More Winter FUN!!!

[Racin'Jacin]

Bring out the hammers!!!

For those who have seen my old '47 Ford truck - - probably the thing that stands out the most is the HORRIBLE patchwork done to the running boards. I think the previous owners intentions were to cover the running board surface with rubber mats - a common practice that doesn't hold up very well as evidence the presence of glue and the LACK of mats on my running boards.

Since I'm more of a "plain steel" kind of guy the FLAT patches are just gonna have to GO!!!

Ebay to the rescue and I purchased an equally crappy running board to extract some ribbed patch material - ribbed for... (ok we won't go there).

Anyways what I thought would be a 5 minute fix (exaggerating) resulted in taking 1/2 a day JUST to remove the running board from the truck - man they don't fool around skimping on fasteners!!!

So after a couple nights of foolin' around I got 2 done so far on the pass. side.

Here's a pic of a "new" piece welded in with the "old" piece just setting there for comparison:


Yeah - it looked pretty awful.

Of course with any GOOD project the fun is only beginning!!!! After the first 2 patches were welded in - this thing was SO WARPED I thought I ruined it!! Yikes!!! After some hammering on the welds to stretch back the metal some - the huge twist subsided a whole bunch - at least enough where I could try to start flattening out the HUGE banana. I'd say I am about 80% there - the last 20% usually takes 80% of the effort!!! But hey at least it's getting CLOSER to being flat again. I'm off work tomorrow so I hope to get the 3rd big patch fit and welded in.

Wish me luck!!! When this one is done -- there's still the DRIVERS SIDE to contend with!!!


Racin'Jacin

[Racin'Jacin]

UPDATE: So the stretching has been helping, but not sure if I've gone far enough yet. I will say this - this is the first time I've had to use a SLEDGE HAMMER for body work!! The straightening of the ribbed surface is far from over, but getting way closer with the use of the sledge.

My biggest problem was the outside edge - this has a huge effect on the straightening of the top surface.

I think it's time to bring out the BLUE WRENCH!!!




Racin'Jacin

[Racin'Jacin]

OK I am still struggling a bit with that outside edge - this *&&^ is THICK!!! Kinda awkward as well so I think I'm gonna mount it back on the truck to finish the edge work.

But!!! To do that I need to re-make the hat shaped sections that support the running board mounting screws.

I took some scrap 1/2" steel plate - bolted some 1/4" thick strips - took another big chunk and added a 1/4" strip (had to use 2 pieces as my scrap wasn't long enough) and viola!! I had a poor mans set of dies to press out the pieces I need. It takes about 30 seconds to make one now - minus of course the couple hours I spent making the "tooling". Literally took 5 minutes to make 6 pieces - definitely worth the time IMHO.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get the running board back on the truck. It still needs some lovin' , but I have no plans on getting it perfect - it's just a "work" truck ;-0

Racin' Jacin

[Racin'Jacin]

I got the passenger side running board back on and put some primer on it! Woo hoo! Progress!

Moving on to the drivers side. I decided that taking the running board on/off was a lot of work - maybe unnecessary for the driver's side. So this time I'm gonna leave it on and see if I can get away with that.

So far I have the first patch fit, welded and ground down. There's only a small ripple that is fighting me. So far leaving the running board on was a good decision. Tomorrow is another day.