Friday, May 27, 2005  -  Sorry for the lack of recent updates, but normal life has been keeping me busy, so I haven't gotten in a lot of shop time lately.

I sold the '67 F250 bed to a FORDification forum member a couple weeks ago. We made arrangements for him to drive out from Kentucky this Memorial Day weekend to pick it up on Saturday. Since I hadn't had the time to get it disconnected and ready to go, I decided to take a vacation day on Friday to get that done. However, I got caught up on work early Thursday afternoon, so I went ahead and took the rest of the day off, and hit the shop to get started on removing the bed. Because this was such a low-mileage truck, all the bed's attaching bolts were very easy to remove, and it took me less than an hour to have it ready to go by the time I went home Thursday evening.

However, that now meant I had a whole day to myself to spend in the shop on Friday. I decided to go ahead and get the fuel tank installed, to complete the rolling chassis. Almost everything was ready to install, so it really didn't take that long. I had to enlarge the frame holes a bit to mount the skidplate, but other than that, it went quickly and smoothly...until I went to hook up the emergency brake setup.

Trucks with this auxiliary tank have a different e-brake setup than those trucks not so equipped. First, the cable from the e-brake pedal assembly in the cab back to the frame crossmember is longer, because it has to essentially wrap around the tank. It's connected on the forward corner of the tank and then snaps into the frame crossmember. Also, trucks without the auxiliary tank have a lever-style equalizer mechanism (Fig. 2) that will interfere with the tank, so  the lever must be removed and a slightly different setup is used (Fig. 3).

The F250's front e-brake cable works just fine on my F100, even though it's a LWB truck....the front cable is the same length for both LWB and SWB trucks. The difference in length is made up for with short cable extensions between the front and rear cables.

Fig. 4 shows the routing of the e-brake cable around the tank. You can see how it's attached to the front corner of the tank and is then attached with a clamp to the tank's crossmember. What you can't see is how it snaps into a hole in the frame crossmember using tabs exactly like those on the rear cables at the brake backing plate.

Fig. 1 - Here's a shot of the completed installation of the in-frame 25-gallon fuel tank.

Fig. 2 - This is what the standard e-brake setup looks like. You can see where it will contact the tank, so a different configuration is necessary.

Fig. 3 - Here's the setup used for trucks with the auxiliary tank. There will eventually be a spring installed which will extend from the L-bracket (hanging on the end of the cable here) to the frame crossmember.

Fig. 4 - The e-brake cable routing is shown here.

Fig. 5 - I pushed the F250 chassis outside and then my F100, so I could get it and the shop cleaned up.

Fig. 6 - We just pulled Rob's utility trailer next to the chassis and then lifted the bed over onto it. It was heavy, but not as heavy as I thought it would be.

Fig. 6 - A shot of Rob bolting the pickup bed down to the trailer.

Saturday, May 28, 2005  -  I hit the shop about 10AM. Rob was due to arrive by early afternoon to get the pickup bed, so had some time to spend getting all the sanding dust cleaned off my F100, and time to do some cleanup at the shop. I started off by hauling a full load of trash and unsalvageable parts to the local dump station, then got started in the shop. The scrap iron pile out back got quite a bit larger by the end of the afternoon.

He finally showed up about 3 in a Dodge Grand Caravan...and no trailer! I'm thinking "Where the heck's his TRAILER??". As soon as he gets out, he grins and says "I'll bet you're asking yourself where the heck my trailer is!". He then proceeds to pop open the van's rear hatch and show me.

He went to Harbor Freight and picked up a small fold-up utility trailer like this one for $200. These things have ample load capacity and with a 4x8 dimension, is just the perfect size for transporting the bed. He simply unfolded and assembled it in the driveway in about 20 minutes. He'd mounted some 2x6's across the front and back of the trailer to hold the bed up a bit higher, and drilled holes down through them which line up with the pickup bed hold-down bolts. So after we lifted the bed off the truck chassis and set it down on the trailer, he just had to bolt it down to the bed and then drive off into the sunset.

And just for the record...with Rob at the front of the bed and myself at the rear, we were able to lift this bed off the chassis and onto the trailer by ourselves. However, I DO think my arms got stretched out an inch or two doing this!

One of the reasons I was really looking forward to Rob showing up is that he was bringing something for me that I've been keeping my eyes open for for quite a while....a rear-mounted auxiliary fuel tank from a '73-'77 F250 Highboy. These 4-wheel-drive trucks still had an in-cab fuel tank, since the standard rear-mount tank wouldn't work, because the frame rails were the distance apart as the rails on the '67-'72 trucks. However, some were also equipped with a plastic auxiliary tank which was mounted between the frame rails at the back of the truck, under the bed where the spare tire normally mounts.

Unfortunately, all he had was the tank and a very crusty sending unit. There was none of the attaching hardware included, so I'm now on a quest to try to track down the factory pieces to install this. If after a few months I fail to find the retaining straps and skidplate (assuming there IS one used), then I'll have to fabricate them myself. I'll also have to hit a local salvage yard and get a fuel filler door setup to graft into the side of my box. Hopefully I'll have the MIG welder mastered by that time.

Fig. 7 - I set the auxiliary tank on the F100's frame to get an idea of the modifications that would be necessary to mount this tank.

Fig. 8

Well, the project is coming along nicely. I'll be ordering another batch of POR-15 within the next couple days to get started on coating the bottom of the cab. Once this is done, I can go ahead and get the cab bolted down and get serious on the interior cab floors.

I've also got another pile of parts that will be headed to get powdercoated soon. These include the inner fenderwells and firewall mounting brackets, battery tray, styleside sport bumper brackets, and even a good radiator support. If you've been following the project, you'll remember that almost exactly one year ago did a few minor modifications to a '79 core support to accept my '67 grille and then had it powdercoated...because I was unable to find a rust-free '67-'72 radiator support. However, the '67 F250 I recently bought has a perfect piece, so it'll get powdercoated and used instead, and I'll probably E-bay the '79 support.

Stay tuned!