Need advice/inspiration

So I started in on my metal work tonight on the cab after a night of rough wire wheel action last night. Long story short, this thing needs a lot of love. The cab mounts on the front are about shot. The drivers side is shot. If you look at the pics, you can see that the mount point is broken. Also if you look at the rocker you can see that it's bowed from where the A pilar was shoving on it with no support under it.

Cons:
Cab mounts and bottoms of the A pillars are shot.

Floor is Swiss cheese in several areas including the drivers foot well, pass footwell, and especially along the drivers cab corner inside and out.

The other cab corner is toast and I haven't been able to inspect it carefully, but the rear seem between the floor and back wall fell rough.

Pros:
The rockers are really clean from what I can tell. Other than the rust it's pretty straight.

It's a 5 speed which around here is hard to find. I looked at a ton of trucks convinced I was going to have to convert one.


This one fooled bad guys.









So the question becomes, at what point do you cut your losses. I haven't bought the metal yet. I hate to buy another complete truck because of the work I have in the running gear already.

Do I just patch it up as best I can and live with it?

Do I go hunt a clean cab down south or out west?

Do I just keep the good bits and junk the rest and go find another truck?

Is it fixable... Absolutely. Am I running out of patients with fixing it. Yes. This POS has fought me every step of the way. I'm not sure why I'm surprised at anything at this point.

Thanks for the rant and whatever advice/encouragement you have.

man, I would probably hunt down a clean replacement cab.

thinking about it a little more you are in the position where you could do a crewcab swap

man being fed up with your truck sucks. just got mine on the road after battling the damn thing for about 3 months straight and 2200$ worth of ****. I knwo it is damn tough but let me tell you once you get er going its all worth it. so keep pushing brother shell get there someday

one thing i learned about my fords is no matter how hard you beat on them they always beat right back. throwing another thing at you ahah . thats what makes me a proud ford owner

as for the rust i would be ooking for a new cab or you can just tack it up and just drive a redneck looking rig like me haha good luck and ford on!

-mark

What is another truck body with title worth? What is a clean cab worth? I have a truck that I bought for the wheels (because I couldn't find any alcoas). Then harvested the engine for another truck.

I can't find the pictures right now but I remember the underside being pretty clean.

88 extended cab. 2wd, c6 but don't they all have the cutout for the floor shift?

I can go scope out the underside tomorrow if you like.

Perhaps it is not pristine after all. I found one pic on the other computer.

I have thought for a while that I would patch it up and drive it for a while then look for a cc to transplant. It's one of those things where to do the job right, I'm looking at enough money in metal over the whole truck to buy a clean truck. I am really questioning my sanity.

Tim4 said:

Perhaps it is not pristine after all. I found one pic on the other computer.

Click to expand...

I appreciate it but if I were going to go that route it would have to be pristine or it's not worth it.

+1 for new cab.

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If you go looking for the new cab route, Here's the junkyards I visit. They are already ***** by a bunch of damn goons who harvest the good stuff before I get to it, so no point in hoarding it.

http://nvpicapart.com/

Prices are listed on the site, so let me know if anything catches your fancy, then we'll figure it out from there. Count on the desirable stuff being gone already, or honestly/sadly, if I do happen across it before the two I suspect are the ebay bandits, then it's mine for my truck. Cabs/doors are usually intact though, just the prized stuff goes quickly. Dash parts, Engine related items, etc.

We do get some trash rust buckets from salt country through now and then, but it's rare. Not as common as the stuff that makes this area legendary for sheet metal and the like.

Cabs/Beds i'll have to figure out transport logistics and borrow someones trailer if it fits/they allow it. Don't have one myself. If I can figure out a way to get it in the bed of my truck without trashing anything, then may not need the trailer

edit: obviously shipping/transport is a whole other ball game

I think if it were me, I would be on the hunt for a clean replacement cab. While you are hunting for the cab, stay inspired by working on the rest of the truck, and eventually you will find the cab you want. Your time is valuable, and the cost of your time and the cost of replacement sheet metal(and not all is available as I understand it) will continue to add up as you work on the cab and you will wish you had just taken the time to hunt down a clean cab anyway. It will probably take some time to search out and find the cab, but I think your time is better spent that way rather working on the original cab I know you want to get the truck back on the road, but you will be happier at the end of the project if you can find a clean cab. If the rust were just in the front cab mount areas and the rest of the rear floor and seams were solid, I would say replace the front metal, clean the rest and seal and paint. It just looks like even the seams on the rest of the cab are pretty bad though. So, start hunting! You might be surprised what you find once you start really looking and shaking the bushes!

I agree on the replacement cab thing also. I know that IDIDieselJohn from Canada did just that. On one of his yearly trips to the states, same trip he normally wanders by the rally, he went to Florida. In Florida he found a clean cab, and even a cheap utility trailer, bought them both and towed them back to Canada......

So here is the argument I'm having with myself. The point of starting with a local truck is that I really have no way to move a truck from a distance other than shipping it or driving it. I don't know what a cab goes for really, so lets just say $500 if I can find just a cab and not an entire truck. That's not counting travel to go look at it or cost of moving it. If I take that $500 and put it in metal parts, I can put this truck back together pretty much the way it was only safe (holes patched even if its not pretty) and now I at least have a tow vehicle even though I know it's probably on borrowed time as far as rusting out again. If you look at my build thread, you can see that the frame is not in pristine condition either and neither is any of the other sheet metal although the rest of the sheetmetal seems to be in much better shape than the cab is. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is do I take the short term pain and suck it up to get this truck on the road and then start looking for a complete clean truck? I'm trying to figure out what the best long term solution is. To figure out if this is at all viable, I need to go through the other panels more carefully and see what things look like. They would probably all pass inspection right now but certainly would not be in "good" condition without some work.

It's becoming aparent that the best long term solution is going to be find a clean truck and put the good bits I have collected into it. Really the question is what the path to that will look like. Do I spend a little money now and get the thing on the road for a little while knowing its temporary or do I put that money into travel and shipping costs and wait patiently? This is the argument I'm having with myself. I have started searching by the way. Maybe the answer will fall from the sky when I least expect it.

Appreciate you guys' thoughts and please feel free to keep weighing in.

Thanks for talking me off the ledge guys and being a sounding board. Sometimes I need that and it's surprisingly helpful sometimes to see your thoughts organized in print. It can make decision making much less painful.

New plan. I am going to attempt to fix this cab with the understanding that this is a temporary measure. It probably won't be pretty. It will probably rust out again. I am going to work at it with the goal of getting 3-4 years out of the repairs before I HAVE to do anything again. Rather than spending a lot of money on new fenders etc., I'm going to try to salvage what I have (if the cab isn't perfect, no reason for the rest of it to be) and save that money back to go hunting for another cab/truck once this one is road worthy giving me a way to travel because it is blatently obvious at this point that clean sheet metal falling from the sky and landing in central MD is probably not going to happen.

What do you think?

what im doing with my cab is basically cutting out the entire floor minus a few key peices, making a frame for it out of 1x1 1/8" square tubing, and then welding slabs of 16 gauge sheet to it. The seat rails will be made out of some 3/16 L channel. After dicking around 2 years ago patching my floor on the dirver side-its ******. its nic ethick metal but from the bottom it looks terrible sinc eit was all layers upon itself, but it was better than getting killed by welding spatter from underneath while trying to weld to thin rusty metal. I basically put in a long 16 gauuge 4 or 5" C channel as my rockers, welded that to new A B C pillars I made and that was my base.
I seriously think just doiung the whole floor from new is better(more durable), fairly cheap (probably like 60-100 in 16 gauge sheet) and is QUICK. screw making nice formed areas, just build a frame aroudn the whoel underside of the cab-which the body mounts also tie into, and just weld and brace with C channel and more sheet.

Also another reason i say do all new 16 gauge sheet and a tube frame is-say you get a MINT cab..seal it all you want im sure rust will start up in a few years anyway. That lil 20 gauge or whatever they use will fall apart, and the cab uses the whole structure to remain rigid. Make yer own, bigger and thicker than factory

I hope ot get to mine late next week.

****..which reminds me....i should order more sheet while I have my dads matrix to haul it, as sheet dont fit inside a foxbody!!