Salan's 1980 Something

[Gary Lewis]

Wow, that looks good!  

But  seems to be like Chickenman - "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!"  

[ArdWrknTrk]

Thing is.., you can't see flames through a welding hood.  🔥.

My friend James got one of those canvas garage frames for free because the "tent" was in tatters.
He covered it in metal roofing panels using gasketed self drilling screws and uses it for storage. (I want to say it's 18x28'???)

I don't know what building codes in Florida would allow, but up here it's not inspected because it's not a 'permanent structure'

[grumpin]

Nice! Looks good!

I’m freezing my buns off out here! That’s why I’m planning on moving to Arizona!

[salans7]

Thanks guys! It feels good to be making this progress on the truck. Checking things off the list is a great feeling and I'm trying to make sure I keep the momentum up.

I've thought about finding one of those galvanized tube frames and running that, but my pad is 20' wide, so I'd like it to span that width so I can cover the whole thing. Florida is lax on free-standing removable structures, but they become more aggressive against carports built into the ground due to hurricane standards and the like. I'd like to get something like this to replace my shop, but with a deeper garage portion and carport.

[salans7]

Today I finished up the other side of my cab wall repair. I still need to seam seal and POR15 it, but I'm going to wait until after I fix the rust on the rear cab crossmember.

Speaking of that, I spent the rest of the daylight and night removing the front clip again. I wasn't planning on removing it again, but then remembered the crossmember rust so it had to come back off. The cab is completely free from the frame, so tomorrow I am going to flip the cab back so I can access the rear crossmember and get it repaired.

Any thoughts on replacing the cab bushings while the cab is off of them? I've read some back and forth on it, but think I remember seeing that polyurethane kits weren't worth it due to noise, but also that regular replacements were hard to find.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Your repair looks great Shaun!  

I can only say that the poly bushings don't compress the same as rubber, so if you want the body line to match the bed you better change them all.

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, the repair looks great.  

As for the bushings, my experience with Dad's truck is that if you use the grease that comes with the poly bushings you can tighten the bolts down until the bushings are very thin and huge in diameter and still not have reached the torque spec.  And since there's no bushing between the bed and the frame the body line won't match at all.

I had to pull the bushings off and scrub them as well as the truck to get all traces of the grease off and then I was able to torque them down correctly.  And I was able to get the body lines to match.

But without the grease I fear that I'll have a squeak, although I obviously don't know yet.

[salans7]

Thank you both! I was rained out today unfortunately, so will have to wait for another day.

As for the bushings, that's exactly what I was reading. I have polyurethane up front (rad support) since that's all I could find a couple of years ago, but maybe now the stock stuff is more available so I'll likely go that route.

[salans7]

I had planned to work on my F350 this weekend, but my daily and the aftermarket fuel pump I bought for it had other plans (pump was good, broken filler vent nipple was not).

I did however get the doors back off, and then had a neighbor help me flip the cab backwards (after he helped me lift the bed off of my daily to access the fuel pump) so I can get to the rust along the rear cab crossmember. After looking at it closer, it's obviously been rusting from the inside out. So now I have to decide how I want to handle that as I am willing to bet the metal is thin all through that crossmember. I would prefer to tackle any corrosion in there, but it may be a can of worms in the end.

[grumpin]

Wowza!

Nice that you have a neighbor to help!

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, that certainly IS nice to have a neighbor that will help!  We have good neighbors, but they are busy and seem to rarely be around.  So I feel badly about asking for help.

Anyway, you are making progress.  But what are you going to do about the rear cab crossmember?  How bad is it?

[ArdWrknTrk]

Is Shaun talking about the frame cross member or the rib across the back of the cab, where he's already made some repairs?  

[salans7]

Thanks guys! My neighbor is a shade tree mechanic himself and does his own maintenance, and I've helped him with automotive things numerous times. We pay it forward back and forth!

Gary, I'm still in the process of coming up with a plan. You can't really see into that crossmember from inside nor outside, aside from the rubber plugs near each body mount bolt. I can only go by the areas that have rusted through, and the pinholes. I know for sure that I need to do both areas that touch the body mount, as well as a spot on the passenger side. I'll take some quick pictures and post them so you can see.

Jim, it is the cab crossmember that the rear cab mount bolts pass through. The sheet metal that touches the body mounts has some rust issues, hence the need to flip the cab this way. There's a few more small issues along the crossmember that need to be addressed as well.

Along the passenger side near the seat belt mount:



Passenger side body mount surface:




And the worst one, the driver's side body mount surface:

[ArdWrknTrk]

I had to make a Framesaver for my passenger side but fortunately the cab itself was solid.

You're doing a great job getting that cab back in shape!  

[salans7]

ArdWrknTrk wrote

I had to make a Framesaver for my passenger side but fortunately the cab itself was solid.

You're doing a great job getting that cab back in shape!  

I can see some flaking coming from under my cab mounts, so I will be separating those and seeing how bad it is on the frame. Hopefully I won't need frame savers. This wasn't a northern truck, so I can't imagine it could be that bad but I don't know what they had in the cab that got into the cab crossmember and caused all of this damage.

Thanks for the positive encouragement!

[salans7]

After some daily driver troubles and some inclement weather, I finally tore into my rusty cab crossmember. It's not as bad as I initially thought and should be a pretty quick fix. It did get into the hidden support a little as shown in the below photo, but it is mainly surface pitting and didn't go up into the void.

The passenger side is even better and will only require a small patch to the rotten sheet metal.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Progress is Good!!!  

Be very thankful you don't have New England's salty winters. 😉

[salans7]

ArdWrknTrk wrote

Progress is Good!!!  

Be very thankful you don't have New England's salty winters. 😉

I am definitely thankful for that, but we have something called "Florida lack of maintenance" and .

[Gary Lewis]

You got lucky!  That should clean up/repair nicely.  

[salans7]

Well I didn't get as much done as I wanted to this weekend thanks to lack of motivation, but I finally kicked myself enough to get out there and fix the inner support for the driver's rear cab mount. I cut out the small area that had rusted through and welded in a patch. The other section was only slightly pitted, so I ground it out and then filled it with weld rather than doing another patch.

I do need some tips though. The overlay patch I will be doing won't be welded to the support (unless I decide to plug weld it). Should I just coat the inner support with weld-thru primer and then weld in the overlay patch, or is there some other type of coating I should spray the inner support with? I'm not sure what the factory coated this support with, but it definitely isn't bare metal.