i can't believe how much i like the explorer wheel on there. will be interesting to see what kind of center cap you come up with. stance looks fantastic. history lesson on door is cool. post a "looking for info on Smith-Roles" ad on the local CL and see what kind of responses you get.
Thanks for the feedback. I thought the wheel looked pretty good too. But I'm going to OE-style steelies and stock hubcaps when the time comes, these just happened to be left over from another rear end that my brother was putting into a customer car.
I've got a Smith-Roles Ebay search set up. Thinking about buying a manual for their combine monitor on there right now. Probably would have had one of those kicking around in the truck at some point.
This project is taking a slight twist as I've decided to build a new garage here in Portland. Going from a 17'x12' falling-down shack to a 20'x18' with 10' walls. I will probably put in one more work session on the truck in South Dakota and then get it out here in the spring - my parents seem open to hauling it out here as part of a vacation road trip. Finishing the design and engineering work this week - can't wait to start seeing some physical progress!
I love the truck. I'm looking forward to loving the new shop!
Met with the GC on Saturday and signed the paperwork. Portland requires a seperate permit ($$ and a 10-day waiting period/protest period) to demo anything greater than 200sq ft. Original garage...204sq ft. Hoping to have some progress photos in a couple of weeks!
Wrapped up and ready to come down! Finally...Portland demolition rules are no joke.
Progress! Torrential rains start next week. The GC is hoping they can excavate early in the week.
All gone! I feel like Clark Griswold staring out the window and imagining his pool. The Bobcat is sitting just about where my truck will be sitting.
Major milestone!
Gonna see the truck in about a week. Plan is to finish the steering rack relocation and start plumbing the brakes.
After a bit of a delay...we have progress on the garage again. The full 10' wall height will be so nice for building over-head storage.
Looks good sir - that looks like at least double what you started with for square footage?
84FSP said:Looks good sir - that looks like at least double what you started with for square footage?
Thank you. I was really limited by the placement of our house on the lot so it's going from 200 sqft to 340. I crammed a Miata in the old garage for a winter but there was no room to actually work on it. This will be more like a typical 1.5-car garage with room to move around the vehicle. I absolutely can't wait to get to work in it.
....Portland demolition rules are no joke.
Back from our trip to SD - Not much progress on the truck due bad weather rearranging our travel plans.
I was able to finish the clearance notch for the steering joint in the cross member. I was also able to rethink exhaust options. Now with the steering shaft moved over, there is more room for the LS1 Vette manifolds to fit. I started to cut and grind the driver's side manifold for a clearance notch but ran out of time to get it finished. My brother will try to clean up my hack work and weld it up. Plan B will be some block-hugger style headers.
I was able to get the wheels powder coated semi-gloss black and I scrounged up some roller tires, but ran out of time to get them mounted. I also stripped the seat - my mom can put together new seat covers for me so I bought some Pendleton blanket material at their Black Friday sale. The frames and springs are all in good shape, so some new foam and the covers and the seat should look great. This was a priority on this trip so it can be finished in time for the truck's trip out to Oregon.
There was also significant garage progress since last update. Everything is sheeted and it's ready for roofing. The loft area is gonna be great storage - about 8ft wide and 4ft tall. I'm so glad I did that.
Paint, electrical and the roll-up door and then it's move-in time!
In reply to caseyjones :
Those storage trusses are a nice feature. i dig this truck project. carry on.
Man, you had serious space limitations with that property in terms of building anything bigger. Looks like you're optimizing what you've got. I work in a 20x25 shop i built that I think is too small (its planned usage changed right after the walls went up..doh) but if i subtract all the dead floor space from E36 M3 i have laying around in there, it's probably the same as yours, and i have fun in there every single time im in it. So, here's to tiny shops!
I also have a 51 chevy truck there that i'm fixing up, but it's quite a bit different from yours because it's on a 70s Blazer frame that's been shortened, with me having to hook up everything but the steering shaft and "body mounts" (ominous air quotes!!). It's also not mine. It does have IFS, v8, etc though. I do want an old (mid 50s or older) truck, but I'm fairly certain I want one that's nearly stock! My biggest payoff for this one will be when it leaves, so it's nowhere near as cool as you doing one for yourself, with the help of interested family, across different parts of the country, and in your new home shop! That's the kind of story that makes people WANT to work on cars.
In reply to Vigo :
Thanks for the kind words! These old trucks are fun no matter what style, stock or modified...but a stock truck would be so much easier!
There's been some progress. Roll-up door is installed and electrical is done for now. I bought 8 cheap shop light fixtures and rewired them for direct-wire LED tubes. Also wired up two 20A outlet circuits. Started moving stuff in. Traveled back to SD for a funeral and saw my brother's latest customer car all put together, a nitrous big block S-10 with tube frame and leaf spring rear suspension built for 1/8th mile racing. I also retrofit the speedometer of my truck with a stepper motor driven by an arduino. it will accept the speed pulse input from the new transmission but retain the stock appearance, apart from the OLED odometer screen. I'm still working on final packaging of arduino and the voltage converter/regulator. The other quad gauge is in progress too.
caseyjones said:I also retrofit the speedometer of my truck with a stepper motor driven by an arduino. it will accept the speed pulse input from the new transmission but retain the stock appearance, apart from the OLED odometer screen. I'm still working on final packaging of arduino and the voltage converter/regulator. The other quad gauge is in progress too.
Build thread for stepper motor speedometer, please?!?!
Badass build! I'd also like more info on the Arduino gauges.
The speedometer project is based on the project here: https://retromini.weebly.com/blog/arduino-digital-speedo-mk3-improved-version .
I can show what I had to do once i get some final details sorted. I haven't found a good example of the quad gauge yet (fuel, oil, water and voltage) so that one will be a bigger effort.
I've been working on making the speedometer project a little bit more self-contained - I think it's to a point where it will have to be installed and tested on the truck before I can refine it much more.
The guts of the retrofit consist of a X27.168 stepper motor, a tiny 128x32 OLED screen, an Arduino Nano and a DC-DC voltage converter. I designed and printed housing for the screen and motor that replaced the bracket that housed the original odometer and speedometer mechanism. The face of the gauge also attached to the housing, under the silver center cover of the speedometer face.
The needle was made of a very lightweight stamping wrapped around a little die-cast hub. I seperated the two parts and printed a new hub to mate to the motor needle and epoxied the parts together.
Last I (poorly) assembled the controller and other parts to a prototyping board and stuck them in a housing on the back of the gauge.
I had to modify the code on the retromini site pretty extensively to strip out a lot of the GPS-related work. I also used a different library for the OLED that I understood better. I was able to change to a different font for the odometer too. I think I still have a lot of tuning to do, but it responds to a frequency generator sending pulses on the input and it's counting mileage, so I'm optimistic that it's reasonably close to working.
The quad gauge has a completely different inner structure to hold 4 motors. The nano doesn't have enough outputs to drive all four motors so I'm going to use a specially designed driver for these motors (VID-6606) in addition to the nano.
If this setup isn't reliable I might look at designing and printing a PCB. It'll be a while before I would start that, though.
--CAsey
Well, the truck isn't coming out to Portland anytime soon, so I have put a hold on this project and found another one to fill the gap:
This is actually the best pic from the OfferUp listing. I will drag it home this weekend. I had a 1965 GMC in high school...time for another 60-66!
It's home and progress has been made. This is a 1964 with a 292 and 4 speed. I'm something like the 4th owner, 3rd since 2007. It's been sitting since 2013, when it suddenly died on the previous owner and he had it towed home.
It's a pretty basic truck - the original owner had it fully set up for towing though. It's got an early hydraulic trailer brake controller, dual aux fuel tanks, the wide western mirrors, and an extra cartridge-style oil filter. Other than those day-one mods and the wheels, this thing is bone stock, AM radio and all.
It's been repainted once but i've only found two spots of bondo. The front fenders are roached but that was to be expected. Theres some rust in the floors and rockers but it's not as bad as most. I got it running off a gas can - found a split in the fuel line from the main valve which might explain why it was parked. Plans for now are bringing maintenance and safety items up to date and driving it for the summer. I've already replaced a front wheel cylinder, sourced some tires (date codes on these are from 2000!) and removed the auxiliary tanks and reconnected the main tank. I need to get the lights working and I think I can drive it this weekend!
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