More work on the tailgate...

 Slow and steady work on the tailgate. 

Progressing okay. 

Here are a couple of action shots!

Coming together! Still have some spots to fix before completely happy with the results, but a hell of a lot better than what it was. 

Reinforcing the tailgate with some steel pipe

 Off to Bunnings again to raid the steel section.  Took a few trips to find the ideal piece. 

Notice the hinge snug inside the pipe? Well, it doesn't sit snug in the tailgate, I can tell you.  Flops around like a piece of poo on a fluffy dog's bum. 

A couple of inches each side cut and welded in place takes care of any looseness. 

Here is a picture pre-weld stage. 

Sure aint purdy, but the sleeve fits nicely and now the hinge sits snug. 

The great 1956 Ford F100 tailgate straightening exercise! Part Two!

 Well, she's straighter'n a gun barrel now, boys!

Gotta be happy with that! 

The great 1956 Ford F100 tailgate straightening exercise! Part One!

 Guys and gals. just let me refresh your memory a little as I show you what we are dealing with here.

The tailgate was the only part of the tub that was salvageable according to the previous owner and that in itself is debatabe as to whether it was worth saving in any case. Well, since I paid through the nose for this truck, I have to salvage some money out of the deal, and from what I can tell I have two options:

Fix it or spend about $1500 on a new tailgate with Ford lettering. (They are much cheaper without the lettering and if this project goes belly up, I might just buy the blank one and be done with it. I think they are around $900)

Still, in anyone's language, that is a lot of money. My friend Rob took the tailgate under his wing to have a crack at repairing it, and he did a sensational job of cleaning it up. However, and meaning no disrespect, he welded in a piece of pipe that followed the contours of the bend in the tailgate. 

This is after Rob started cleaning up the old tailgate. Notice at this stage the top of the tailgate is missing its round bar at the top. I can only assume the previous owner had taken it out to try and straighten it before welding up a new bar. 

This picture shows where the top latch is going to be mounted. Rob has already cut the area away to make a space for it. 

This is the only picture I have of the tailgate before it arrived. I was so disgusted with it, I put it aside ready for tossing in the bin. The front stone guard cowl thing beside it ended up getting tossed as it was total garbage. Dinted and rusted through in many places. I am all for trying to salvage original metal, but not when it costs more time and effort than it is worth. 

Rob came over one day and saw the tailgate and asked me what was I gonna do with it, and I just shrugged as I had no idea. Anyway, he offered to take it home and see if he could work some magic on it. 

Anyway, when the tub turned up, six month later. I asked Rob to bring the tailgate back for a measure up.

This was the situation when it arrived. 

The effort that Rob went to to match the curve of the tailgate is very commendable. However, it's not supposed to have a curve in it. A curse, yes. A curve....um, no. 

The only thing left to do was to either fix it or toss it and get a new one. I didn't want to waste Rob's effort. but needed to get this thing straight. Here is what I have done so far:

Cut away the old bent pipe. Whipped down to Bunnings and bought some gal pipe. It's a touch smaller than the previous piece but heavier. Here you can see it is clamped heavily with a piece of rhs above and below using several clamps. The clamps clear the pipe, so I didn't have to resort to my other idea of drilling holes into the rhs and through the tailgate into the bottom piece and using threaded rod to wind the rhs pieces together. I used that wood clamp to lock the pipe into the v shape left when I cut the old pipe out. 

Before I weld it up, I will have to take that wood clamp away and clean up that area as it is quite rusty before welding in the new pipe. 

Waving the Aussie flag! And why not :) 

More to come! 

Classic Jim's sticker for the truck

 Or maybe for the toolkit.

I think my wife would not approve.

Thoughts, guys? 

Gotta love shit that doesn't fit!

 I was advised by the sales guy at the Performance Warehouse shop that the Cal Custom crossmember would be suitable for my truck using a C4 Auto. 

Here is a screen shot of their website selling and advising same

It says C4. Now, even though my truck is a 56, the width between the rails is the same. 

so what is the big deal? 

This:

Notice something? Yup, that ain't gonna fit in a month of Sundays.  The C4 transmission mount is correct, but there ain't no way this diabolical thing is gonna fit. And that kinda pisses me off, because I coughed up big dollars for this f*****g thing. 

The only thing I can do is cut that whole section off there and weld a new piece of plate onto it. 

The bottom mount was the home made jobby that came off the truck. I wasn't that happy with how it had crappy welds holding nuts in between the rail, and one nut even broke away as I was undoing the crossmember. I knocked all the nuts free and ran four high tensile bolts through the plate. Will probably add spacers between the steel and reuse the whole deal. At least it fits. 

Two weeks laters...

Brendan from X Piggy took the mount and fabbed up a new plate to fit the mount. Looks a million bucks. Have a geezer.

Making a custom handle for the cowl on my 1956 F100

 The old cowl handle is nothing more than an ugly piece of rusty steel that once might have sported a wooden cover over it. But not now. I looked around to find a nice wooden handle from a file or something similar but didn't come up with anything. Instead, a trip to Bunnings yielded this oddity. Yes, You guessed it! What you are seeing is a door stopper in two parts. The small piece is magnetic and is designed to snug against that ball shaped object. One piece connects to the door and the other to the wall to stop the door from slamming your fingers in the jamb when the wind blows. My wife actually suggested it, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

So, of course, I did the only thing I could do and pull it to bits. It is simplicity itself: a rare earth magnet and a spring. 

The small piece slides onto the old cowl handle first. I made up a high tech bracket that will be used to screw into the cowl handle once I drill a hole and place a small screw in there to make sure it doesn't fall off.

The door stopper already had a small hole for the cowl handle and it only needed widening a little to slip right over.  The beauty about this arrangement is that all the parts screw into themselves as each piece has a thread, making it a cinch to remove if needed. 

Here it is. Looks pretty funky! Sits nicely in the hand and has some decent weight. Looks really good with the chrome handbrake don't you think? 

VT Commodore Booster/ Master Cylinder fitted to my F100

 Rather than try something new,  I opted for a solution that worked well last time on my '54 F100, and thinking it will work just as well with this '56. The only difference was, this time I am doing it myself.

Some time ago, I bought a piece of 200mm x sqaure 10mm flat mild steel plate through eBay. It was an expensive way of doing things but it came lazer cut and already had four holes pre drilled. 10mm was probably way too thick, but I didn't realise this at the time. I could have easily gotten away with half that thickness. Anyway, more on that in a second.

I bought a bi metal holesaw kit (Craftright brand) from Bunnings for not much money. Thankfully it lasted until the job was done before stripping its thread and flying off.

The bad new was I hadn't measured what sized hole  I would need to accomodate the VT Commodore master cylinder as I hadn't purchased one at the time. Why did I purchase a GM product? Well, I was advised many years ago that they were a simple system and had a 1" bore suitable for my needs. Plus, if you include the brake pedal, they provide a very easy option. 

I found a good booster and master cylinder from a guy in Yanderra for $60. When I got it home I realised it was not going to fit through my expensive steel plate, so I had to enlarge the hole in the steel. Out came the biggest holesaw in the kit and I proceeded to enlarge the hole. This is how I did it:

It worked fine and then the second holesaw carked it, but it had done enough to cut this hole. When it came time to enlarge the hole in the firewall I had to weld the holesaw to the bit to get it to stay on.

Sadly, after all this work, I realised the plate was too thick, as it wouldn't bolt up to the pedal assembly. I should have known straight away that it wasn't going to work, as the firewall has ridges in it that make the plate uneven. The only solution was to use a thinner plate.

So, off I toddled, spending another hour or more cutting and drilling a new thinner plate, only to realise the thin plate I used (it was all I had) just wasn't going to be sturdy enough. I went through the whole consideration of using stud extending nuts but I just couldn't see how that would have worked. 

My only option was to cut a big slab of the firewall out and weld the thinner plate I'd just made to the firewall and then try the thick plate. I just didn't want to waste all that time for nothing. 

Well. the bottom line is yes, it did work! I only have to clean up my dodgy welds and put a light layer of filler over the whole deal and it should be fine. 

Second time lucky, I also moved the whole assembly one inch to the left, or one inch further away from the steering column. 

I feel very proud to be a certified YouTube mechanic! Why not tell the world?