720 Crewcab - 4 doors, 4x4, and a huge freaking headache

[sebpv]

a frontal load washer/dryer uses a similar mechanism. Pivot and pull

[LTJ]

I like the rear door plan!

[Lockleaf]

More progress. Slow but consistent. Ive reinstalled multiple pieces that i cut off. Welding is finished on one piece, but the others are just tacked. Lots of welding and grinding to do to assemble this door frame. I'm pretty sure the other side will have 1/3 the linear feet of weld :).

 

 

 

I also finish welded the door frame seams and ground them back. I had to use my dremel because the clearances are too tight for a grinder. That sucked.

 

 

Fitting the new door frame is nearly finished, then i will be ready to weld it in.

[Draker]

It's looking a whole lot more double-cabbish now! Loving the progress.

[LTJ]

Looking good!

[Lockleaf]

Too long since I've worked on this.  But i got some real work done on it.

 

Passenger door frame is fully assembled but not quite fully welded in.  I ran out of weld gas last night before i finished.

 

This door frame didnt go that well.  Ignorance caused me to remove a lot i shouldnt have, so this thing is pretty piecemeal.  Its going to take a lot of finish work to clean up.

 

Drivers side should go much better.

 

Anyways heres the pics.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2018 by Lockleaf

[LTJ]

Glad to see this is still going! ?

[Draker]

Hey.. we are all learning right along with you!

 

Nice work!

[wayno]

You learn as you go on stuff like this.

Sheet metal is easy to work with, if what you made doesn't work you can cut it out and start over again, after a few times you understand you can just about make anything you need given enough time, the issue is that most that do this kind of stuff have way too many projects/ideas, it can get overwhelming.

[Lockleaf]

I do have that problem wayno.  I'm trying to talk myself OUT of buying a 1973 International Travelall nearby just because i already have too much crap!  But its on my list!  I want it.

[wayno]

I have so many projects that I have finally stopped buying new ones, I hardly even look at ebay or craigslist anymore, and when I do it is for a specific part and to see how much others want for their 320s, I quit searching 520/521 truck parts all together on ebay, only if I need a part, same with diesel parts, quit searching unless I need the part.

I have no american sheet metal anymore, they are too big and take up too much room.

[Lockleaf]

You speak wisdom I'm not smart enough to hear.  Off to play on the World wide classifieds

[wayno]

22 hours ago, Lockleaf said:

You speak wisdom I'm not smart enough to hear.  Off to play on the World wide classifieds

 

I am an old guy with Too Many Datsuns and a Mini, and I am too attached to most of them as they are projects with some sort of significant accomplishment like your crew cab will likely be to you when it is mostly if not completely finished some day.

It took me years to figure out a headliner for my kingcabs I could make and live with, all my projects need more work to actually finish them which likely will never happen as I drive them the way they are and am fine with them the way they are, no one looks at the area behind the seats of my kingcabs, just today 2 guys at the sand blasting place approached me to talk about my 521 kingcab, if it was a trailer queen none of them people would have ever seen that truck and I would not have enjoyed driving it or talking about it as it was raining on me and the truck, I bought 200lbs of sandblasting media and took it home in my 521 kingcab, it cannot do what my 521 work truck can do but I can still use it for hauling stuff.

I guess the reason for all this typing is too say that I believe in getting them on the road and driving them, they do not need to be completely finished, they just need to be safe to drive, you can finish them later. ?

 

[Lockleaf]

Now that I hear loud and clear. I agree with you, i just suck at focusing.

[wayno]

I forgot to mention that once they are derivable and on the road I find more time to work on them to make them nicer.

I also have a hard time focusing for longer periods of time unless I know that when I finish that it will be done and I will not have to do it again, I generally only work an hour or so before taking a break and doing something else like watching a TV program or sitting in front of the computer, after a while I go back to the project for another hour or so, I may not get a lot done but after a week of part time work on the project whatever I was trying to do gets done and I didn't burn out doing it, as when I burn out I don't even look at them for a year sometimes, my 320 kingcab sat for a year and a half this last time as I wanted to finish it before Canby which was a terrible goal as I didn't make it and I burnt out, I am almost there though on the exterior, I am working on the tailgate now, it is ready for primer as of today, my plan is to remove the tires from the rims and prime/paint the tailgate and rims, then all that is left is painting the interior and figuring out what to do about the chrome bits like the grill, bumperettes, hood trim piece, and the hubcaps, none of them are in good enough shape to have chrome plated except maybe one or two of the hubcaps, I have been looking into spray chrome, I started on the bumperettes last night.

Just pick on small stuff like getting this or that corner in the door opening sorted out, get it done then move on to the next thing, forward progress is progress no matter how small the job is, big jobs that just have to be done by a certain time burn me out.

Edited November 1, 2018 by wayno

[Lockleaf]

Spent hours cutting spot welds.  I got the second door frame piece readied more or less.

 

Started here.

 

 

Cut about 40 welds or so to remove all the inner panels.  I also later removed the bottom inner panel.

 

 

Then cut the frame into three sections so i can realign them to my needs. 

 

 

The cut in the middle of the vertical is in a different place from the other side.  I placed the other side cut in a curve which is hard to grind down cleanly after welding.  So i moved the cut to a straighter section.

 

Then spent a bunch of time inside the cab cutting spot welds, getting the cab ready to accept the new door frame.  Lots of bits to remove before new door frame can go in.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Lockleaf

[Lockleaf]

Life has been massively busy for me for the last few months.  We sold our house and relocated temporarily while we build a new one.  That meant I had to move this beast, so I pounded out some more work on it to get it strong enough to move without tearing itself in half.

 

I cut out at least 60 spot welds on the interior of the truck.  Then I took measurements from the finished side to make all my cuts for this side.  Where I spent something like 15 or 20 hours building the passenger side (badly), I only took about 3 hours to build the drivers side, and it's way better.  Ah the beauty of experience and knowledge...

 

The fitment was pretty darn good I think.  Here's a bunch of pics of the pieces being fit together before welding.

 

Upper door frame and window frame on top

 

 

 

Center Pillar (B Pillar)

 

 

Top window frame area

 

 

Inner main upper support (inside of the above shot, connecting to back truck cab on left.

 

 

Inside of B pillar, front cab portion on Right, "new" part of B pillar in middle, upper door frame on left. You can see the seams unwelded.  I think they are pretty good fit.

 

 

Inside shot of upper half of whole fabbed area

 

 

Lower half of new door frame.

 

 

 

Took me a couple hours to get it all welded up.  The rocker panel is still not done.  I need to replace both rockers completely, so I didn't even weld that portion of the new door frame on.

 

 

Whole passenger door frame installed.

 

 

Drivers side for comparison.  If you look hard, you can see it is much more piecemeal.  If you can't see that, trust me, its MUCH more piecemeal. 

 

 

Testing how I could reuse the INNER panels to build a new B pillar, also needs to fit properly over the seatbelt section.  Both photos are the passenger side of the quad cab.  I think I can split the orange B pillar piece and the black one and build the inner fairly similarly to how I built the outer, and get it all reassembled.  That has not happened yet.

 

 

Thats basically all I can do for now.  I'm in a place I can't weld or really do lots of work to any of my projects.  Focusing on getting my new house built, but we are only just getting the plans finalized so I have the whole thing to go.

 

This doesn't get much work, but I'm overall pretty happy with how it's going.  I've decided that much as I wish I could keep the two sunroofs that were installed in this truck, they are just in way too bad of shape and don't seem to have parts available.  So I'm going to cut a roof off of something else (that has a sunroof), and install that roof as one piece on the top of this truck.  That will fix the sunroof holes, and also fix the "step" I currently have in my roof.

 

I will try to repair the dead pic links soon.

[Lockleaf]

No progress on this but I have now fixed most the bad links.  I can't find a few of the photos currently, so I will have to find those and get them uploaded, but 90% of this thing should be good again.

 

Nearly done building our new house.  I've basically spent the last 18 months either working on the old house to get it ready to sell, or dealing with the construction of the new house.  I hope to be moved in in another 6 weeks max, and then maybe, finally, I can start back on all my projects.  They all moved with me, but I haven't touched them basically at all since October of 2018, except for finishing the one door frame, and fixing the head gasket on my other 720.

 

This project is far from dead.  Just too much life has been going on.  I'm itching to get back in the garage.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Lockleaf

[Lockleaf]

Ok.  Holy crap.  Life just doesn't allow for playing much sometimes. After much work and time, I am firmly established in my new home with larger 3rd car "shop" for me.

 

December 11, 2020 was a big deal day for me.  Not perhaps that meaningful to anyone else, but to me it indicated huge things.

 

It was the day I got my first project inside the shop to begin work.  I unloaded the truck cab from the trailer where it has lived since October of 2018, and got it back on its cart.

 

Cab on the trailer inside the garage.  Not really that neat because I couldn't work on it here, so it wasn't official yet.  Also all the extra body panels I kept for this build.

 

 

Sketchy death potential unloading.  First lifted the front of it with the engine hoist, and the back with a jack and rolled it 90% of the way off the trailer.  Then held front up with big jack and lifted the rear with engine hoist to drive trailer out of the way.

 

 

Not the first time this level of ridiculous has been seen in this thread....

 

 

When I was hauling this thing up to my new place, the cart was on the trailer beneath the cab.  Somehow my straps got loose and when I pulled away from a stop light, the cart shot off the back of the trailer.  I had to pull around real quick and then drag the biotch off to the side of the road to reload it.  Not cool, but luckily no one and nothing got run over during this example of my stupidty.  😄 The jump off the trailer did bust two of the casters off my cart though.

 

 

I replaced both of those with some random casters I had laying around, did a bit of finaglin', and finally got the cab in to the shop.

 

 

Time to get something DONE.

 

 

[Lockleaf]

And in the spirit of movement on this truck, I found someone parting out a King Cab Titan.  Scored these for $20 a piece.  My suicide door hinges.

 

 

They seriously burly hinges.  And since I didn't pull them, he did, I'm not 100% sure how they mount to function properly.  I think I'm going to have to figure that out sooner rather than later, so I can know how I might need to mod them and what changes I might have to make to my cab body to support them properly.

[]2eDeYe]

good to see this one back in a shop

[Lockleaf]

I got in a couple of hours of work on the truck last night.  It was full of crap and massively dirty inside, so I started the evening just pulling everything out, organizing the stuff that needed to be kept, then vacuuming the whole thing pretty well.

 

 

Then I took a 4ft led work light and hung it up inside so I had good lighting

 

 

I've been watching a lot of videos on Youtube learning stuff from old timers.  In particular for body welding, I've become a big fan of Fitzee's Fabrications.  I wanted to try some of his techniques, and I've never been happy with how my floor turned out.  So I decided to redo some sections of that which were heavily pieced together.  Here's where it was.

 

 

Scrounging some sheet metal, it appears my options are washing machine or tool box door.  Turns out washing machine is the correct gauge to match the existing floor metal.

 

 

Cleaning the coating (powdercoat?) off the washing machine metal sucked, but I got er done.  Here's the piece that I cut to piece in.  Aim was to fix weld gaps plus replace the metal I had cut slices into in order to flatten it.  I shaped the metal for the contours and got to work.

 

 

Well Hell. I don't think I made any improvements. But hey at least I learned a lot about this cut and butt technique!  Toward the end I was starting to understand how to make the technique work correctly.  I think I can improve on the other side much better.  Some of this might get done a third time?  I want it to be good not garbage.

 

LEARNING!!!

[Lockleaf]

I redid the other side and re-redid a couple points on the side from the post above.  I still suck, but I think there is some improvement over what was there before.  I did the second side in 3 pieces because each piece had a shaped feature that I was not sure I could really combine on one piece and still have a good fit.  I wasn't as successful on the first side as I wanted so I was trying things to improve my fit. 

 

 

I'm still not really impressed with some of my work, but this is going to be good enough for now.  Eventually I will stand the truck cab up on its back so I can really clean the bottom and then weld everything together.  While I do all the full welding, I may have to redo some of these patches yet again.

 

So I am moving on to other parts of the truck.  I need to get to work rebuilding the interior side of the B pillars.  The drivers side exterior all fit together pretty well, with no large gaps.  But the passenger, the side I started with, is pretty bad.  There are 2 seams across the top, and both are huge gaps.  They look like this.

 

 

Because part of this one is visible from the outside, I am fitting a patch across it.  The other one is completely up under the roof line, so I will just put in a piece to bridge the gap and seal it.  Because there are 2 seams across the top of both rear door frames, I want to put in a piece of pipe/bar that crosses all of the pieces to hold them together and prevent flex.  I don't have much metal at the current house or a place to easily go get some.  So I turned this nearly useless piece of garbage

 

in to a pile of semi useful garbage
 

 

Once I weld in the patches and get some weld through primer, I will weld these bars in across all three pieces.

 

 

Now I just need to buy that primer...

 

[Lockleaf]

Patches welded in.  Now redoing some work on the passenger side B pillar exterior.  I didn't like the shape overall, so changing it up a little to allow the doors to seal better.  No pics tonight.

[Lockleaf]

Progress continues.  Well its kind of like progress.  Much of this is actually just fixing past work that wasn't done all that well..... 😄

Big ugly gap in the top rail from the poor way I fit everything together.  Part of this forms the exterior skin just under the drip edge.

 

So I put a new piece in to fix that and transition between the two top rail sections.  I also welded a plate over the other gap I had in the top plate farther back.  Those repairs are circled here.

 

 

Not the prettiest but hopefully functional and serviceable enough.  Man I have a long way to go on this auto body welding stuff.  Better than I used to be though.

Moving on from there I decided it was to grind down some welds and just try to "finish" the exterior of this passenger side B pillar. After grinding, I found I had some pin holes that blew completely out when trying to fix them.  So I had to patch two places on the pillar.  Only took pics of one though.

 

Then finish the grinding.  At one point I missed the metal and ground meat instead. 😄

 

And basically done.  I need to use a finger sander or something for a few nooks and crannies, but for the most part this is as good as I can do.  Body filler will have to fix the rest.  Plus the bottom is hidden by doors and the top is hidden by a cover plate.  The bottom will remain unfinished until I redo the rockers completely.

 

 

It photographs better than it actually looks.