Drive train clean up

It's Time to clean up the drivetrain.

Every thing getting power washed, wire brushed, and taken apart.

 This is a 318 engine with a 4 speed manual NP435 Transmission and a NP203 full time 4 wheel drive Transfer case.
 For this truck we are thinking about adding a RV cam for the engine if it's in other wise good shape, replacing the NP435 with a NV4500 5 speed over drive Transmission and a rebuild kit for the NP203 Transfer case.

Pay Dirt at the Junk Yard, Oh and lots of other dirt and mud.

 After searching trough 4 Junk Yards we found a 1978 D150 with a good Bed and lots of extras.

 The W150 has a fixable bed, but the W200 would be very expensive to repair as it is mostly oxide.
 For $350 we got the bed, the rear frame, interior trim, plastic glove box liner, Cargo and interior lights, and an aux gas tank.

 We found these trim pieces on other trucks in the yard from the early 80s. They fit great!

The rear half of the frame is a real gold mine. Show here on top of the W150s frame. We are going to cut it up and sister rust rotten frame sections of both trucks. Some of the crossmembers and crossmember supports are direct bolt in replacements. 

 These end stops for the rear leaf springs were completely missing from the W200(rusted away). Score!!

 Repairing this dent is a lot cheaper then repairing all the rust on the W200 bed.

Man oh man do we have some rot on a few of our crossmembers, this is the best of the ones that need replacement.

On going Rust Repair

 As normal the air handler has holes rusted through where leafs collected.

 The outside patches are coming along just fine.

 The inside patches are taking a little more thought.

 I am fabricating a patch for the bottom of the air handler with a drain so moisture will not collect at the bottom.  

 The inner fender wells are hard to find and expensive, so time to get out the sand bag and hammer out some patches.

The cab is off the frame now time hammer out the dents and fix the half @$$ job the last guy did of replacing the floor pans.

Repaired the Rear Floor and Rocker Panles Cab Corners

As the roof was off the repair of the rear cab support and floor started.

The rear floor on both sides where the seatbelts mount need to be replaced with new sheet metal.

The passenger’s side also needed a replacement Cab support.

 These sections of floor were fabricated out of 16 gage sheet material.

 Here the replacement Seatbelt mount can be seen.

 Both the right and left Cab corners were cut out and replaced with cut down Rust Repair Panels. 

 If in doubt throw in another weld.

The W150 Roof

Ok I have not been neglecting the project, just the blog. In the colder months I worked on the W200 brakes rear and front Axles. In early spring I started on the W150 in earnest. 

We traded out the trucks and got the breaks and power steering working so we could move it around the yard. 

Juck Yard 1980 Donor Cab.

Parts for the W200.

 

  

 Then out came the seats carpet and dash. The roof on the W150 had a lot of rust damage from the drip edge into the windshield support.Rather than repair the brown roof a black donor cab was cut up and grafted onto the truck. The donor cab had many useful parts that will probably end up in the W200 as well.

The Headliner and the roof of the black cab were split apart by drilling out all of the spot welds. This was done more as a learning experience. While it was apart 

the clearance light holes in the roof were welded shut,

 the windshield support was repaired, 

conduit wire guide was run to the rear high break light and the rear view mirror,

 and modern thermal insulation was placed between the roof and the headliner.

The blue stuff in this photo is State Defender II Rust incapacitater. The inside of every body panel is painted with brown Rustoleum.











The front pillars had splints made out of scrap pillar install to reinforce the splice between brown and Black Cab.

The Brown cab’s Roof and Back was cut off and the Black cab’s Roof and Back was carefully installed. Needless to say with a lot of measuring and small adjustments made.