1947 ford ranger...

This has to be my favourite phrase of the year so far. 

This is the last bit of welding I had to do on the cab before I can paint the bottom side and refit it to the chassis. It’s the recess for the removable trans tunnel on the firewall and toeboard area.

It doesn’t seem I’ve mentioned it and I can’t find any pics, but after I dropped the cab down onto the chassis by putting the prop tunnel in, I also had to raise up the top of the actual trans tunnel panel for it to work. To do this I split it in half horizontally and added a 4” strip all the way round so it was tall enough to cover the ranger gearbox. If you scroll back to where i finished up the firewall once the cab was removed, I’d already finished this recess on the back edge where it met the tunnel.

I could have just hacked the lot out and added a big conical tunnel like I would on most builds where cost is a consideration (I.e. a customer wants to spend a couple hundred on a new tunnel, not a couple of grand!) but as this is mine and cost of labour isn’t a consideration, I wanted to go all out and make it look to the uninitiated like it could be stock, hence reworking the stock panel and recess.

Adding 4” of height meant this panel now met the firewall 4’ further up too, above where I’d had to notch it out for the bellhousing area of the gearbox. and was longer so had to be extended forward. I’d done most of that previously but didn’t take any pics it seems. Mostly cos it was an awful job to do I guess.

This was the tunnel panel after extending, and the firewall/toeboard area cut back to where the two would now meet.


You can see the back end still has traces of black paint, that’s the original panel, all the front bit in front of where the old shifter hole is panelled in is new. The smaller hole on the right is for the handbrake.

Here at the front is where I will be working. You can see the bit that bolts down onto the floor has a slight flange to the edge which sits in a recess, which is what I’m trying to emulate.


First job is to determine the profile of the original recess, and make up a few straight lengths of it for the 3 long sides.
Here it is, I beadrolled the step then tweaked the angles a bit in the vice after as I didn’t have dies that were exactly right. Then I did the return on the edge in the brake.


I put the top section in first so I could then add some extra screws for the trans tunnel to hold it solid in relation to everything else.


That stiffened things up a lot, so then I did the slightly easier drivers side. Slightly easier as the floor was flatter, and it was a continuation of the existing recess so I had something to work to.


Then the slightly trickier passenger side. On this side I cut all the old swage out and straightened the line of it up, I’ll tweak the tunnel panel so the edge on that is straighter afterwards.


Then some grinding, on both sides.








This is with the removable panel fitted, and one of the only half decent pics of it. Lots of construction lines are still evident on the bottom side, which show how I split it to extend it.


It also shows the two tricky corners that are left to do.
I did the drivers corner first as again it was easier, but still rather difficult given as well as the actual shape of the recess and the return, the panel curved around between the firewall and the toeboard too. I didn’t actually take any in progress pics as I was too busy concentrating on the work, but I used a similar method of bead roller first, it then I hand tipped and hammer/dolly formed the flange after.
Mucho grinding back both sides and it looks like this.






The other side was even trickier, and I’ve had to reshape a big area of lower firewall to give me room to get the panels to curve rather than meet at sharp edges.

I fitted in this little corner piece first, which adds strength to the corner to allow me to work it all a lot more with the hammer, and also shows the corner on the firewall behind stick out too far, it’s already over the panel.


So I radiused that corner back a lot to allow me bring it back earlier. I then formed a new corner that I let in, which I then tipped the edge on so it reverse-curved to the recessed area. Again I'm scant on pics, but once welded up and roughly ground, it looks like this-




It needs revisiting before paint for a little more finish grinding, but I’m pretty happy with that so far, and it’s an awful job I didn’t want to do ticked off!

That came out really nice.

This build just keeps getting better...

Well with the brackets painted and fitted I decided to do the main brake line from front to rear. This is a bit of a monster, it requires nearly 15 feet of pipe.

I’m using kunifer, not worth using anything else to save literally pennies.

It wiggles around a lot so the installed length is about 12 feet. I used the old crusty steel one as a template.

It starts at this bracket that attaches to the front suspension crossmember and takes a body-to-chassis flexi hose. Well engineered!


It then hugs the chassis rail and steps up to meet the same clips as the fuel pipes where it goes under the cab.


It then mirrors the fuel pipes down as far back as the tank, using the same clips again.


Behind that it goes out on its own to the back of the tank-


Here it deviates from the norm as I'm relocating the brake flexi slighlty. I’ve run it back to the new extra crossmember I’ve put in then along the bottom of it to come at the flexi from the other side.


The reason I’m relocating the flexi is to stop any pull or collision of the ends if I end up bagging the truck. Obviously there will be a larger range of movement so I need to make sure the brake hose isn’t limiting it. It’s a minor change to make now but will hopefully save any issues in the future.
Instead of mounting on the other crossmember near the tank, it’s going to go here.
The axle end is as per stock, as is the hose.




You can see there I’ve actually already welded it on. I touched in the paint and left to dry to dry overnight before finishing the brake line.


Here it is done and the line finished off.


I added some extra clips and coppergreased all the screws and that’s about it. I didn’t bother putting the original clip holes back in after I repaired this area as all the origiinal plastic clips broke during removal, so I’ve just used stainless rubber lined p-clips and tek screws instead.


I then made the longer of the two axle lines, again rerouted slightly to try to accommodate future plans. Again more stainless crews and p-clips were used to attached to the original brackets.




I only made the longer one as I didn’t have enough kunifer left to do the short one. A new roll is ordered so I’ll finish that when it turns up.

Well Seeing as I can’t finish the brake pipes yet, and I’m waiting for parts for the other two cars I’m doing, I decided to move on to the next bit.
I decided that would be finishing off the little bits on the bed so it can go for blasting and paint.
First I trimmed out the cutouts in the return flange so they don’t catch on the bed supports as it’s slid on. That was just some grinderage and filing.

Then I decided I needed to do the bolt holes to mount the bed infill panel thingies that don’t really do anything.
Marked out for some holes-


Drilled em-


Then clamped them to the return lip, marked through the holes, unclamped them, drilled the return lip then bolted em up.


So that’s them fitted up.


Next I had to bolt up the rear valance too. This just drills and taps through into the rear bed frame drop panel, as it’s 3mm thick.
I marked out the holes on the valance so they were all evenly spaced and pilot drilled it.


Then It was clamped up and drilled through, then tapped to m6.


The holes in the valance were opened up to clearance then it was bolted up. I ran out of bolts though so need to get some more, ideally shorter.




So that’s that lot ready to blast and paint I think.

nasty case of "grinders cuff" there!

Did you clean back the surface rust before you welded that in or just put more heat through it?

Truck is coming along well.

It was cleaned back. It’s actually cleaner than the pics make it look, the camera highlights it. A lot of what appears to be surface rust is actually dried dust as well.

I’ve recently gone from cheapy screwfix work trousers to carhartt double fronted ones as they’re much less flammable!