Cargo Door Hinges and Getting Tooling Ready

 Going to run accent lighting under the truck for some cool effects. Cut out the bottom of the rocker panel to accommodate a channel for the led lights.

 The channel with a lens cover to protect the lights strips

 The channel getting welded into the panel.

 The new rocker panels fitted to the truck.

 Next up is to install the hinges for the cargo doors. Decided to use a Soss hinge instead of a piano style to keep the outside panel smooth looking.  We will also have shaved handles on the cargo doors for the same reason. 

 First we transfer the location of hinges to the frame from the aluminium siding panel.

 This is the shape of the Soss hinge that will be installed.

 Holes cut out to accommodate the aluminium blocks that will hold the hinges in place.

 Since the hinges are stainless we need to machine some aluminium blocks so that we could weld them into the frame.

  

 The block in place an ready to be welded in.

 Welded in and finish out.

 The block was designed so that the hinges would hang down the thickness of the panel.

 We were really happy that we only had to file a couple of the opening to make the panel fit.

 We need to make some shims for some of the hinges to make them flush with the bottom of the panel so that they will work properly. Other then that thing are good to go. Next up we need to put the body lines in this panel before we weld it in. Then we can finish the rest of the opening for the cargo doors. Then we can measure and make the doors.

 So we need to make some tools before we can go forward on making the panels. Chris and I designed this for his new english wheel. All the parts were cut and formed by BBC Steel.

 This will be the other side for the frame.

 Chris is using the do it yourself Hoosier Profile Kit to go with the frame that he will be building.

 Chris was also able to get his hands on a Pullmax P3 that he used to use when he was making commercial hoods. It was sitting in a tracker trailer outside when he rescue it. It used to be green and needed some TLC. We both worked on it to get it look like this.

 Rewired, new paint, and new oil seal and she runs like a champ.

 The new shrinking dies that we will be using a lot of to get the the box done.

 The set of dies on the right are ones that came with the Pullmax. The two on the left are ones we had water jet from the pattern that we gave BBC Steel. These are the two body lines that will be in the truck box.

 We need to take off the sharp edges and fine tune the contours of the dies.

 After filing, sanding, and polishing.

 Both sides done and ready for some metal shaping. Oh wait we have another set to do.

 This set of dies will  mimic the lines in the cab.

 Okay now were ready to do some metal shaping.

 What a amazing piece of equipment. We have a little more fine tuning on the dies but are very impressed on how well the Pullmax can make these body lines. The material that we used was 3003 .08 gauge aluminium. We will need to work on how we are going to keep our long run of lines straight and radius smooth.

Talked with Jose at Ogden Chrome to see how things where going with the grill and he sent some pictures of it in copper.

Tells us its looking good but has had its challenges on getting it to this point. I'm thinking it looks pretty awesome. Thank You to Jose and the crew at Ogden Chrome. 

We Have Panels

Propane lines ran for the tanks that will be on the back platform outside of the box

    

We will have two 100lb tanks for each side of the truck.

We how have parts to start putting on the skins. We are using .08 gauge 3003 aluminium for the skins on the box and had the parts lazier cut and formed by BBC Steel in Canby.  

Back Wheel-well cutout and bottom of the rocker formed up. (Looking at it upside down.)

The stair treads made out of 1/4" aluminium. 

Test fitting the back wheel panel. We have plans on rolling the inter fender to match the look of the front fenders, and will be finishing out the inside of the fender well.

This is the top panel that will be part of the cargo door opening. Had the openings for the door hinges partially cut out so that when formed it didn't get distorted.  

A look at them after they where cut out.

The part being test fitted. Went to start working on the rocker and side pieces and had some issues on the fitment, so we had to have them reformed. Meaning we have to wait at least a week before we can get back at it.

While we wait for our parts to be reformed we needed to switch gears and decided to layout the rest of the box. 

All wrap up and ready for some body lines to be draw out.

We have two body lines, one that will match up with the truck body line and the other to make a transition between the painted part to the polished aluminium

. 

Made some profiles out of clay to get a feel of what we wanted.

The layout on the back part of the truck. From the bottom of the rocker to the bottom of the first line will be painted red. From that line to the top of the last one will be black and everything above that is polished aluminium.

With our lead times running about two weeks on parts that we have formed we decided to get ahead of the project and start to layout some more parts that we will need. This will be the back panel of the truck that houses the taillights.

We are working on some cool things that we have planned for the taillights. Stay tuned.

I Promise We Have Been Working

 Well as promised the air intake has been installed.

 A look from the under the frame.

 Front view of the air cleaner setup.

 Drilled out and welded in tubing to run the electric wiring thru the frame.

 Used some sallow boxes and modified them to work for what we needed.

 Ran a total of 11 circuits leaving us with one to spare if we need it. Also started to run the propane lines for ovens and water heater. We used 3/4 flex piping with special fitting that work with hard pipe. Used the hard pipe for hard 90 turns and T fittings. You can see the propane line for the oven in this picture.

 Ran the propane line in the chase that will have a removable panel for maintenance if needed.

 Install the wheel wells and the upper flooring. The flooring is just fitted for now but will be welded in after we are sure that we didn't forget something.

 A look from the other side. If you're wondering why the two wheel wells are different there is a good reason. We have to do some custom work to one of the refrigeration unit to fit over the wheel well, so we want it to be as small as possible. All so we could go 4" lower.

 We got all the engineering worked out for the back of the box and got the parts back from BBC Steel. Time now to put the five part together to make one. The straight leg on this part will be cut off. It was use as a guide to form the curve in the part.

 Starting to fit the parts in.

 This is the top part of the piece.

 We made the parts long so that we could cut the finished part to fit. Chris made the part off the frame 2" because of the extra length of the part. Here we have one of the sides and the top clamp together. We used all the clamps in the shop and still had to buy more to hold everything together.

 Looking up at the part.

 It took a lot of patience and time to put this part together. Here Chris has it tacked and is ready to do the finial welding.

 This is one awesome looking part that all started out as flat sheet metal.

 Chris will cut the part where it intersects the frame and then move the part forward 2". Then weld it to the frame to make one continuous frame part.

Here it is all put together. You will not see this part after all the sheet metal is on. It is for structural purposes only. Don't mind all the wiring mess it will be all be tidied up soon.

 Now that the back structural part is done I needed to come up with what I was going to do for taillights. We where trowing a lot of ideas around but hadn't made our choice yet. We wanted to do something different so we came up with 70-73 Camaro taillight and use Marquez design inserts. But we want it to be three lights instead of two. 

    

 We took two sets of  the stock bucket housings and cut each of them in half and glued them together to make a three light housing.

 Still need to be sanded and repainted but are ready too be fitted to the frame.

 Chris finish up all the final welding on frame structure so that we could cycle the suspension for the Accuair sensors. We were concerned that the box frame could get tweaked if we didn't. This is the front sensor installed. This is at full extension of the travel.

  

 This is the back sensor at mid travel. 

 Both rear sensors. 

  This is the truck at full extension.

 Here we have it at its lowest.

A nice picture from ground zero. Ride height will be about 4" from this. Next up we will start working on the rocker panels and working our way up from there.