Well, as a departure from E-bay, I figured I'd post up a progress report
on the 53 street rod project. After some hemming and hawing and and
general confusion, I finally welded in my small block motor mounts. I
had held off removing the cab from the frame until I got to this point,
in order to see how the motor and tranny fit in relation to cab
bodywork. I had to juggle the location a bit to clear the power R&P
steering and that put things an inch or so more forward than I wanted.
If this results in fan/radiator clearance problems, I may have to run an
electric fan, but I'm not worried yet.
Today, with the help of my 17 & 22 year old sons, wife, and oldest son's
girlfriend, we were able to remove the cab from the frame. I had not
removed the doors, and thought the whole assembly was a bit too heavy to
just lift off, so we ran som straps through the open windows and lifted
it as high as I could with the chainfall in the garage. One of the body
bolts up front was rusted away so it only required the 3 remaining to be
disconnected. Well, the chainfall didn't lift the body very high, maybe
3 inches above the frame, but with a lot of jockeying and a few blue
phrases, the girls were able to roll the frame away.
Then I built a wooden dolly to drop the cab on and roll it out into the
yard. The frame is going back in the garage and I'll re-mount the
engine block/tranny in order to position the tranny cross-member. Next
step is to look around the boneyard for a suitable driveshaft.
Tomorrow's work will be to clean up the remaining frame section and
contemplate stuff like electrical and brake lines.
Has anyone used an aftermarket wiring harness (Painless, Ron Francis,
etc.) and how pleased were you with the quality and ease of
installation.
Progress is going well, and I figured I'd better get to this point soon,
as I promised my wife she could have the garage stall back for the
winter. I always seem to get pretty excited when I get to a major
progress step like this, though I did have thoughts running through my
head, like "what if we can't get this body back on the frame and have it
line up". I did have another crazy idea...I was going to have my son
hitch the rolling chassis to our pickup, and then pull me around the
block so I could "see how it rode". But I have no steering yet, and
strange looks from my wife and comments about my sanity made me
reconsider. Years ago I would not have caved in so easily!
Wally / Templeton, MA
53 3100 rod project
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
|