We Have A Cab

 Paul and Chris doing some rough final adjustments to the trim piece before the final shaping. Paul helped us out on doing some nice mill work to get us close to the shape that we were looking for. Chris then hand sanded to the final shape.

 Some blocks Paul made to hold the parts for when he milled them.

 The top square stock is what we started out with and bottom is almost the finished piece.

 We inserted a Ford hood emblem into the trim piece. All hand filed to fit into the trim.

 All finished up and ready to be shipped off to be chromed.

 The cabs back to the shop and is ready to be fitted to frame. The cab will go on the frame to match up the body lines that will be put into the box. Then it will come off again to do the bodywork and paint on the truck box.

 We made special brackets and used a gantry crane to assist us on putting the cab on the frame.

 We made it onto the frame but decided that we will use one more body to help next time. I will say it was a little stressful.

 Side view with lower apron and running broad to see how we did on matching up the box to the cab. The only thing we would change is that we ended up with about 1" between the cab and box and it would be nice to have another 1.5".

  

 We are very happy how the portion are working out between the cab and box.

 Starting to work on making a buck for the front box corners.

 Used 1/2" MDF to make the buck and had to make it look cool so we added some windows to it. The windows also help to see how your metal is fitting to your buck.

We used a 20" radius for the corners of the cab.

 The finished buck.

 Making a paper pattern off the buck for the sheet metal that will be formed.

The folds in the paper give us a guide on where to do the shrinking on the panel.

 The paper in the flat. This is what we will use as our template to cut the aluminum.

  

 We are using .080 aluminum for all the exterior panels. We also laid out all our shrinking lines on the aluminum from the pattern.

 The Pullmax at work with the shrinking dies.

Chris hard at work on the panel.

 Not much to look at and you wonder if it will ever be a usable part.

Next up is the English Wheel that will smooth and do the final shaping.

Here is the new English Wheel that Chris just finish up. Its time now for him to do his magic.

 I got so caught up in watching Chris on the English Wheel I forgot to take pictures of how we got to this point. Well it was a lot of wheeling and shrinking the outer edge and fitting to buck to get it to this point. It is real close but needs to be cleaned up some more.

We stop at this point but will do some more adjustment to the panel after we fit the side and top panels. We made the bottom pattern and will work on that next.

 Here is the bottom panel with the rough 20" radius on top and 18.5 radius on the bottom. The panel also will have a slight contour shape that we will achieve with the English wheel.

  

 We use a slip roller to get the radius in the part.

You can see the contour that was put in the panel. We layout lines on the panel to help with  the tracking of the English wheel. This really helps out when your just starting out on using a English wheel. You can make a really bumpy panel fast without a good tracking pattern. 

We been working on some other aspects of the project so that we can continue to move forward. Took measurement and cut material for the other 20" radius's that we need to complete the box. These will be all simple 20" radius's that we are having rolled. Also been tuning in the dies and practicing on our skills for the body lines. Once we have the the body lines master we can finish up the panels that go to cargo doors and then get the final measurement for the doors. Lots more in the works will keep you posted and Thanks for watching.

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

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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.