Friday, November 25, 2016

First Cargo Door and Back Doors for the Box

Going to use these for task lighting and for the backup lights in the back of the truck box. They came in black but we stripped them down and polished them to match up with the polished back panels. Also sanded off the brand name to make it more clean looking.

Holes cut out in the panels for the lights and installed the backup camera. We also stripped the paint off the backup camera to match the lights. This picture still shows it with the paint.  

Light installed in the panel and the first cut on the panel.

This is the start of the cargo door. We are using a 2" tube in the top of the door to mount the hinges in. The door will be made up of six pieces of formed material and will be welded and glued together. 

The doors will have some adjustments in the hinge. We will weld this into the tubing and the hinge will mount to this. I will post some more pictures of this process later so it will make more sense.

These are the two end caps for the door

Bottom rail 

The doors will all use automatic door latches for a nice clean look on the box. The latch is mounted in the bottom rail.

The skin for the door.

Bamm its done. Okay I didn't get any pictures while putting this door together. The good news is that we have six more to do and I will take more pictures of the process. The bad news is that this door was to long in height and will have to be remade. It was not all bad we made some additional changes to the door to make it work out better. 

Its nice to see at least one open spaces closed up. Some of the body work has started so that we can start to fit the siding on the box.

While we wait for the cargo doors to be cut and formed we got started on the doors for the back. Each door has two skins that fit into each other to make one door. They will have a frame inside to make for a stronger door.

Chris laying out the frame for the door.

The frame in one side of the door skins. 

A lot of work went into these doors to fit hinges, door handles, bottom sill plate, and the window.

We used a old reproduction door handle that were used on some old vintage trailers in the early fifties.

After all the fitting was completed it was time to glue everything together. We are using glue to help keep the distortion down from welding, because these door will be polished to match the back panel.

Used up some claps to hold the skin to the frame while the clue has time to dry. Next we clue on the front skin to this door.

Almost done polishing the back panels only have the last final step to do.

This will be probably the only picture you'll see of this guy. I'm pretty happy about how the back panels are turning out. Can't wait to get the door finished up and polished. It's taken some learning and trying different techniques to get it to this point. It should go better on the doors (I hope).
 Happy Thanksgiving to you all and thanks for watching the progress.