Chevrolet C8 1940 Cab 11 restoration, The Netherlands

[Bob Carriere]

I have never seen an arch bar cut and repaired before..... the compound curves are a nightmare..... not to mention the residual tension from being formed in the first place.

Bravo.......

Bob C

[Alex van de Wetering]

Thanks guys! Mike; I think you might be right that a lot of frames might have been bent from new.....and even though I did brace the frame before cutting and welding, I have no idea how much it got bent from rust damage and the hard life at the farm before I started the restoration.
Something I also noticed is that the fenders had some extra holes cut for fastening them to the arch bars....and some holes that were obviously modified to get everything assembled. I would not be surprised if this was done in the factory, and I also wouldn't be surprised if I need to add add some spacers or wedges to get panels aligned, even though at the moment all seems to be pretty much level.


Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

Some of the captives nuts on my cab frame were missing or mangled, so I had to make a few new cages.

Al Tooes had a bunch of cages laser cut for his HUW restoration and he sent me some that were left over from his resto (thanks again Al!)
The HUW cages are somewhat different from the early C8 ones, but I was able to use the same sheet metal outline. The first picture shows one of the original cages on the C8 cab frame. The second shows what some of the others looked like, but it gives you an idea how they were welded.

I made a simple tool that I could clamp in the vise and welded on one square nut and clamped a second. I used the first as a jig to form the long ends of the cages by lightly tapping with a chisel and a piece of flat steel bar. That's why I welded on this nut....I wanted to keep the nut in position so I could properly make a 90 degree bend. After the long ends were formed, I placed the piece onto the second nut and formed the short ends. After drilling holes in each of the long ends, and grinding the ends to an arrow shape, the cages were pretty much ready to weld onto the frame. I clamped the cages to the frame by inserting the square nut in the cage, inserting a bolt and clamping down the cage by use of a second nut on the outside of the cage. This makes welding and grinding a piece of cake.

[Alex van de Wetering]

After I made the first few cages, I noticed they were really tight around the square nut...much tighter than the originals and therefor not allowing very much play when assembling the cab panels, so I welded some material onto the sides of the cut and ground it down so it was slightly oversized. I used a washer to create some more space in the other direction. The result was much more like the original...with the nuts allowing to rattle in the cage.

Well...that's it....a lot of pictures and text to describe a simple (and fun!) job

Alex

p.s. Square nuts came from the Filling Station by the way.

[Alex van de Wetering]

The centre section of the frame isn't welded to the arch bars fully round, leaving space for water and dirt.... creating the perfect environment for rust. I decided to weld up the gaps after I sand blasted the frame. You can sort of see the difference if you compare the first two pictures.

After two coats of primer and a base coat in green I installed the arch bars to the chassis and removed the temporary braces.

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

I didn't have much luck with the bumper bolts... Even before sandblasting the chassis at the start of the restoration, I tried welding on some nuts to the studs that remained after the bolt heads were broken off......hoping I could get the bolts out....I tried several times, but no luck. So at the time I cut off the last remains and used a centre punch to prepare for drilling out the studs.

Now two years later I was ready to drill out the bolts. Drilling went OK, but tapping new threads proved a bit more challenging. I broke the tap in the last hole.....now what? I tried heat, huge amounts of penetrating fluid, pliers and punches....but in the end I decided to try a tool I got from Ebay, A Tap extractor from Walton. It's basically a holder with 4 pins, that insert around the remains of the tap. With some patience....WD40 and even more patience, the broken tap came out. I was able to tap the last bit with new tap.


Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

I was afraid the bumper wouldn't fit properly as one or two holes I drilled were at a slight angle, but as you can see in the pictures the holes in the bumper have enough play to get all 8 bolts in!

The extractor is quite a simple tool , but it worked. The pins, or flutes, sometimes break, but even with a piece broken off they will still do the job. You can also buy seperate new "flutes". The only trouble with the tool is that they only work for one size tap....so if you have a habit of breaking taps, you will need a variety of different size extractors.

Alex