Sunday, December 10, 2005  -  I spent a good portion of the day today getting started on repairs necessary to the box. However, before I get ahead of myself, I should get you up-to-date.

I saw an auction on E-bay back in mid-August for a '72 SWB truck. Here's a copy of the listing:

1972 Ford 1/2 ton Short Box Pickup with Cap

This is my neighbors truck and I'm listing it for him. It has a later Ford V-8 in it and a 3 speed floor shift. I believe it's a 302 motor. I just started it and drove it around and it starts and runs fine but probably could use a tune up. Shifter is OK and the clutch seems to work good. You need to give it a bit of gas when you first take off but maybe that's characteristic. I'm used to driving a 460 Ford and it just jumps when I take off!.

The body on this little truck is surprisingly rust free especially for a midwestern truck. The inner fenders where the hood attaches looks solid and hood opens and closes fine. The interior is nice and the bed is solid. It has an aluminum cap on it that has a little damage at the top and a few dings but still works good. Most everything that I see looks nice for a 33 year old truck.

I'm listing this as a parts truck simply because it has been sitting for a while. Even though I started it and drove it about 50 yards I'd want to check things out, tune it up and so forth before I hit the road with it. Or if you just need a nice cab, fenders, doors, interior and so forth this would be perfect. Take what you need and sell the rest. It does have a near new Interstate battery in it.

It should be considered as a parts vehicle only and you may want to trailer it home. Or I can haul it for you if needed - BUT we need to discuss this before the auction closes. I'm very busy hauling vehicles right now so don't assume anything until you talk with me. It may be OK to drive it a ways but I'd prefer to trailer it so I don't have any surprises along the way. I guess that's just the way I do it whenever I buy a car or truck. You can do whatever you are comfortable with.

PICTURES POSTED WITH THE AUCTION

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Since I'd been keeping my eyes and ears open for a decent box for my truck, because of the rust repair that was going to be necessary on my original '67 box, I went ahead and gave the guy a call. He lives about 4 hours away, so I figured it might be do-able. I started off by explaining up-front that I wasn't really looking for an entire truck but needed a good box. While he was on the phone he walked around the truck and described the box to me, even crawling up underneath. Besides surface rust, the only thing he said he could find on the box was a little bit up along the front panel on top. He then told me that he had a '68 that really needed a good cab and front sheetmetal, and if I was only interested in the box, we might be able to make a deal on splitting the cost of the truck. The owner would get what he wanted and so would each of us. I told him I'd think about it.

In the meantime, he posted the following update to his auction listing:

In response to MANY questions, I just crawled around under this truck to take a real close look. Remember this is not my truck. Anyway, the underside is really very nice. This a single beam front axle and it all looks good. I didn't see a bunch of oil or leaks or anything hanging down. Looks like whoever put the 302 in this did a nice job. Now to the cab. The cab has had some floor repair on each side where you would place your feet. Panels where cut and fit and put in and they appear to be galvanized sheet metal. Pretty solid repair but the old sheet metal is still underneath. Carpeted and the mats are in place. The rockers look fine but there is some repair needed at each front cab mount. They're solidly attached but there is some rust through and you may want to fix them. The cab does not droop or anything though as the supports are still doing the job. At the bottom of the driver side door there is a small amount of rust coming through on the outer skin (couple of inches in length) and there is a small spot of rust at the rear bottom edge of the door jamb. Both cab corners have a bit of rust in them and I'd probably rebuild or replace them if I were gonna restore this cab, but as a driver it won't hurt a thing. All of the bed mounts are nice and solid! Not bent. I didn't see any rust through on any of the cross supports either and they all appear straight. There is some rust through at the very bottom of the tailgate however but none on the rear of the box itself. It has a dual exhaust under it that looks good all the way back and it turns out behind the rear diff. Glass all looks good. All in all this is a nice little truck especially for being well over 30! If you expect a new truck then buy a new truck. If you want a nice little truck for parts or to fix up and have fun with, then this may well be what you need. Good luck with the bids and I hope this has answered most all of the questions so far. My neighbor has a local price on this and you are welcome to email for more info.

After giving it some thought, based on his description, I decided to go ahead and buy it. We talked again on the phone and we agreed that he'd end the auction early when he received a payment of $500 for the box and rolling chassis, and he'd meet the $850 reserve set by the owner. He'd then remove the front sheetmetal and cab for his truck, and would bring me everything else. I'd also pay him $100 for fuel reimbursement for him to haul it here to me. He told me it would take a couple weeks to get disassembled and delivered, and I said OK. We decided to shoot for Memorial Day weekend for delivery.

As Memorial Day weekend approached, we talked on the phone and he said he hadn't gotten a chance to get started yet, and it would be a couple more weeks. From that time on, I called him every 2-3 weeks to see how it was going, and kept getting told that it would be a couple more weeks. Anyway, to make a long story short, he finally called me on Nov. 5th, saying he was on his way. It was a good thing he called when he did, because we were set to leave on a 2-week vacation that evening. He rolled into town about mid-afternoon and we unloaded the truck at the shop. However, to be honest, I was a little disappointed by what I saw, but I was due to leave on vacation in a few hours and didn't even really have time to give it a good going-over. When I returned two weeks later I shot the following pictures:

At first glance it doesn't appear too bad. However, once you start looking at it more closely, it's not in the best shape. As you can see, Figs. 5 and 6 show the rusty areas on the front end panel that he mentioned on the phone. I wasn't too worried about these areas, as I could easily cut these out and weld in patch panels, and since it was in a hidden area behind the cab, they'd be virtually invisible. However, rust had gotten into the body seam on both sides, and upon closer scrutiny (Fig. 7) I could see thick body filler on the right side along the seam, and could only imagine how bad it was. The left side end-cap was banged up and virtually non-repairable. And finally, the front bed-floor support was completely rusted out, both on the bottom and the sides (Fig. 9). At first glance the bed floor itself appeared to be in good shape, as well as the remainder of the underbed floor support channels.

So at this point I started contemplating what I was going to do. I have the original '67 box which has some major rust damage underneath, and now a '72 box which appeared to be good underneath (aside from one floor support) but had pretty good damage on the side and end panels. So what to do? I've spent the past several weeks going over this in my mind, trying to figure out what to do. Should I just sell the rolling chassis and try to recoup my investment and keep my eyes open for another box? Should I just try to repair one or the other, or use one as a patch-panel donor to fix the other?

Well, today I finally decided that since the purchase of this '72 pretty much depleted my truck funds account and I was getting antsy about getting more done on this project, I'd just bite the bullet and completely disassemble both boxes and then reassemble it using the best pieces from both beds. It was going to be a LOT of work, but as you can probably tell by now, I'm not afraid of diving in and getting my hands dirty, as long as I can see regular progress. The '72 bed will supply the floorpan and supports, while the '67 bed will give up it's side and front panels, as well as the end posts and wheelwells.
 

So I rolled the '72 chassis into the shop and to get started with the disassembly. Since every individual panel is spot-welded together, I would need to invest in a spot-weld drill bit and so I hit both local auto parts stores searching for one. The first place I went to had a guy at the counter who hadn't even heard of such a thing before. He did some poking around in his catalogs and didn't see anything listed. I hit the second store and found that they did have one, but a cheapie version ($9) (Fig. 10). I'd never seen one like it before, and I had my doubts whether it would work, but decided to pick it up and give it a try. Unfortunately, the cutting points on this bit wore out before I'd even completed drilling out the first spot-weld.
 

Fig. 10
 

Fig. 11 - After hitting the Bondo'd area on the right side with a wire wheel, I could see that a previous owner had tried to repair the ridge by drilling holes to pull out a dent, and then just slathered 1/4" of filler in there.

Fig. 12 - The bed evidentially had a rollbar installed at some point. The previous owner decided to fix this by drilling four NEW holes to attach aluminum covers, and used a half-tube of silicon to seal it up. In addition, the tops of both side panels each had a large collection of holes that would have needed welded up.

So I decided to just dig out the air chisel and see how that would work. I decided that the '72 box would supply the floorpan and supports, and I'd have to remove one support from the '67 bed to replace the rusted piece shown above in Fig. 9. Therefore, everything above the bed floor was fair game to practice with the air chisel. While it was slow going, it was working, although it was difficult to keep the chisel from occasionally cutting through something it wasn't supposed to. I started off by removing the left-side end cap (Fig. 13). I can see now that this is something that would have been impossible to do by drilling out the spot welds, due to their being completely inaccessible with a drill. I'm not sure how it could have been done by the factory! Then, because the lower side panels were dented up and rusted-out along the seam, I just used the air chisel to break what little bit of spot-weld remained to hold them on. (This really wasn't necessary for what I had planned, but I just wanted to get an idea of what it would take to remove one.) The front lip of the lower panel is also spot-welded along the front of the bed and would have required drilling out those welds, but since I was discarding all this anyway, I just dug out the angle grinder with a cut-off wheel in it and cut the panel off.

I then got started removing the main box sides. I discovered that a BFH (big freakin' hammer) made short work of removing the sides and wheelwells from the bed floor (Fig. 15) and saved me a lot of time. There were still a few stubborn spot-welds which required either the cut-off tool or the air chisel, however, but this actually went pretty fast.

In Fig. 16 you can see the bed side and wheelwell almost completely taken off. It was still connected at the front of the box in this photo, but it wasn't necessary to remove it further, since I was also planning on removing the front panel from the floorpan section. Once this photo was taken, I got started on the right side and removed it in the same way. The front floorpan support (on the bottom of the bed - Fig. 9 above) has a lip which wraps up around the bottom of the bed's front panel, so I did have to fire up the air chisel again to cut those spot welds.

Fig. 17 shows the finished product...the floorpan section after the front and side panels were removed. This whole process took me a good 4 hours or so. You can also see that I kept the four side-panel lower supports (hanging down on each corner), by just using the cut-off tool and cutting away a small section of the lower fender. I'll clean these up and reuse them as well...although I might just leave the small pieces of metal on the ends of the supports and weld them onto the new lower panels as-is, for extra support.

I then got out the grinder and cleaned up the edges all the way around the floorpan's perimeter (Fig. 18), and used a block of wood and a hammer to straighten out all the lips, where the new side-panels would need to be welded.

In Fig. 19 you can see the lip for the front floorpan support is bent up. As mentioned above, it wraps up around the front of the bed and is spot-welded to the bed's front panel. Once I get some good spot-weld drill bits, I'll flip the floorpan section over and drill out the welds holding the rusty front support to the floorpan and replace it with a good one from my '67 box.

I then got started with some of the disassembly of my '67 box. In the last picture (Fig. 20) you can see that the floorpan area has been cut from top to bottom with the air chisel. leaving about 1/4" of metal on it which will be cleaned off later. However, I figured it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I've gotten about as far on this box as I can until I get some good spot-weld drill bits for further disassembly.

I believe I can just drill out the spot-welds holding the front floorpan support to the floorpan...and by leaving the front support attached to the side panels at both ends, I should be able to just hook it up under the front of the '72's floorpans, set the rest down on top of the floorpans and weld it back up. I guess we'll see when I make it to that point.

Fig. 13 - I started out by removing the end cap.

Fig. 14 - Here's a shot after removing the lower side panel.

Fig. 15 - I loved getting Neanderthal with the BFH!

Fig. 16 - A view of the box sides almost completely removed.

Fig. 17 - ...and here's the finished product.

Fig. 18 - In this close-up you can see the broken spot welds that I would have to grind down.

Fig. 19 - A view from the front.

Fig. 20 - Here's a shot of my original '67 bed, with most of the necessary cuts made to remove the floorpan section.

So this is basically where I'm at right now. Although I'll actually have both days next weekend to spend in the shop working on this, I doubt I'll be able to get any more done on it, since I'm going to have to special-order the spot-weld drill bits, and I doubt I'd get them in time. However, I AM going to try. If it doesn't happen, I'm sure I'll find something else to do to keep me busy in there. I mean, I have to take advantage of the opportunity! How often does a married guy with three kids actually get a whole weekend to himself to play in the shop? Stay tuned!