Oswald: Nothing Special's '97 F-250 Crew Cab

[Gary Lewis]

Part of me wonders why you live in the rust belt!  But I guess you have your reasons.

Anyway, yes it was subtle but I did figure out what was missing.  That's got to be a huge relief to have gotten that much help to get things off.

As for the bolts, let them eat cake.  Oh, I think I got the wrong quote.  But it must be close.  

Glad you are making good progress.  

[grumpin]

Ya got me, I was thinking running boards!

[Nothing Special]

grumpin wrote

Ya got me, I was thinking running boards!

My bad, that was probably the biggest change!

And I gotta say, I sure like the look of these trucks better without that type of running board / fender flare.  I'd've taken them off on day 1 but I was afraid of what it would look like underneath.  Lesley says I need to put steps back on it or she won't ride in it with me, but I won't be going back to anything that looks like what I had.

Gary Lewis wrote

Part of me wonders why you live in the rust belt!  But I guess you have your reasons....

I guess I've decided that there are more important things in life than having trucks last more than about 10 years.  (but that part does sting a bit)

[grumpin]

I've been using Carr Hoop Steps.

I wasn't going to put them on my GMC, it sits lower, but my Ex wanted them for a long trip we took.

https://www.carr.com/product/the-hoop-ii/

[Nothing Special]

I think Lesley is going to want something longer than that.  Or maybe more accurately, I'm going to need something longer than that to get it in the right place for her.

Plus I really don't want to mount the step to the body.  I want to hang something off the frame.

I have a vision for what I want to do.  I think it was DeeZee that used to make an off-the-shelf version, but I heard they discontinued them for these older Fords a while back, and I'm not even finding pictures of what I remember anymore.

I know I can fabricate the mounting just fine.  But while I could fab up the entire step, I'd rather not go to the effort of making it look nice.  So hopefully I can find something close enough to adapt and I can use what a company already did to make it look nice.

[Gary Lewis]

I just bought used step bars and adapted them.  They worked out great.

[Nothing Special]

The big progress from the last update was removing the bed.  The big progress this time was putting it back on!  But more on that in a bit.

I got the last seat belt bolts out (I don't think I reported on this yet).  The ones at the ends of the belts were all stuck pretty good (I broke a T50 Torx driver trying to get one out).  I ended up welding a nut to the top of each bolt so I could use a big 6 point socket to turn them out.  The fronts came out OK that way, but both rears snapped off.  If I don't end up replacing that sheetmetal I'll end up needing to figure out how to get the broken bolts out, but that's a problem for another year.

Then I had a glass company come out and remove my windshield and rear window.  I didn't want to mess up the chrome trim around the windshield, and I will be reusing the rear sliding window, so I wanted them removed by someone who knew what they were doing.  (edit to add so I can remember, a lot of the clips that hold the windshield trim are in pretty bad shape, so I'll need to get some new clips when it's time to put it back in)

With the windshield out I could take the headliner out.  I did break one of the tabs on the lens for the front dome light, so we'll see how that goes back together (eventually).
(edit to add: I threw away the insulation that was above the headliner.  It was about 3/4" - 1" thick stuff that looks like the stuff you roll out in your attic, but sealed up with a layer of plastic on both sides.  I'm trying to keep everything I take off, even if I expect to replace it, so I know what I need to put back.  but this had been used for a mouse restroom and was way too gross to do anything with but throw away.  But I'm noting it here so I have a better chance of remembering when it does come time to put it back together.)

With the cab now completely stripped out it was time to remove the doors  There's some freeplay in some of the hinges, so they'll need to be rebuilt or replaced before the doors go back on.  And a few of the bolts were rusty enough that I'll want to replace them.  But otherwise that all went fine.


That's as far as I'm going to be able to get on Oswald this year.  What with closing up the cabin, a couple of vacations coming up and grouse hunting season I won't be able to get anything more done before winter, and I never end up doing much on car projects in the winter.  So it's time to put him away.  But as I've mentioned, I don't have room to store piles of truck parts, so everything pretty much needs to go back in a truck-sized footprint.  To do that the bed has to be on top of the frame.

But I want to be able to get the bed on and off by myself, and to be able to move it around when it's not on the truck.  So I attached 2x4s to the top of the frame rails and the bottom of the bed.  The idea is that I can tip the bed up, back the truck under it, then pick up the back of the bed and slide it on.  While it's off the truck I can attach casters to the bottom of the 2x4s so I can roll it around.  And when it's on the truck I'll use just the center bed mount bolts (but longer to reach through the 2x4s) to hold it in place (and probably some ratchet straps for insurance).

That was the idea.  In practice it didn't go quite so easy.  The doubled up 2x4s didn't lift the bed high enough to clear the tire or the back bumper, so the bottom edges of the bed took a bit of a beating.  No big deal, the bed's getting replaced anyway.  But that was harder than I expected.

Anyway, here's a few pictures of that project.  And the last picture sort of shows the doors and windows gone.

[Gary Lewis]

I've broken more than one Torx bit on seatbelt bolts.  Man, those things can be in there!  So I do understand the problem.

As for the glass, I like the idea of having it removed professionally.  

Are you going to store things in the truck?  With the doors off?

Speaking of that, I guess winter comes early up there.  

Last, I like that idea of mounting and removing the bed.  But what change would you make to have it work better?

[Nothing Special]

Oswald will be in a garage at the cabin.  The seats, carpet, headliner and doors are in my basement (a lot less mice).  Most of the rest of the stuff I removed will be in the bed (in the garage).

Winter is still a few months off, but September is pretty well taken up with a vacation.  October and into November is grouse hunting.  The next couple weekends in November are usually catching up on the yard work I've neglected during hunting season.  And then comes Thanksgiving, and that's starting to get into winter here.

So it's not that winter is here, just that I can't make Oswald enough of a priority to make any significant headway.  So I'd rather get him put away for the winter before we close the cabin up on Labor Day.

I don't know what I'm going to do different to get the bed on and off easier.  Removing the rear bumper will be a good start though.  And I have thought about getting some junkyard steel rims and trying to get the smallest OD 16" car tires I can find (take-offs) to get Oswald low enough to fit into my garage at home (if he's not too long as well).  But any more figuring will have to wait until I get closer to needing to do anything.

[grumpin]

Yes, great idea on the bed, too bad it didn't work out better.

[Gary Lewis]

Ok, that makes sense. All of it.  

As for winter, closing the cabin up on Labor Day sounds like a tradition founded on experience.  But it also sounds like there's a difference in weather betwixt here and there.  Here, in recent years, Thanksgiving has been warm.  But I know that hasn't always been the case as I remember all too well riding an enduro on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the middle of Kansas.  It had been 20F for several days and the ponds were frozen hard enough to walk on, but not hard enough to support a guy and an XL350 falling 3' off the bank.  

[mat in tn]

that's a cold day to get wet!
many of us have successfully used an engine hoist to remove truck beds. many years ago, I even used a tree. but the last few frame offs all have been done more like what you just did with boards on the truck and board on the bed allowing me to slip it forward slowly and inching my way in place. I have had a man on each corner before, each wearing gloves, and still someone's belt buckle caused it to be pulled back off and put back in the paint room. live and learn. jeans with rivets are bad also. and half of these cool car guys have chains hanging off of somewhere. I prefer to take half a day putting it on then doing it over.

[Nothing Special]

Gary Lewis wrote

Ok, that makes sense. All of it.  

As for winter, closing the cabin up on Labor Day sounds like a tradition founded on experience.  But it also sounds like there's a difference in weather betwixt here and there.  Here, in recent years, Thanksgiving has been warm.  But I know that hasn't always been the case as I remember all too well riding an enduro on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the middle of Kansas.  It had been 20F for several days and the ponds were frozen hard enough to walk on, but not hard enough to support a guy and an XL350 falling 3' off the bank.  

We've often waited until mid-October to close the cabin.  The problem this year is that September is too busy, so we won't be up there, and Lesley doesn't want to leave everything for later when it just means we're going to have to run up there the next time we possibly can (mid-October) just to close it.  We will probably leave the water in since my sister still wants to use the cabin, and let her close that down.  But I'm the only one in our family with a trailer hitch, so I have to put the boat away, so then I might as well take out the dock...

And we have had warm Thanksgivings, but we will have a hard freeze before that, and our cabin is not at all equipped to deal with that.

mat in tn wrote

that's a cold day to get wet!
many of us have successfully used an engine hoist to remove truck beds. many years ago, I even used a tree. but the last few frame offs all have been done more like what you just did with boards on the truck and board on the bed allowing me to slip it forward slowly and inching my way in place. I have had a man on each corner before, each wearing gloves, and still someone's belt buckle caused it to be pulled back off and put back in the paint room. live and learn. jeans with rivets are bad also. and half of these cool car guys have chains hanging off of somewhere. I prefer to take half a day putting it on then doing it over.

I'll definitely have to have a better plan by the time I get to putting a repainted bed back on.  But that is at least a few years off, and this bed is destined for the scrap metal dealer, so I'm not too concerned yet.

[Nothing Special]

Well, Oswald's all settled down for a long winter's nap.  But it was a process!  First of all he was parked nose-in in my driveway, and to get reasonable tongue weight I need him pulled on the trailer frontward.  But with no steering wheel, no way to run the power steering pump and a 460 sitting on the front tires I wasn't going to be able to do much maneuvering.  So I put the trailer behind Oswald, loaded him on backward, pulled him out in the street, unloaded him, got the trailer in front of him and loaded him on frontward.

That was all easier said than done (and it wasn't easy to say!).  Part of the trouble was moving a non-drivable truck down hill and up onto a trailer.  Sometimes I had to be controlling him to keep him from rolling back too fast, and other times I had to be pulling him backward.  I did that by having one come-along from the front that I'd pay out and another from the rear to pull with.

But that took a long time, so when I needed to pull him up hill to get him down off the trailer I thought of another approach.  I hooked Pluto up to Oswald with the tow bar and pulled him off.  That worked great!



It worked so good that I decided to do the same thing to push Oswald on the trailer frontward.  That did not work so well.  As the front tires went up the ramps the hitch dropped so low that Pluto was pushing the hitch down instead of forward, and it tried to lift Pluto's front tires off the ground.  I ended up tweaking the coupler on the tow bar.  Not bad, but it doesn't work as smoothly as it used to.  So I just used the come-along, which was fine because it was all uphill.

Getting the loaded trailer to the cabin was finally uneventful!  Now with a new transmission the Dodge didn't set any codes!

Unloading was another uphill / downhill exercise, but without anything in the garage to pull from.  So I welded a D-ring to a plate that I bolted down to the floor in the back of the garage.  I hooked a snatch block to the D-ring and then I could pull him into the garage!





After getting him in the garage I put his rollerskates on again and pushed him against the wall (to leave room for the pontoon boat).



Kind of sad to say goodbye again, but nice to have that job done!

[BigBrother-84]

What a journey, pull, push, winch, push pull!


At least, nothing broken and the beast can hibernate quietly.


Good job Bob!

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, good job!  Having done that kind of stuff plenty of times I know how much work it can be.

But your trailer doesn't have a place to bolt the winch on?  Mine has a platform where I can move it if I want to and pull things on the trailer.  But what is easier is to hook Big Blue to the trailer using the front hitch point and just run the winch line out to the vehicle.

Your winch goes in the hitch, right?  That won't work in that case.

[Nothing Special]

I do not have a winch mounted to any of my vehicles.  I have the receiver-mount winch that can be used on either end of Pluto or on the front of Oswald.  None of my other vehicles have a receiver and an Anderson plug at the same end.  And the Dodge doesn't have a front receiver.

There is no place to mount a winch to my trailer.  It wouldn't be hard to weld a receiver on the front where I could stick my winch.  Then I'd also need to get electrical power to it.  But with all of this the come-along to the front of the trailer is what worked best, and that's what a winch on the trailer would make better, so it just isn't a priority.