Matt's 1951 Chevy Pickup

[_Matt 2,841]

A bit overdue on an update.

Undersealed the cab, came up pretty good!

Flipped the cab back over and sanded all of the inside and door jambs. Then put some epoxy primer on.

High build primed the dash and a few of the panels that will be visible once done, so they sanded up smooth and just sprayed the primer as a surfacer on the rest.

Once I got it all sanded down and filled the little bits that needed doing sprayed some colour on. Pretty happy with how it turned out, other than a couple of small sags on the dash, but I'll sand them out later.

Picked up a couple of boxes of Dynamat and covered it everywhere I could get it. Made a decent improvement, just need to get some inside the doors somehow and also do something with the gap in behind where the top seat belt mount is.

I needed to sort a radiator as the original one wasn't in the greatest of condition. Tried searching for a couple of weeks to find somewhere to buy an aluminium core the sizes I want, but seemed to be pretty hard to get anything. So went and bought one of those universal Chevy cross-flow things that had a core close to what I needed.

Cut off the tanks, drew up the radiator and support in solidworks and designed the mounts and new tanks from there. Top tank is angled at the front and with the gap at the top allows me to bring the air intake through there, as there's not really anywhere else for cold air.

Drew up some aluminium brackets to mount the electric fan as well.

Should clear the engine if I trim some of the pulley bolts that stick out a bit much.

Started on prepping the rest of the body panels for clear coating. Left side is sanded with 800 grit which seems to work pretty well, cleans it up nice.

The seam at the back was pretty rusty so gave it a sand, rust kill and then seam sealed it. The blue colour I was using for the rest of painting was quite the same as the patina'd paint some had some different stuff mixed up and used it to blend in the repairs. Came out really well!

Fixed up the patches where I welded up the old mirror, spotlight holes and the area around the cowl vent.. 
The sanding brought back some of the original pinstripping around the cab which is cool.

Had to clean up this seam on the tray as well since it was rusty and needed touching up.

[_Matt 2,841]

All the bits are clearcoated. Came up alright, got way too many runs on the cab, but that's okay as I'll be re-coating it all again once it's assembled with some flatter clear. At least it's all sealed up now.

Installed some black fender welt between the bed and the guards.

Started installing some of the parts.

Put the door latches in, had to replace one of the springs behind the interior handle on the left side as it had snapped.
Squeezed some Dynamat on to the outer skin of the doors and wooow what a difference that made to the whole door including the inner skin.

Couldn't wait to see what the gauges looked like, so in they went.

Got the door windows and quarter windows in, what a frustrating time that was, since they had to be installed in the right order and it all has to be fitted through the small slot in the top.

Put an LED in the original interior light housing, wired it up and fitted. Puts out some decent light.

Pulled apart the old headlight surrounds and put in new spring and seals.

Gave them a bit of a polish up as well.

Bought some new sealed beams, no-one could seem to find any semi-sealed ones with the domed glass when I was looking. Found some in America after I bought these though, but will try these out for now and if they're rubbish change them later.

Fitted one of the inner guards when the engine was in and realised that trying to make headers was waaaay too much effort, time consuming and there really just is no space in there, plus the factory ones already fitted perfectly.
So cut off the ugly heat shields on the factory headers, tidied up some of the welding, ground out the lumpy weld on the inside of the flange, painted them with high-temp paint and then wrapped them in heat-wrap, look much better. Would of really liked to build my own headers, maybe on the next project, as I have 20x 1-5/8" U-bends arriving from America next week haha.

Put the cab on so I can see where the brake and fuel lines can run.
Looks like it could actually be finished sometime soon haha.

[_Matt 2,841]

Need to do updates more often so they're smaller!
Put the tray on as I needed to see where I could run the fuel and brake lines.
Also borrowed a pair of wheels off one of my parent's cars, to test the tire sizing.

Bought a fuel filter and made a stainless steel bracket to hold it.

Made some mounts for the rear bumper to bed brackets, as they were welded on before.

Got out the LED tail lights that I've had for ages and made up some stainless brackets and polished them.

Started running the brake line out of copper-nickel tube.

Also got some 5/16" lines for the fuel lines.

Made some stainless clamps to hold them all together and to the firewall and chassis.

Made some bits for the column change linkage. Top middle piece mounts on the firewall around the column and has some little stoppers that make it so the gear stick needs to be pulled out to change from certain gears. Left bit is what goes over the stoppers and pivots with the gear stick to push the rod bit down, which then pushes the right piece down and change gear. Thought at first it would have to be some super complex system with cables and stuff but this way was actually pretty simple to make work.

Then I needed to make up a indicator on the column to show which gear it was in. Drew on up in Solidworks and laser cut it out.

The accelerator cable needed some modifying to work, it's wasn't quite long enough to reach the pedal, so made a new bracket that moved the housing closer to the throttle, which allowed for more cable out the pedal end. Then all it needed was a plate with a lot in it that bolted to the pedal to hold the little ball on the end.

 

Have had some big train air horns for ages. Couldn't find anyway with enough space to fit them, as they were originally mounted together in a triangle shape. So pulled them apart, made some new brackets and bolted them up under the cab to the chassis. Need to just run some lines to them.

Some boxes of stuff finally arrived from America.

They included some front windscreen stainless trim, door panels and the surrounding trim. Might replace the door panels one day as they weren't as good as I thought they'd be for the "deluxe" spec ones.

Also arrived were some wheels. 15x8 Artillery steel wheels with baby moons and beauty rings.

Spent ages trying to figure out what colour to paint them, didn't really want to go red (what everyone does) or black (spent too much money on them for them to be hidden). Decided a bronze colour would look good and hopefully not too out of place. Then spent more time trying to find a nice bronze. 

[_Matt 2,841]

I said I should post more often so they're smaller, but here we are, another big post. I didn't think I had much to post because the majority of it has been wiring and that's boring, so not many photos.

Air horns are now fully plumbed up. Used one of my dads cast aluminium fuel logs and used it as the manifold which has the main inlet and then each individual line to each horn.

Bought the biggest battery that would fit inside the box I made earlier. Then drew up a clamp for it, laser cut it from some ali and folded it up.

Getting better at ali welding!

Fitted back into the under floor hole. Bought some battery cables and hooked them up to the main engine power junction.

Wanted a killswitch mounted somewhere, made up a bracket for it out of stainless steel.

Decided under the seat was the best place that is still reasonably easy to access and hidden from sight.

Made an aluminium glovebox since the original cardboard one had seen better days. As the dash is quite short, it would of been hard to tuck up the fuse box behind it and not have it being a eye sore. So designed the glove box to fit the fuse box inside out of sight, which also tucks the wiring up.

Started with the air bag wiring as it was the easiest to do and I don't have very much experience with it, other than a couple of weeks work experience nearly 5 years ago.

Once the airbags were all done and working, I made a start wiring the rest of it. Started at the rear and worked forward.
Need to make a reflector of some sort for the licence plate light.

Since the engine had already been rewired at some stage, it had it's own fuse box and relays ready to go. Decided to mount the fuses up under the dash, after extending the wires to reach.

The relays stayed in the engine bay since they shouldn't need to be accessed as often. Had to rewire the starter relay as it had full power going through the inhibitor switch and apparently that wouldn't be good for the switch, so cut and swapped around some wires.

Stole the power steering pump off of my parent's Mercury that also has a Nissan V8, since they won't be needing one for a while yet. Only just fits, the pulley is pretty close to the chassis rail and the tensioner bolt is very close to the crossmember. Got a new high pressure line made up by using the original fitting from the Nissan line and the rack end of the Jaguar line.

Assembled the inner and outer fenders and then lifted them in place, to check everything still fits. The engine bay looks pretty nice (other than the ugly engine)!

The accelerator cable needed a new bracket to hold it in place since the original didn't work that great anymore.

Made up a V2 under dash panel for the ignition switch and other numerous switches. Looks better than the first one, it might end up black eventually I think, brushed stainless doesn't really match anything else.
From left to right has the ignition, heater, fog lights, wipers and horn switch. Also charge and oil pressure lights.

Made a stainless steel bracket to mount the tacho gauge under the dash. Also above it is the headlight switch. Had to make a bezel for it as the hole in the dash was 25mm and the switch was supposed to only fit in a 8mm hole.

Park/indicators and headlights all wired up with some waterproof plugs.

Managed to blow the 6v sealed beams in the fog lights, so got some new GE 12v ones from America. Made some stainless steel spacers for them to sit on. Need to get enough courage to drill some mounting holes in the front splash apron now.

Noticed the transmission mount was broken, asked around and found Nengun.com had genuine new ones far cheaper than any where else I found.

Bought some oil filter relocation sandwich plates, as the oil filter was nearly impossible to access with the inner fenders in place. Had to get a new adapter nut turned up since the supplied one was too short like they seem to be. Made a new mount for the oil filter plate since the one that came with it was pretty pathetic and weak. Then got some fittings and hose, cost way more than what I thought they would.

[_Matt 2,841]

Learnt a lot in the past month and a bit.
Main thing being that you should probably lube your fuel injector o-rings when you go to put them back in.
Got the engine running, was only running on half the cylinders. Discovered there was no fuel going to the rear half cylinders, so decided to pull out the injectors. Took them into town and put them on an injector tester and nothing happened. Was told they can gunk up after sitting for awhile.
So went off back home and gave them a spray with some cleaner and smashed them on the ground until they started clicking freely again with power to them. Got them all sounding really good, so in they went (without any lube, thinking back it should of been something that should of come to mind, but I guess I was just in a rush to get it running!), as they went in they must of torn the o-rings. I got the intake and everything back on and together and we started it up again. Ran mint!! So turned it off to see how it would start again, flat battery.
Chucked the charger on, and then decided we'd put the wheels on, piece it a bit more together and go for a drive up the driveway. By time we got it together and off the hoist, a few hours had past and so had a decent amount of fuel past the o-rings and into cylinder no.5. Cranked it over and it didn't want to start very easily, so gave it a few more attempts and finally started up with a lovely knocking noise! We thought maybe it was just something loose in the bellhousing, as when we first started it we quickly realised there were no bolts in the flex plate to the torque converter.
Anyway drove it up and down the driveway and then back on to the hoist. Decided over Christmas we'd pull out the transmission to have a look in there, other than the weights on the flex plate being ripped off by the torque converter there was nothing that obvious. Started the engine without the trans in and it still had the knock, which was a disappointment. Our neighbours Tony and Jason, who are a bit more mechanically minded came over on Boxing day after hearing that it wasn't transmission related, and went over everything they could think of. Eventually after a good few hours we narrowed it down and decided to check how high each piston is coming up by sticking a threaded rod with a nut on it and turning the engine over by hand. Got around to cylinder no.5 and it was about 5-6mm lower than the rest. Was obvious at this stage that we had a bent rod that was caused by hydraulicing the engine with fuel.
Out came the engine, onto a stand, flipped over and then pulled the sump off. It was pretty bent! The crank smashed up the bottom of the piston, but other than the rod and piston everything else looked good. 
The engine is now at the rebuilders and injectors have been professionally cleaned with new o-rings.

The buggered o-rings on the injectors.

Since I had awhile off work over Christmas and the engine debacle halted progress a bit, we decided it was a good time to sand out all the runs in the clearcoat and give it another couple of coats with some flatter clear since I wasn't quite happy with the last stuff I used.
Used some PPG autothane clear with flattening base in it this time. Was way easier to spray, looks waaaaay better, a lot smoother and a more consistent flatness. Also the extra coats covered the rust up a bit more, as before it didn't seem to be covered well in the rusty areas.

With the engine out it was a good time to go through and tidy up a few things. Made up some stainless heatshields that cover the wiring on one side and the fuel and brake lines on the other. Also wrapped some of the exhaust in heat wrap to try and help keep some heat away. Ignore the plastic cable ties, the ones that came with the wrap were too short, and I'll change them soon.

After trying to drain the coolant I decided it'd much easier if there was a drain plug, rather than having to disconnect a hose and having it run straight onto a crossmember.

Next thing to do was sort out the fuel filler. Turned out the u-bends I bought for the headers were the correct size I needed, so took one of them, cut it to fit and welded a breather pipe on the side.

Made a stainless pipe that goes from the 1 5/8" u-bend to 2" on the tank.

Also added some gas struts to the rear bed lift up part.

Whilst under the rear end noticed the rear airbags were only mounted on the bottom with bolts and no washers. This was mostly because the mount was so close to the diff tube and the airbag mounting holes had quite a small PCD, you couldn't fit much else in there. Came up with these plates that mount to the airbags with a countersunk screw and then have the studs stick through the outer of the slotted hole in the diff mount. Heaps of room to get a nyloc nut and washer now.

Was running out of stuff that I could think of to do, so my Dad made a start planing and fitting the Matai wood planks that I bought quite a while ago.
Fitted in they looked a bit weird being natural, too bright or something.

Had some Japanese stain lying around that we tried and I quite liked it. So went and wiped that all over it once it was fitting well. Then wiped over some Scandinavian oil and came it out really nice.

Got the windows installed, he still needs to come back and finish them off.

The front window stainless trim doesn't fit as well as I'd hope it would, sorta sticks out a bit, but we're sure it's in there properly. Probably a combination of the crappy re-pro rubber and trim not being 100% right to start with, as I've heard of a heap of people having troubles with windscreen rubbers not fitting nicely on these.

Supposed to be taking this to Nats in less than 6 weeks hahaha