1960 Ford Truck.

Thank you for the nice words grizz.

A little progress on the truck, I went through the parts that have to be put back on and decided which needed to be powdercoated & which needed to be galvanised ( zinc).

So those could be dropped off at the shops that do that.

Next thing I have to do is repair the hood hinges.

They got too much play in them, which messes with the hood adjustment.

I have a plan ( typical overkill, I'm going to try to convert them to bronze bushings.
So that will be a project in itself... )

And for that, I got a blasting cabinet to clean them up( nothing special, I got it from a budget tool place.
But I might modify it a bit to make it better
Also, assembling the cabinet took way longer than I thought it would)


Hopefully the coated parts are done soon, so the doors, tailgate, front fenders and hood can go back on.

And after that, I'm bringing it home.


Besides that, I'm still working on the house ( I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel...)

Floortiles are done and I put in the baseboards in the last room today.

But I still have a lot of cleanup to do ( back porch looks like a building site, etc )


So hopefully a better update than this one on the truck soon

The hood hinges are 63 years old and had a lot of play in them.




They sell new repro hinges for all early Ford trucks, but because the '57/'60 are not as popular, not for those years.


Looking for a set of NOS ones is not realistic, they would have been snapped up years ago.

So repairing mine was the only option.

The hinge pins are basically a oversized rivet, so with a little grinding they came apart.






The hinges are just steel on steel, so the holes ovaling out was inevitable.

My plan was to make bronze bushings, but when I had them apart, that turned out to be not practical.

I stayed with the original steel on steel design, so I guess I'll just have to do them again, some 63 years from now...

But part of the wear was where the arms had rubbed against the brackets.

So I decided to use bronze thrust washers.

The best way to get a accurately drilled hole ( size & roundness) was with a stepdrill.

So I drilled everything to the next size over the ovaled out holes in the arms.

That was 9/16".











( no pics of the arms, but you get the idea... )

Then I took a piece of bar stock and made new pins for a nice tight fit ( but not so tight it would bind )












Hinges reassembled with the new pins welded in.














Now they need to be painted, and then they are ready to go back on the truck.

I'm still nostril deep in house and yard work.

So no real updates, except, I did pick up some parts from the powder coater.

We are outside of town, so there is all kinds of wildlife.

Coyote's ( they make a lot of noise at night, I assume when they are hunting), Rabbits ( I like seeing them in my yard, but of course my dogs wont leave them alone), Pigeons ( one has built her nest on my BBQ, and she stayed there while I was cleaning stuff of the back porch and moving stuff around, at times less than 3 Ft away from her )
Spiders (some very large, some venomous), Scorpions ( small, but they can sting ), and various types of Snake (those things freak me out, I've seen one slither up the stucco outside wall on its way to a pigeon nest).
And then there are Gila Monsters (a reptile that is about as venomous as a rattle snake), but those are rare.
I've only seen 1 once, in a friends yard...
Javelinas ( a kind of wild pig. don't see too many of those in our area, which is great because they are aggressive )


And birds.
Don't know what this is, a Hawk maybe?
Its wingspan was huge...

^^^
+1

Yeah, its usually warm and dry and its not too peopley.

But that comes with a different set of problems...


I'm not really a nature type person, but to me, the Arizona flora & fauna has some real beauty to it.

Except snakes...

don't like them...

The truck is home...

Looks horrible 😂
Call me weird but I’d love to see this with a set of vintage 3 bar wooden bed sides.
Wiring and interior in the next week?
James

You must be feeling pretty good so far.

Well done team.