PilotHouse2500

Weekend progress. Hoping this coming week and weekend it will actually be tilting. BTW first picture of my early orbit day present. I will tell you this, if you buy a cheap helmet you will fight welds. This new helmet is like seeing for the first time (I'd imagine). I can see the area prior to welding, during welding and the puddle is so obvious (now). Hard to believe I made good welds on my old el cheapo helmet after using this. It's like welding suddenly got WAY easier!

meanwhile on my resto....

progress from this weekend.

Thanks guys! Means a lot. Look for some (hopefully this weekend) updates on the front clip.

and ready to build the support frame....wish me luck Everything lines up REALLY well (at this point HAHA)

and fender #2

One fender rebuilt. Just need to mark and drill holes and make bolts to mimic the rivets. On to the next one.

Been fighting my tractor rebuild project and not winning so I decided to take a day and get a win. Donor clip and TODD clip after sections welded back in from where the PO had chopped out chunks.

Well summer has gone with a blink of an eye, but I got a pile of woodworking done to pay for some of the bits on this project. So, next step will be to bag the truck. With an eye towards this, has anyone bagged a frame? So, I need to new location for a new shock mount. I'm liking location #1 as it is easiest and doesn't mess with the sway bar mounts. Thoughts?

hmmm, that concerns me....they guy who checked it over insisted that I'd need to have input from the trans into the TC to shift (might it be specific to models?). Guess I REALLY Need to get this go-karting prior to body being installed to find out!

hmmm lack of replies...from what I gather the truck needs the input to be turning to get it to shift. Messing with the outputs won't do anything. Maybe I'm just speaking to the wind.

so a question: I've been trying to figure out the TC, just so I know where to lock down the handle, I've poked at trying to get it to shift. I can spin the front output no problem, and this weekend before I dropped the cab back on I put the driveshaft in and spun that. That spun the front output as well, so it looks like it's in either 4L or 4H, but I can't get it to shift to a different setting. I really don't want to force it, and the place that went over the TC (and put the higher spline count gear in) said it was in great shape. I tried to shift while rotating the driveshaft and tried both directions and tried with it all static. No joy. What am I missing?

Firewall, dash and fuel hole delete completed.

Today's progress. Needless to say the cab PO mucked up the dash bad cutting in 2 holes, a huge notch for a SW, and the speaker area cut apart. Nothing a little filler and building primer won't fix.

I assume you meant the last picture? That was whet was embedded in my eye lid, small piece of metal from grinding (on a Q-tip w/ tape holding it one). Hurt like hell.

well the weekend is over (at least I think it's Monday), floor and firewall work is done, now on to filling in the missing bits of dash and the random holes that are there, clean up my fill panel by the drip rail, and finish the cowl/firewall plug welds and the cab will be done until I tackle the doors and get a steering wheel and seat set up figured. I little bit of filler and sanding on the lap joint interfaces and butt weld areas when it's paint time and things will be nice and pretty. Meanwhile, AFTER being done on Saturday, AFTER I cleaned up, I took off my PPE and THEN got this little bugger in my eye and ended up in urgent care to get it removed.

took my "free" day and did some grinding on the welds thus far. I will have to redo one whole line of welds on the trans tunnel as I ground thru them since I didn't prep the seem properly.

My neighbor offered me the use of his rotisserie....gonna make finishing the welds SO much easier! Fun week ahead!

Brackets made to hook chains onto to be able to lift the cab off with the engine hoist.

Well, for better or worse, TODD has a full floor. Some spots just downright gave me fits so I ended up chasing welds. Knowing I'm going to grind a radius on the outside of the frame notch, I bridged the hundreds of spot welds to give myself some meat to dig into. I really was trying to watch distortion on the cab back. I used the old cab floor corners (body panel glued to the outer skin) and made fill in panels. Some selected grinding left, but I'll wait on that a bit so I give the rust monsters less to work with.

Work for the day.

have you seen the milk prices? My brother runs the small family dairy farm my grandfather started...he's seen his value drop 35% due to this. Working on razor thin margins before...he's now losing money for each gallon produced. Milk is being dumped across the country and dairies are being told to cull cows....yet auctions for animals are being closed due to the virus...what do you do? Farming is all he's done his whole life and at 60 he has no 401k to fall back on.... The globalist and socialists are loving this panic and fear based suspension of our civil rights.

IMO, we've gotten to the point where the cure is now worse than the disease. Here in MN, the last few years kids have started to get days off for it being "too cold for the kids"...maybe dress the properly...this reaction will now be the norm for anything in the future.

well, with the virus causing potential financial issues to all in the country, my plans for this spring and summer are now on hold: 1. rebuild the engine 2. buy the rad and rad box made 3. get the frame bagged 4. get the frame stripped and repainted 5. seats 6. steering wheel I'm now back to basics that I can afford without dropping thousands: 1. finish the cab welding 2. front clip repair 3. design and build the front clip frame and hinge for tip up clip 4 doors? Just hoping to to hold onto my job after all of this (like 95% of the rest of the country).

Late to the party here. But what do you want to know after thinking about it for a while? I actually work at the Cummins Power Gen plant in Fridley MN supporting the 10-250kW diesel and spark gen sets from an engineering standpoint. I'd be glad to offer as much knowledge as I can.