Avoid the Concrete

[Low68]

This weekend I made a brace for the passenger side firewall. I got it tack welded in place.



I also modified the speedway seat brackets that I purchased to get the height and the angle that I wanted for the seats. I still have to weld some anchor plates on the bottom of the cab and cut off the old ones that are in a different place. I will do that when I pull the cab back off. I am also planning on making the seat bottom of the passenger side flip up so that I can mount the fuse panel and other electronics under the seat, but still be accessible easily.

[gringoloco]

Coming along nicely! Waaaaaaay back in the first post, were those pics of the 6.5/8 drop with Hotchkis springs? What did you think of the setup?

[bterry97gt]

Now that you have the seats mounted i am curious, do racing seats feel awkward or uncomfortable in a 'truck style' seating position. I had corbeau seats in a car and just cant imagine how they would sit with your legs bent towards the floor versus straight out in front like in a car. That probably doesnt make sense at all, but I have been going back and forth between a race seat and TMI's line of complete seats.

[Low68]

Chris, Yes those photos were the Hotchkis springs. I was pretty happy with them. They rode pretty well and I moved the control arms around a little to help with the handling. For not a lot of money you can have it handling pretty well.

Bterry, I don't find them uncomfortable. I think it is all in how the brackets position the seats. I tried to angle the front of the seat up slightly to help support my legs. That way it feels like you are sitting "in" the seat more than on top of it. The brackets don't look like they are that angled that much, but I cut them down a little at a time until it felt pretty good. Then I had two other people sit in the seats and they both said it felt pretty good. I really like having this type of seat in my truck, but then I don't usually drive it long distances anymore. I would rather have something that holds me tightly because I corner hard everywhere I go. I am curious to see how these seats feel when driving and cornering. They are not as snug as the last seats that I had, which is good and bad it think. Time will tell. Hope that made sense and was close to an answer for what you were asking.

[bterry97gt]

Originally Posted by Low68

Bterry, I don't find them uncomfortable. I think it is all in how the brackets position the seats. I tried to angle the front of the seat up slightly to help support my legs. That way it feels like you are sitting "in" the seat more than on top of it. The brackets don't look like they are that angled that much, but I cut them down a little at a time until it felt pretty good. Then I had two other people sit in the seats and they both said it felt pretty good. I really like having this type of seat in my truck, but then I don't usually drive it long distances anymore. I would rather have something that holds me tightly because I corner hard everywhere I go. I am curious to see how these seats feel when driving and cornering. They are not as snug as the last seats that I had, which is good and bad it think. Time will tell. Hope that made sense and was close to an answer for what you were asking.

Thanks, hope I didn't sound like I was questioning you using a race seat. I was just curious to see if you felt they were comfortable. I may have to use those speedway mounts, they look nice for the price!

[Low68]

Not at all. I don't mind questions. I was pretty impressed with the speedway mounts for the money. They were pretty high out of the box though.

[bterry97gt]

Originally Posted by Low68

Not at all. I don't mind questions. I was pretty impressed with the speedway mounts for the money. They were pretty high out of the box though.

Do plan on doing a cage? If not what are your plans for harnesses? I dont really want a full hoop in the back but have been trying to think of a way to mount harnesses safely without taking up a bunch of room. Just a simple harness bar I guess you would call it.

[Low68]

I have gone back and forth on a roll cage. At the moment I am planning on doing one. I was thinking about doing a harness bar and mounting it between the outer cab skin and the inner skin from the cab back since I already have that off. Then I would just have to have a couple slots for the harnesses to go through the roof skin on each side. It is more complicated than that cause I would have to make sure the harnesses weren't resting on the edge of sheet metal, but basically that was a possibility. I am trying to avoid having whatever I do require the seat be moved forward.

[bterry97gt]

Originally Posted by Low68

I have gone back and forth on a roll cage. At the moment I am planning on doing one. I was thinking about doing a harness bar and mounting it between the outer cab skin and the inner skin from the cab back since I already have that off. Then I would just have to have a couple slots for the harnesses to go through the roof skin on each side. It is more complicated than that cause I would have to make sure the harnesses weren't resting on the edge of sheet metal, but basically that was a possibility. I am trying to avoid having whatever I do require the seat be moved forward.

I had an idea that may be stupid, but I thought it might work as a good harness bar mounting place and add some chassis stiffness. I have noticed on street trucks that arent fully caged that the frame twist is noticable between the cab and bed when they enter a turn. I thought about making up some poly type bushing (like a body mount) that fit between the front panel of the bed and the back of the cab and actually bolting the cab to the bed through these bushings just under the rear window. Almost making it into a unibody I guess.

I thought this may add some dimensional stiffness to the truck without having to put a cage in. Then these bolts could be used to mount a sturdy harness bar just under the window where the inner roof panel ends. The only issue I can see is the holes possibly leaking or the bushings squeaking over bumps, and if it flexed enough it may could even bend the front panel. Thoughts?

[Low68]

Sorry Bterry. I just saw your post. I accidentally unsubscribed from my own thread.

That is a creative idea. I think if you are just doing it through sheet metal, you would not see much of a benefit as I think the sheet metal would just flex as it moved. However, if you did some bracing so that it was attaching more than just sheet metal to sheet metal, I think it may work. The trick, at least on the bed, would be to get it to look decent if you did the bracing. I think that I would prefer to stiffen up the frame over that though. If you leave the frame as is and just put an fixed point between the bed and the cab, I could see that leading to issues. One of which you said about possible leaks. That seems like it would be a lot of stress on the body where it wasn't designed to have stress. If you stiffened up the frame some, it may be a good supplemental modification though.

[Low68]

Time for an update.

Because I am planning on doing a roll bar again and the harnesses that I bought go down right behind the seat, having the fuse panel behind the seat like I had it before is not ideal. I decided to mount it under the passenger seat. This means that I need to make it easily accessible. I decided to have the passenger seat bottom pivot up in the front. Then my dad suggested making it easy to remove completely in case I need to have easier access to work on things underneath. So I came up with a plan to make a pivot that also serves as a quick release for the seat. I copied another build thread that I saw on here for the front and bought some mini bear claw latches for the front of the seat to hold it down. For the back, I am fabricating what I need. Here is what I have going for the pivot:


I have two plates welded to the frame. The frame will be bolted to the floor and will not move. I will eventually cut out the cross pieces that came on the frame and will be welding new ones in at the very front and very back. This will give me more room for the electronics. The round tube you see is 3/4 O/D tube. I have two 3/8ths rods that are threaded into a delrin bushing on the inside with a spring in between them. I also made busing for the ends of the tubes to allow the rods to slide freely in and out of the tube. I milled a flat spot and drilled and tapped a hole for the stops to mount to. This will prevent the rods from going out too far as well as allow me to hook a cable to them and pull them together to release the seat from the frame. Pull them together and the tube will release from the frame:




That's all for now.

[gringoloco]

Nice work!

[Low68]

Originally Posted by gringoloco

Nice work!

Posted via Mobile Device

[Low68]

Thanks Gringoloco

[Low68]

Did some more work on the seat frame. I welded a flat piece of steel on the front of the frame to bold the latches to. Then I cut out the center braces.

Then I made the new frame for the center section of the frame. This frame will bolt to the bottom of the seat and swing up with the seat.





Hopefully tomorrow I will get a little more done.

[Low68]

I got the latches mounted. I am pretty happy with the way it works so far. Here are the photos from today.








I need to weld mounting tabs for the seat sliders and figure out the mechanism to release the latches. I was thinking a release on the side would be easy, but I may try to do something on the front instead so that it is hidden better.

[Blown06]

That's looking real good, nice work.

[Low68]

Thanks Blown06!

I got the seat remounted. I was planning on doing a strut under the seat to hold it up, but there is not much access with the seat up, so I may just forget about the strut and plan on taking the seat out when I need to do anything under there. Here are the pics of it mounted. I still have some clean up work to do on it and round over some edges, but I will do that later. Time to move on to something else.

[Low68]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I haven't been working on the truck much lately. Lots of other stuff going on. I did manage to get the window figured out. Hopefully it is a decent solution. I guess I will find out. I ended up getting rid of the front window channel felts and cut a piece of delrin to fit in its place. My thinking behind it is that the delrin should be slick enough for the window to move up and down in and won't allow the window and sash to flex. I tried it out of wood that we had laying around and it worked so I bought some delrin and voila! The window barely wobbles now. Very happy with the results. So once I had that figured out, I made some new mounts for the window tracks that were more secure. Here are the pictures I took.

The strips of delrin that prior to being cut:



After cutting to shape:





Delrin in place and channels mounted:

[1Bad 37]

Looks great man! Its awesome that you've done so much work after the wreck that many would have written the truck off! LOVE the firewall!

[Low68]

Thanks Christian! If this wasn't my first vehicle I owned, I may have just bought a different one and transferred some parts, but it has sentimental value, and I don't plan on selling it, so I decided to just rebuild. Thanks for checking it out!

[Low68]

I borrowed a mock up a/c unit from So-Cal Speed Shop in Phoenix and got the a/c unit location nailed down. I didn't want to see the a/c unit hanging down below the dash, so I decided to mount it between the seats behind the shifter. I will be putting a console in the center that will cover the a/c and allow me to run the vent tubes up to the dash. I am also going to do a straighter shifter to bring it forward more. It is too far back to be comfortable for me.






I also cut the driver side door skin off to start working on the window modifications. When I started looking at the door, I noticed that I wasn't really happy with the quality of the latch installation that I had done the first time. There were several individual pieces of metal welded in place instead of just one. I had done that because I was trying to use the installation plates that came with the latches and they didn't cover the entire area. But the pieces were not flat and I noticed some holes around the edges. I decided to cut it out and redo it.

[C-DUB_07]

I'm late to the party but this thing is looking awesome! Any updates? I'm starting a project soon and one of the main things I plan on doing is shaving the drip rails so your write up will help a ton! One idea that came to mind while looking at the 3rd picture in post #184...do you think it would be possible to just section the inside of the A pillar (as seen in that pic) without cutting the front and then bending the front skin in to close the gap? I'm sure you had reasoning for doing it the way you did but just a thought I had. Second, I hadn't looked at mine close enough to see the difference between the door and the back of the cab and your fix in post #191 is perfect! I'll definitely try ripping that one off! That is, if you'll allow it haha

[ltrrtl]

C-DUB_07,
You may want to check out the latest release of the mag "classic trucks". They have a pretty detailed article on removing the drip rails.

[mcbassin]

Excellent fabrication work on the seat mounts, doors and everything else! Keep up the good work. Very clean