully finish gregs truck, well my part of it anyway.

[joedoh]

took advantage of the nice weather and popped the front on.



cleaned the shop while the truck was outside, organized a bit and blew out the plasma cutting dust. I cant wait to move into the new shop. pushed the truck back in and got my son in law jack (hes fast so I call him aluminum racing jack) and his brother 3 ton jack to help me line it up.



needed some trimming on the frame horns, I like leaving that threaded hole on the bottom of the frame in case I need to mount something, but I trim the top back a lot. if you are scared of unbolting the steering box, dont be, this was a 3 minute job to unbolt, trim and reattach.




i stepped back as far as I could, its just slightly low in front still but maybe ol 3 ton jack lost a pump or two waiting around for me, hes an old guy relatively speaking.



looks tall, good thing I had the foresight to screw up royally and end up with a set of drop springs.



tomorrow is my last trip to gregs, I will throw up a few pictures

[oldman3]

Russ, looks good...Jim

[Rusti]

wow. grate color combination. Like the old looging trucks with the dark colored hoods.

[Tempest67]

that is a good tip on saving the lower part of the frame with the threaded hole.

That is in the memory bank for the next one......... if there is a next one???


Keep it going, and thanks for posting

[Matt_50]

Just read through this build. Looking good. Getting fancy with the mounts, I like it!

What's your best time from start to finish on one of these so far?

[joedoh]

oh probably 6 months if I really try. the first took a year. I want to do them faster but I feel like I am not spending enough time making it good and up to my standards. I wish I could buy the first one back, and redo it with everything I have learned... heck I wish I could redo nicks 54 that I did over christmas, these parts I am making now are lightyears better than the old ones I hand cut and welded.

anyway.


visited greg, his wife raises bengals and these two were "helping" sometimes they get more than one kind of cat in a litter, so even through they are brothers they dont look the same. names are This and That.



finished up his firewall with a new piece I cut that both closes the old steering column hole and locates the new hole when the column is centered on the gauges, I see a lot of use for that.






I gave him a list of shaft and u joint parts to buy, when he gets them in I will install them and thats my last piece.

he lives about 30 min east, and as luck would have it I made a deal with another guy local to greg on a steering wheel for bickle, a 3 spoke chevelle. he had another, a two spoke that was more complete but someone else had dibbed it. but after dibbing he went to the lake for the holiday and maybe would pick it up tuesday. this was sunday. I paid for my wheel and said if the other guy falls through I will come back and buy the other also, he said save a trip and sold me both.



so now I am leaning towards champagne mist for the interior, marc did you use that on your truck?


more next post.

[joedoh]

while we were driving back to his place to drop him off I told him about that unreliable guy who fell through on my forklift. made a deal and didnt honor it. I wrote his name in my book and then crossed it out (anyone get that reference?)

greg said a guy around the corner had a ton, so he called him. the guy said he might have something for me and spent an hour walking me around. first we saw his 54 chevy gasser, anyone recognize the shackles?



then some big girls




a one ton, this was special because it has a brownie box, over and under!




and a 33? chevrolet.



and a 46



he had a pantload more than that, more trucks like a 72 gmc astro day cab, another astro with a sleeper cab and manure bed which I am sure was some kind of oversight in purchase, 14 forklitfs, tractor/loaders, and even a skid steer. Saab, old plymouth, international scout, taurus sho, mazda 4x4, this looked like my collection I never had.

after all our walking I hit him for the numbers, and he said sorry, nothing for sale. you know, the opposite of what he said on the phone. no big deal, nice guy and maybe he will call with something someday.

[joedoh]

so back on bickle. trying to put a front end on you have never had on (this was a two ton can remember, and I replaced the drivers cowl) is a fiddly chore. getting it pulled back enough is hard, getting the holes lined up is even harder. this is also why I advocate leaving the front end together, a lot of aligning and holding your tongue right is needed if you blow it to pieces.

I needed a good pair of hands to hold things in place. luckily my wife was home so I used some ratchet straps to help and did it myself.





looking better, but not right yet.



when you are lining things up, I am a big fan of using existsing monuments. for example if you want to know if the bookcase you just assembled is straight and level, you could step back and compare it to a door frame. the human eye can "see" a mismatch of 1/16", so I like to find things to look at for alignmenet. for example you could squat down and line the top of the core support up with the line on the top of the firewall to check side to side level. in this case I wanted to see how "square" the front end was on the frame, so I looked down and lined up the bar I tacked in, to support the bottom of the core, with the sway bar, which is absolutely perpendicular to the frame.



you can see it, so did I, the front end wasnt even. I dont have bolts in the cab mounts yet, too early, and I always leave a 1/4" leeway for adjustment in the holes of the mounts so a quick shove sorted it.

after that, I added some bolts. another tip, getting the holes lined up is frustrating, doubly so if that front clip had never been on this cab, but my advice is do the top one first, its the hardest to reach, then focus on getting the fenders level and the other holes will magically line up.



more tomorrow, I am on a tear since its raining again. next saturday (not this saturday) a friend is bringing his ext cab frame by to shorten, me and my big mouth told him how easy it was. ( I am not complaining, hes a good guy)

[8man]

Thanks for the tips, I know I can use them on the 54.

[OutlawDrifter]

Russ...why would you show me that snub nose GMC big girl followed with...not for sale. I'm still drooling.

Champagne Mist was my color selection for the interior metal works on Francis...sharp memory my friend!

That snub nose would make an awesome car hauler with a 6BT and a baby RoadRanger 10 speed....

[joedoh]

memory like a steel trap my friend haha.

those snub gmcs are hard to find for sure, that one had a pontiac 336 v8 in it. I will let you know if he ever sells but I bet its like the guys on that picker show, sometimes they just like showing it all off.


got the front clip standing on its own with the mounts tacked in. drug that hood I found in the back yard to the front and used air pressure to liberate the spiders. it still had hinges and springs on it, and the hood bolts backed right out! I took that as a good sign and test fit it.






a little high in the middle/back, probably out of shape from laying around. I got this hood with a buttload of parts from Mike in Salina years ago and totally forgot it was in the back yard until I moved the s10 bedliner to take to the dump!

also the fender body line doesnt look level to the cab, but its because the door is slightly open.

the wheel alignment is perfect now, the cab was slightly back. I tried shoving it around but like most times you try shoving something bigger than you it didnt really like it, I needed a slow steady push. so since I have all these s10 jacks laying around I decided to modify one, usually they have a round bump on top to lift on a special dimple on the frame, but that made it useless as a jack for anything else, so I cut the bump off and used a piece of scrap from the plasma table to make it useful once again.



I put it between the bed mount and the cab, low enough to push at the floor seam and sloooooooowly cranked it till the cab had moved a 1/4", which worked perfect!


tomorrow there is a swap meet and I need to go pick up the black bed from travis tomorrow evening so I can get it set on, maybe saturday?

[oldman3]

Russ, coming together my friend, looks good...Jim

[joedoh]

thanks jim!

today me and beeps went to the first swap meet since we bought those 55-57 beds, remember that? we walked straight to a table and swap met a cranky guy with a bunch of steering wheels. crank or not, he had a 67 deluxe chevelle cap and thats what I was missing.




found a model A taillight stand and license plate bracket, I wanted it for the 53 number riveted over the 51 plate, never have seen anyone do that before. and the chrome 55-57 headlight bezel for my 56, $3!



then I visited travis and he he had what I needed. 1/2 ton short running boards and aprons



and a whoa black beddy.




visited his GMC too, great looking swap, going to run a 6BT.




thats all till tomorrow!

[OutlawDrifter]

At it again! That GMC has potential!