Work on My F8, No. 11

[king of obsolete]

jim, keep up the the good work and keep this thread going because you have "lots" of info which others can use done the road. also i like the trans so you can drive the cmp when you are finished. being colour blind i don't let that set me back. i have worn pink thinking it is a grey with a smile on my face. i just laugh about it in the end.
also i like the fact you are not cheaping out on the repairs, you are spending your money wisely.

thansk
KoO
Published Author

[Jim Price]

Work was limited to three days this week as I had a dental appointment on Monday; broke a portion of a tooth off and am having a silver crown put in. (Couldn't afford a gold one as I've spent my discretionary funds on the truck...... )

In any case a fair number of tasks were completed:

Bob finished welding the bed frame at his home where he's got a 220 MIG welder. He also sanded down the welds before returning the frame to my place.

Cleaned and painted the windshield wiper motors. The grease inside the chamber had solidified and the vacuum "paddles" were stuck.

Welded the frame to the bottom of the bed and, after cooling, bolted it to the frame. (As you may recall, the original bed was beyond saving so I had new bed pieces made up at a local steel fabricator.)

Made up a set of spacers to go in between the base of the brush guard spring "legs" and the inside of the 5" channel bumper. We made these from 1 1/2" heavy wall square pipe, using 1/4" flat bar to seal off the top and provide the "step" for the bottom of the "legs" to rest on. Drilled a 1/2" hole to provide for the bolt heads that hold the individual springs together. We used Allen head bolts to reduce the size of the hole as they will be hidden by the spacer.

Had a set of "U" bolts made up to affix the guard to the back of the bumper. We then put it all together to check for fit and then disassembled it to take to the stripper and painter.

Got some neighborhood help to lift and set the sides of the bed in place and then clamped them to the bottom in preparation for welding both in place on Monday. By the way, when we cut the cross pieces for the bed frame we left the pieces that bolt to the truck frame just a bit long. This enabled us to rest the bottom of the side pieces of the bed on these slight extensions making the job of clamping them on straight a certainty.

Pushed the truck into the driveway where it slopes down to the street and stuck the garden hose in it and did some flushing of each side of the engine. Although the use of air pressure did blow the vast majority of the sediment out, more did come with the water treatment. We'll do the same with a flush when we've installed the radiator and run the engine for a short time.

The fan arrived and I was successful in having the winning bid for the replacement manifold. I expect it'll be here some time this coming week and we can get back to working on getting the engine started. We still need to alter the exhaust pipes, purchase a muffler and install the exhaust system.

Today I stopped by a local specialty lumber store and had the pieces for the gas tanks support cut. They were cut from ash wood, a common wood used in early automobiles here in the US. The top planks are 1" by 6" and the bottom plank is 1 7/8" by 8". More to follow on this task in the near future.

That's it for now!

Regards,
Jim

[Mike K]

Jim

this is the floor layout on the C8 ?????????

Mike

[Mike K]

Jim

This is a pic of the floor .. an original 1A1 body . Maybe the F8 has a different layout . Someone else may add more .

Mike

[Jim Price]

Mike:
Your drawing and picture are indeed correct! However, both Bob (my welder) and I, after having a close look at the bed that came with my truck, determined that the original design was not sufficient to support repeated heavy use. Because I intend to use the truck at reenactments, we altered the design of the bed frame to meet the expected loads.

Regards,
Jim

[Jim Price]

This past week was a bit of a slow one, mostly measuring, more measuring, discussing, cussing and other assorted important digressions. However, we did accomplish the following:

Welded the sides of the bed to the floor.

Welded the angle iron braces onto the ends and sides of the bed sides. These took the place of the flanges which had been formed from the single pieces of the sheet metal that made up the bed sides for each side of the bed.

Repaired the ragged hole in the left rear end "cap" (torch-cut during ithe truck's civilian use...) to match the factory-made one on the right side. We had saved both end "caps" when scrapping the old bed...

Welded the underbrace to the bottoms of the end "caps" and then welded the brace to the end of the bed.

Removed the old sheet metal from the original angle iron (which we had the foresight to save when we scrapped the original bed.... ) which fits around the sides and bottom of the front of the bed and sides. We're having this important piece of angle stripped and then we'll affix new sheet metal to it and then bolt all to the front of the bed.

Propped the new tailgate into place just to see if it fit. (Whew! It did!) By the way, we saved the old tailgate and will remove all the old furniture, including the fold-down step, and install all on the new one. More to follow on this.

The replacement right-side manifold (which has the lower profile) arrived. We may get it installed next week. Depends on how excited we get about finishing the bed.......

That's all for this week!

Regards,
Jim

[Jim Price]

As the angle iron that wraps the front of the bed did not arrive back from the stripper yet we turned to an avoided project, the reconstruction of the exhaust pipes.

Suffice it to say, the job of taking a set of exhaust pipes that were designed and manufactured to exhaust out the right side of the frame and altering them to exhaust out the left was not an easy job. It required making 11 different cuts in eight places on both pipes but when we were done both fit like they should!

Prior to installing and trying the pipes for fit, we installed the replacement manifolds, the right side having a more shallow profile. Below are pictures of the maniolds, old and new, showing the difference between the two.

Also shown is a picture of the right side pipe where we altered it to fit the space betwen the manifold and the driver's side foot space. A picture of the reformed exhaust pipes are shown as well.

That's it for now!

Regards,
Jim