So what did you do with your truck today?

IDIBRONCO said:

That's WAY more fun. Just be willing to hold their beer for them.

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Exactly!!

I didn't get real far, but I managed to pull the front clip off the CC to get ready for new fenders and core support repair

Rock

You may not think that it's much, but it's still something.

Overnight and today we got around 6-8 inches of fresh snow, which is pretty good for our area. I needed wood pellets to burn for heat so I fired up the ol girl while brushing snow and scraping ice off the windows.
Went down and got a pallet of wood pellets, a few groceries, and came back up the hill.

I couldn't resist driving down to a park near my house to do some gentle 4-wheel drifting with nobody around. I was having so much fun at one point that I forgot about the wood pellets...and suddenly the truck felt lighter and I saw in front of me where some idiot had dropped a bunch of 40lb bags all over the parking lot!
Soooo....after cleaning up the mess with a huge grin on my face I went home and got to unload those pellet bags, only needing to tape up about 10 of them, doh. I'd say it was worth it though. 8" of fresh beautiful snow and like 8 4x4 fatty doughnuts was so much fun.
The bigger tires I have on now are WAY more fun in the snow than stock. 275/75R-16 is a 33", much wider and take a lot less air pressure to wear correctly. It makes the truck very predictable in the snow which I appreciate a lot.

I finally got around to playing with the new-to-me welder. Got a little more whittled away on my bumper.

Bolted the side pieces to the bumper



Tacked the top bar in place



Pulled it off and capped the lower tube, the drilled and tapped it so it's removable to make it easier to work on.



I still have to add some pieces to it before I put it back together, but it's looking good so far!

This ain't how a radiator core support should look
I picked up a decent used core support I will clean up and swap in. Hopefully I will get the front clip back on by Friday.

Now, all this got me thinking... Has anybody bolted their front clip together and made a tilt hood? I really miss that feature on my international.


Rock

Farmer Rock said:

This ain't how a radiator core support should look

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Isn't that the light weight, high performance version? kind of like those Pontiacs back in the early 60's with the holes in the frame?

IDIBRONCO said:

Isn't that the light weight, high performance version? kind of like those Pontiacs back in the early 60's with the holes in the frame?

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That's correct! Both my trucks have the aftermarket weight reduction packages.....
I've got 30 second 0-60 times and all.
I've run neck and neck with a 50cc moped once..... I smoked him.... literally,lol.

Rock

Farmer Rock said:

Now, all this got me thinking... Has anybody bolted their front clip together and made a tilt hood? I really miss that feature on my international.

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I've wondered about that. We'd have to get some hinges, and we'd have to come up with some way to support the inner fenders? We would want the radiator and the core support to stay fixed with the engine, right? but that's part of the front clip, isn't it? How is it done on the ones that have tilt hoods from the factory?

nelstomlinson said:

I've wondered about that. We'd have to get some hinges, and we'd have to come up with some way to support the inner fenders? We would want the radiator and the core support to stay fixed with the engine, right? but that's part of the front clip, isn't it? How is it done on the ones that have tilt hoods from the factory?

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I believe that the core supports on medium and heavier duty trucks stay put when the hood is tilted forward. I think that the difference/problem is in the design/intent. The tilt hoods are a one piece design with the fenders included from what I've seen. Our trucks have separate hoods and fenders. The fenders are designed to stay in one place and not move. If you tried to tilt the hood and fenders in one assembly, the rear, bottoms of the fenders would hit the doors before the assembly was raised very far. An internal support system would also have to be designed for the assembly in order for it to hold it's shape while tilted upward. If the fenders were to tilt upward, what would happen to all of the things that are attached to them (wires, starter solenoid, etc.). What about the headlights" I'm pretty sure that the headlight buckets are attached to the core support. How would that work with the Brick Nose/OBS trucks when the fenders would tilt while the turn signals stay put since they are mounted to the headlights or the buckets? I'm sure there would be more issues that I haven't thought of with a tilt front end, but these that I've mentioned should be enough to show that the answer this question, for all practical purposes, would be that it can't be done. Can it be done? Sure with enough fab work ($$$$$), but it sure wouldn't be practical for over 99% of us. And that's how I see it.

Yeah, it's probably not worth the effort, and if we were going to do it, might be easier to build a new nose from scratch, or figure out how to scab on an old Mac tilt hood.

IDIBRONCO said:

I believe that the core supports on medium and heavier duty trucks stay put when the hood is tilted forward. I think that the difference/problem is in the design/intent. The tilt hoods are a one piece design with the fenders included from what I've seen. Our trucks have separate hoods and fenders. The fenders are designed to stay in one place and not move. If you tried to tilt the hood and fenders in one assembly, the rear, bottoms of the fenders would hit the doors before the assembly was raised very far. An internal support system would also have to be designed for the assembly in order for it to hold it's shape while tilted upward. If the fenders were to tilt upward, what would happen to all of the things that are attached to them (wires, starter solenoid, etc.). What about the headlights" I'm pretty sure that the headlight buckets are attached to the core support. How would that work with the Brick Nose/OBS trucks when the fenders would tilt while the turn signals stay put since they are mounted to the headlights or the buckets? I'm sure there would be more issues that I haven't thought of with a tilt front end, but these that I've mentioned should be enough to show that the answer this question, for all practical purposes, would be that it can't be done. Can it be done? Sure with enough fab work ($$$$$), but it sure wouldn't be practical for over 99% of us. And that's how I see it.

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You make a lot of good points on this. It's definitely not practical, and I don't have the time or endless funds to get it done. I just like the idea of being able to pull the whole front clip with two hinge pins like my international had. But as of now, I'll just be putting the stock front clip back together today or tomorrow, and the tilt hood will remain a pipe dream.

Rock

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from trying this. I'm just pointing out why it's not practical for the vast majority of us.

Tonight was a little interesting at times. Background:I don't have to work tomorrow since it's New Year's Eve. There's the worst cold spell of the winter so far coming in this weekend. I've been wanting to install a wood burning stove in my house to combat the insanely high natural gas prices. It's been so warm that I pushed it to the back of my mid and forgot about it. A couple of nights ago, I was going to start getting everything together and get started putting the stove in. Yesterday we had a high temperature of 31* so I didn't go dig the stove out of my garage since the high today was supposed to be about 50* (it was 51*). While I was going through everything, I discovered that I didn't have any double wall stovepipe to run out through that wall (no chimney and I didn't want to go out through the flat roof). I was going to use the warmth today to get the stove out of the garage, but less than 10 minutes before I left work, I decided to go get the stovepipe instead of getting up at 5:00 AM to go get it. I bought everything else at Menards and it's a smaller diameter than what I can buy around here so it was back to Kearney, NE (about a 1 1/2 hour drive) to go to Menards. Just the savings on the price of the piece of double wall made the trip cost effective. As I was getting closer to Menards, I noticed a guy in a newer Chevy crew cab waving out of his window. I looked over at him (he looked to be about 18-22), he motioned to me that he wanted to race my truck. I guess he must have liked the way my exhaust sounds. I laughed and shook my head no. It's been a LONG time since I was challenged to race and I've never entered one that I didn't know I would win. He took off fast and disappeared after I got caught at a red light. The rest of the trip wasn't really exciting, but it still is comical when I think about that guy who wanted to race my N/A IDI! Apparently he wasn't looking for much of a challenge.

IDIBRONCO said:

Apparently he wasn't looking for much of a challenge.

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Like that trans swimmer.

Couldn't take the competition from fellow men, so he claims to identify as a woman, and competes with them.

What a wussy. He is male, but I wouldn't call him a man. Wait, is that proof he is trans? Still not a woman, and shouldn't be competing with women.

Let them start a trans league...