Work on the Jag IFS for the 1956 F100 continues

 I am actually gonna have to get my welding guy to slow down while I take stock of things. Hard to believe after such a long time that I have had to stand back and evaluate the progress. Good news is, the progress is continuing slowly. With more work planned for this weekend, the front end should be complete and ready for sprucing up. 

The two front body mounts have also arrived and my wife is picking them up from the post office in the morning. That should be the last piece we need for the cabin, as  I think we have everything else.  Sure hope so, it's starting to add up and look a bit ridiculous. 

Meanwhile here are some examples of what is going on and where we are at.

Dopey me painted the Jag front end before welding it, and that made it twice as hard as it should have been to weld. I have to get deep inside that groove and wire brush out all the paint to ensure a good fusion when welding. 

 This is a small area that we are considering adding a piece of 5mm steel into in the shape of a wedge and welding that in there. This isn't much to hold the front end onto. I am planning on reinforcing this area. 

Even though there is a solid horizontal plate now in place, I want to run another plate further across that spring housing structure just for more security and safety. The small arrow points to where the only bit of weld has so far been applied to join this front end. I am introducing this cardboard template model to provide extra strength. 

some nice welding work here. The boxing came up well. I only ground some of the high spots off. 

This is my greatest area of concern as it is really one of the actual areas that welds the front end to the side plate. 

The engineer sent me some examples of how the new plate style looks. This example is from an early Chev truck and quite a bit narrower than the Ford. However, the principle is the same. 

The Chevy is much more narrower, so everything is exaggerated somewhat in comparison to the Ford. See how much metal you can get between the spring saddle and the edge of the chassis!