46 pickemup in NJ "the Rebuild"

[TJ's Chevy]

Dang it sounds good! Wow, What are the specs on the cam?

[paintman]

Originally Posted by TJ's Chevy

Dang it sounds good! Wow, What are the specs on the cam?

Its Tom Lowe's 270 cam with JE (not Ross) 10:1 pistons, crower rockers, guide plates and springs, custom length pushrods.

[paintman]

Forgot to mention that the dyno pulls showed the carb was to small. The guys at the shop said a 600 cfm is the way to go and would probably get it to hit 300 hp.

[TJ's Chevy]

Tom lowe's 270 cam? As in the "Mid range" cam on his sight? Any how...those are good numbers....I'll be at 9:5:1 on mine so it'll be making 285 hp with the big carb...390 is small for a hopped up 292. lol I'm going with a 625 cfm demond carb made specifically for the 292 with a cam duration of 218 @ .050...gonna see how that does.

[paintman]

Ok so the motor is home safe and sound and ready to go...........
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So,..........The Paintman has been kind of quite lately on updates to the truck itself because he was trying to figure out what to do with the dilemma on the back of the cab.

For those of you who have not been following along, when I bought the truck, one of the PO's booger-ed up the back by pop riveting a piece 36"x 24" stainless steel to the back of the cab (see post#3 for pic) to cover up whatever issues it had. I say boogered because instead of trying to fix the original issues he instead just made it worse by drilling about 50 holes in the back for the rivets. When he went and tightened up the rivets of course he deformed the metal around all the holes So when I removed the patch I found a world of problems. Oil canning, waviness, all the holes, etc. etc.

So the obvious fix would have been to cut the back out, and stitch a new piece in like all the true hot rod craftsman do. But here's the thing, the Paintman was scared **** less to do that. Why you ask???????????????????
1. The back of the cab although rough had absolutely no rust anywhere.
2. The Paintman does not have the equipment to cut, roll, and contour a piece of sheetmetal that big.
3. The Paintman does not have anybody to help him for the 3 or 4 hours it would take to cut and fit the panel properly other then his wife and 2 kids (that would have been a train wreck).
4. The Paintman has done nothing but struggle when he has had to stitch in some of the smaller work he has don on the front side of the cab.
5. The risk/ reward was just not there for me to cut out the back, I felt that there was a very good chance of me ruining the cab completely.

So first off let me say that I was not going to post any of this because of the certain flaming and ridicule I am sure to get. But what the hell maybe there is somebody else out their in the same predicament. If you guys want to tear me down go right ahead I can handle it
First off I got back on a heavy dose of my medication so my analness would be under control because what I was about to do would kill me .

So the plan I devised was to reinforce the back of the cab from the inside with some ribbing. First I cut 10 pieces of 16 guage sheet metal and gave them a slight bend to hopefully hold pressure on the back panel.
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[paintman]

I think at some point this truck must of had a flatbed on the back and was used for a mobile bowling alley. Because of all the abuse, the inner vertical support ribs were not really touching the back wall of the cab. This was going to work to my advantage as it would give me enough space to slide the ribs behind the supports thus allowing them to "spring" and push the panel back to it's original curve. I had to futz with them for awhile to get the curve just right.

Once I was confident with the fitment of the ribs and the curve of the back of the cab, I pulle them back out and clened them up in preperation for final install with 3M panel bonding adhesive.
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I then just glued them up according to the instructions and put them in place one by one working from the bottom to the top. After alot of adjusting and clean up this is what I ended up with.
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Now your just going to have to trust me on this but, after the glue dried up the back of the cab is stronger then it ever was from the factory. There is absolutely no flex when I push on the back of the cab. All of the oil canning is gone. I think with a little more hammer and dolly work, (and more meds) it will look just fine. After all 90% of it will be hidden behind the bed.
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Ok so here is my disclaimer: I know, I know this is probably the most half a$$ed way to fix the problem but again a man has to know his limitations

[paintman]

In other news............... I did succeed in patching the fuel filler hole. doing this is what convinced me to not cut out out the back of the cab.
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I also have had a pair of nearly mint condition rockers panels sitting in the garage that I scored at a swap meet a few years ago. got them mounted
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Next up is get the cab on the ground so i can flip it up on it's nose so I can strip, clean, and undercoat it with some KBS Frame coater.
Also getting ready to order the torque converter so I can get the beast back in the chassis.