One of these days I will put these under headings like, body, frame and so on... Well look what I got around figuring out and doing.

This is what my dad wrote to a guy about the truck:

First of all, a welder, if you don't have one, is almost invaluable. When I started my truck, I already had an Arc welder and an Oxy-Acetalene, and thought I was well set up. When I first tried welding a body patch in, found out that body repairs required entirely different equipment. Tried a few different units, and ended up with a Lincoln 125 MIG. What I like about this unit is that it is 110 volt powered, so can take it virtually anywhere. More important, is that it has a dial for basically infinite (within the manufacturer's specifications) voltage control. Have found out that just a minute increase in voltage will make the difference between a ridge being left after welding, versus almost no grinding being needed at all.

To keep us wanting to work on the truck more we take it out - illegal as hell! No windows, no lights, no fenders,no box, no brains (who put that in there?). It's been good for our morale to take it out a few times, makes us enthusiastic again. We're saying IT'LL BE ON THE ROAD, LEGALLY, SUMMER OF '98. (Have said that for the previous 2 years "Next summer", but the time has come...)

I would like to hear about your trucks. What drive line, rear end, steering, etc., you have? Especially interested in what isn't stock, as maybe you have overcome some of the situations that I'm faced with, and I can use your ideas. Scott.

We went with Bearclaw door latches activated by power door lock solenoids, micro switches connected to the outside door handles activate the solenoids, retaining the stock look from outside. Inside, small push buttons on dash independently open the doors. Installed an electric key switch under the driver's door handle outside, and retained the stock mechanical key lock on the passenger door in case of battery run down, or whatever. Otherwise the body is stock.

We installed a spare tire winch in place of the stock spare tire setup. The winch is from a D50 or Nissan '80s pickup. We wanted to have a spare with the truck, as it will be a daily driver, but we didn't want the tire in the bed.

The front suspension that we went with is the Mustang II IFS as the bozo we bought the truck from cut off the steering column with a torch when he was removing the body from the frame, so, opportunity to update suspension/brakes was ideal. The Mustang II lowered the front about 9" from stock height, and we wanted to try to maintain as much clearance as possible. The clearance is still considerably more than current FWD cars, but will know more once we get the truck on the road daily.

We went with leather buckets out of an '85 Daytona plus the power window mechanisms which have been considerably modified. A friend sold them to us at a reasonable price. The column is out of an early '80s mid size Chev car, with the old column hole in the floor filled in and column angled more than stock.

The Daytona seats fit nicely, but I've found that I use the welder either quite often, or very often, depending upon what I'm working on. We took out the stock bench seat and mounting brackets, and scrapped the lot (I previously had a '52 Merc, and recall that the seat left a bit to be desired, at least for my back). Using the front mounting holes, made a couple of vertical supports that bolted there, with a 5/16" x 1.5" flat bar welded horizontally (had that size of bar, makes a nice rigid framework). Bar extends about 6" beyond both vertical uprights. Basically did the same for the back, but lower for seat tilt, but used 1.5" square tubing as bolts for seats screw in vertically. Welded coupling nuts inside the tubing to give more strength, as we use these bolts for the seatbelt anchors. The framework was basically trial and error, but as these are the second set of seats that we tried, had a bit of experience in what we wanted, etc. The saddle tanks are filled by one filler neck, cut into the cab approximately 2 inches below the stock seat tank filler neck. Had to design the filler neck to tank piping to route nice and clean, and still allow me to install the rear seat mount. The passenger mount has a "fancy" dogleg to clear the filler pipe.

We retained the stock guages, but built a 6 volt regulator for them, and still use stock sending units. The flathead sending units indicate much hotter water temp since they are now in an OHV, so we had to play with resistors across the sending units so temp guage is reasonably accurate. We also built a heavy duty 7 volt regulator for the heater motor, with infinite speed adjustment (something that wasn't hard to do, as my dad has wished for years that vehicles would come stock with infinite speed adjustment).

To try and keep costs low, we didn't want to buy a 12 volt wiper motor to replace the vacuum motor, so when a friend offered a wiper motor out of his '61 Ford bus, many hours of modifications later resulted in an electric setup.

We built a console out of thin sheet metal to fill in between the seats and to cover the auto shifter (shifter is out of an '81 Buick Skylark because we needed the cable length, plus this shifter has built in neutral safety switch and reverse switch). Console also houses the power window switches, power door lock switch, power seat controls and amplifier switches.

We had split bench seats at first, but they were too wide for our liking. One of the nice things about the Daytona seats is that they are not "thick", i.e., since the cabs on our trucks are not large to begin with, don't need the space taken up with bulky seats.

Also made a mounting bracket under the passenger seat as high as possible for the sub woofer amplifier. There is still room underneath for me to make some sort of an underseat storage drawer. The sub woofer speaker is in a custom designed and manufactured (by me) box under the driver's seat.

We mounted the battery in the stock location and replaced the top tray of the stand and replaced it with a 80's Chev battery mount that holds the battery on from the bottom. This was to get rid of the old bracket that used to hold the battery on. If anyone is thinking of building one of these or working on their truck one thing to keep in mind is, depending on how much rake (lower the front is than the rear) try to make the battery level and just put some spacers on the front of the stand.

We also made a pair of saddle tanks for inside frame, straddling the transmission/driveshaft. Tanks are about 40 inches long, about 8 inches wide, and about 9 or 10 inches high, joined by a 1.5" HD hose, vent line at top. The passenger side tank has a 2 inch nipple welded on top which protrudes through the cab under the seat, then piped to a second filler neck just below the stock filler neck. These 2 tanks, which act as one larger one due to the 1.5" hose, carry about 22 gallons (Cdn), so between the seat tank and these. Yes we still have the seat tank for those long trips. We have a tank solenoid switch to install to switch between tanks.

These tanks were easy to build, being rectangular, but in our case they are the particular size they are since we have opted for 350/350 engine/transmission swap, plus the routing of the dual exhaust wouldn't allow longer tanks.

Our exhaust comes down from the manifolds, routes under the frame to just behind the tanks, then inside frame, then turbo mufflers, over back axle, then outside frame just above axle and back.

What I would like to do is rebuild the engine, blueprinted and balanced. And I was thinking that a high rise manifold would be nice with twin or three deuce carbs and twin turbo. One day I'll have it.

Well today (10/29/97) we finnished putting power steering on the truck. At first we had the hoses reversed so when you turned the steering wheel left the tires wanted to go right and same with turning it right. Now it will be a pleasure not a chore to park the truck. The next thing that I have to do is make a mount for the cooling fan for the stereo because is is in an overhead console which is enclosed. There is an amplifier up there there that came with the stereo. The stereo is a am/fm tape and cd unit out of a 1992 Eagle Talon. We attached the hood and had to move a bracket towards the front of the hood to clear engin. The 350 with the water pump is longer than the flat 8 and we had to move the radiator up to the inline 6 mountings.

Today (11/01/97) was sandblasting day! Yeah, I got to get up at 9:30am. This was after getting home at 1:00am. Boy was I ever happy, anyways we sandblasted the hood, lower fender, part below the grill and some other small parts. The other day we found out that it would cost $500 cnd. to chrome the grill, front piece on the hood and the front bumper. The bumper included straighting and filling holes. So you know what that means, I will be even more broke than I already am. But it will look good and if I hit anyone or anyone hits me and bends my bumper I am going to cry.

Well today (11/09/97) we cleaned out the horn and painted it. There was so much dirt in it, after we cleaned it, it was alot louder. The moment that I have been waiting for... the sub is now in the truck and it is working. I got the amp a while agao and then I blew it, so I better not do that again. A friend of my dad is going to put remote gain and cut off frequency controls on it for us. The amp is mounted under the passanger seat and with the remote controls we will be able to control the sub from the concole between the seats. The hood and fenders are also on and I will have to take a picture because it looks really good.

I was going to go skiing today (11/16/97) but my friends all had home work. So instead I sanded the dash and doors. I had to remove the old rubber on the doors and it was a pain. Note, holding the sand paper with your fingers may burn your fingers, I burnt mine. Well we now have air vents on each side of the dash. It looks really good, the store only had one so we still have to get another one. The vents are going to have air going to them all the time so in the winter they will clear the door windows and in the summer they will keep us some what cool.

If you're interested in more details that we've done, or if we can help with ideas, etc., please e-mail me. If you know of anyone who needs parts we have the stock door latches, inside door handles, window regulators, etc, and would like to find a home for them. If anyone has parts that they need or want to trade/sell then e-mail me and I will post them.