My web page

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 08:04:48 -0500, John puked:

No official page yet, but here's a picture of the '66 El Camino I'm working on. Hope to have a page soon.

Looks like you have quite a project there.

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:44:24 GMT, lab~rat puked:

And a link might be nice, too:

lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

I have a 80 ElCamino SS 4 gear I did up about 10 years ago now Needs doing again though

Wow nice ride man. You got any more pic of it.

And a little note about the web site, if you go to angelfire.com and read a bit it isn't so hard once you get the hang of it. They have these templates to use, all you do is edit them and add your pics.

And please tell me the way it is man I a no bullshit kind of guy I can take it! to email me remove -is from my email

Well, if you're bored you can take a look at my site. I'm rebuilding a '67 Ford F-100 2WD shortbox, using parts gotten from parting out a half-dozen other trucks. Replacing the cab right now, repairing some rust in the roof.

Excellent web site man! I loved it. I worked a double shift I was up 30 or so hours and just wanted to check my mail and go to bed and thought I see if anyone replied to my post and low and behold I was up for 3 more hours reading your site I couldn't stop I loved it. Just curious what you do for a living if you don't mind?

Just a few comments. Great job its going to be an excellent truck!

I have a 77 ford with 44" tires witch was rotted to the nines as well. You can just see it in the back of one of the pics of the 68 int on my site. It was my first body job. I did it 17 years ago now and it's a mess again. Don't know if I will do it again or not!

Ok first off I think you paid to much for the original truck and wasted a lot of time and money with the cabs. But I know you know that, you did the work, and lots of it.

Might of been a idea to do other things like rear end and rebuild the motor and tranny while waiting for the right cab to come up.

I know the last cab is better then the one before but you had all those hours in the one before. It was sad to see it go to waste! But it had to be done!

Now I would have cut the roof on the new cab right off at the posts about 3 to 6 inches down and the same on the blue one. lot less body work doing the posts then doing 3/4 of the roof and a lot less mud! You would really have to take your time cutting and measuring but worth it I think. You get one crack at it per roof! I would measure and use tape to mark my cut inside and out.

I'm not a body man but I have spent some time working in a body shop I didn't quite like the way you removed the roof patch, the air chisel can really make a mess. What I do is take a small drill bit and drill a hole in the middle of the spot weld then take a 7/16 and drill almost right through. Then if needed air chisel for the little bit that gets missed. Some times its hard to find and get at the spot welds but if you clean it up nice you can usually find them.

Then when installing the removed piece you just put a tack in each of the spots where you drilled then go back and put another tack in each of them and keep going till there all welded right up, [slow as to not warp it] little grind and skim of mud and its perfect! Just like the factory!

We spend a lot of time in our garages me and you and our old ladies are special people to put up with the likes of us.

oh and one more thing DON'T sell the 51 fix it it will be one cool ride!

Just my 20 cents!

Here's my freak truck project. Kind of a resto-rod project. Some love it - other hate it. Decide for yourself.

Cheers, - Jeff G

John:

Hmmm....I sent this last night but it didn't appear, so I'm reposting it.

Thanks for the compliments and the insights! (FYI: I run the printing presses at the local newspaper.) This is my first semi-major work like this, past projects were pretty much either replacing worn parts, with a little light bodywork...so I'm pretty much winging it and learning as I go.

If the blue cab had possesed a useable roof panel, I'd have used it, but although it wasn't rusty, it was pretty beat up. I seriously ran through all my options and decided on this route. It's very possible I'll kick myself later, but I think it's going to be OK. *knock on wood*

I also believe I paid a bit too much for the truck in the first place, but I'd been keeping my eyes open for a truck like this for a while now without much luck. I had several friends with parts trucks and I figured a couple weekends to swap cabs and then I'd start driving it. But as you found out by reading the story, finding a useable cab in the midwest is virtually impossible. Yes, I had some time invested into the blue cab, but that was basically it, no money yet, aside from the initial $75 purchase price...so it was basically a no-brainer. At first glances it simply appeared that the cab I'm using now simply needed one completely hidden patch panel in the door pillar, it wasn't until after I started prepping the cab for sandblasting that I found the rot along the drip rails.

I've been paying for this project selling parts off the parts trucks I've gotten, so I'm actually coming along fairly well. I'm really hoping to have the roof patched and the rear cab corners done within the next few weeks, and then I'm likely sending the frame and other misc. parts off to get powerdercoated. Yeah, again it's overkill for a daily driver, but once the cab and frame are done, I can slowly continue to fix this truck up as I drive it, since the foundation will be done. I'd hate to have to completely disassemble this again later down the road should I decide to promote this truck from daily driver to something more.

...and as for the '51 Stude pickup...I'd LOVE to keep it, if I had a place to store it I surely would. Right now I'm renting a shop in town, and the landlord specifically told me not to store junk vehicles outside...but right now that's where it's sitting. Once the Ford pickup cab goes back onto the frame, though, it'll clear up some space inside, so I might just find a place to stick it back in the corner, to use as a future project. We'll see.

Keith

Wow! Talk about karma! 10 minutes after posting that message I get a phone call from somebody with cash in hand who wants the 'Stude! Looks like my Ford pickup frame is headed off to get powder-coated a little sooner than I thought! :)

Keith

Oh man such a sad day for you! Good day for the guy that bought it. That is such a cool truck . I have a 51 Int. pickup on a 77 ford frame I bought for my wife in 95 that I haven't finished yet. We just got another 80 ford 4x4 pickup to use instead with better drive line this fall. I'm going to email you a pic of the 51 and a pick of my 77 ford f250 with the 44 inch tires and 10 000 lb pto wench. I was playing around on your site again and found the page about where you were censored from the ford site hahaha what a ass this guy is! I will never go to his site and would hope everyone would read your page and never go back to his site either! But I doubt it! John

John:

Oh, you mean the page at

? Yeah, that really ticked me off at the time, but it gave me the kick in the butt I needed to start my own forum, and it's really taking off. It's located at and as of today, it's been up and running for two months now and there's already 59 users signed up and posting. Most of them are former members of the other site who also got ticked off with all the damned politics over there and came over to a board where we can simply talk trucks, sell parts, etc. without worrying about getting our hands slapped. I got the pics you e-mailed...that Internation pickup is very cool! You don't see too many of those around anymore, even at car shows. I do kinda wish I'd have been able to keep the 'Stude...but sometimes you have to make some hard choices. My wife and I are expecting another baby in June, so I had really get cranking on some of my projects now, 'cause I doubt I'll have the time or money for them later on.

Keith

I like vehicles that are hard to come by or painted one of a kind. I haven't been working on mine we are in a deep freeze up here in northern Ont. -40's or so for a month now but I think its just starting to break. I do have a wood furnace in the garage but tools are -40 and it stings a bit to hang on to them till they warm up.It takes about 8 hours to get everything 2 feet off the floor warm and I haven't had it on long enough to melt snow on the floor by the time it warms up in there I have had enough and what to go sit in here and play on the net. At -20 or less it heats up well in there so I can start working on her again. I need more web sites of rebuilds!

A little of both. I'm not far south from you (Wisconsin) and up until Jan 1st we were having a fairly mild winter. I even rode my motorcycle on New Year's Eve. Not gonna happen now though. It's been a cold January and since I'm not working on this indoors, it's on hold until it's at least in the high 40's on a regular basis. I'm actually doing this entire rebuild on the concrete slab between my house and garage with no cover overhead. You can't see it from the front of the house so I haven't had any complaints so far. The one neighbor that can see it from her house doesn't care at all, so I lucked out on doing it this way. I don't expect February is going to be a whole lot nicer, but we'll see.

Cheers, - Jeff G