Setting the engine in the truck

Well the headers from Red's Headers showed up.  Man they are gorgeous.  Well, judge for yourself:

So we bolted them up to an old Y-Block that I had laying around.  It has an automatic transmission that I will not be using...do you need it??

 Off with the old cast iron exhaust manifold...

 On with the new Headers from Red's headers....something shiny on the truck, oooohh aaaahhhh!!

 Pretty!

Nice, with just a couple of simple bends we can get the exhaust done.  Anyway it is just sitting there right now, I have ordered the rubber engine mounts and then we will build the engine mounts for it.

Doug over at D&D autobody had a roof off of a 62 pickup, so I snagged it, and we will make it fit.  It will look a lot better.  That's all for now.  It is getting exciting!

This is how she looked when I first found her in my friend Riff's yard in Pahrump Nevada.  When I showed interest in her, and told Riff that I would use it as a project for my welding students, he gave me the truck!  What a guy!!  It didn't have a hood on it, so he rooted around until he found a hood.  Riff's business is 50's through 70's trucks and parts.  This truck is virtually rust free and the body is extremely straight, but we need to finish the chop top and tilt nose, then scavenge for all of the rest of the parts to make it run.  Probably from Riff!  If you need truck parts, call Riff at 775-751-3751

Someone has scabbed together a McPherson strut front suspension that was not that great, but the wheels were located correctly fore and aft. We measured from the body mounts (under the cab) forward to the center of the spindle, and cut the the front clip accordingly. The truck frame was way narrower than the van, so we had to leave it long and cut it at an angle. Also the truck frame kicked up at the firewall, so we had to cut a long skinny triangle out of the side of the frame rail near the top in order to make it match the van clip. After tacking the Astro van suspension onto the truck frame, the boys then made some doubler plates/fish plates to beef up the splice. Many thanks to Bob Pease for the Astro van clip. I will get the wheels to you ASAP, Bob I promise!!

The springs on the Astro van are way too stiff, so it may require airbags on the front. Oh darn. Then we can put it down into the weeds if we want. We have pretty much decided on a Y-block engine with an old cast iron T-10 four speed that was under my pile of treasures. I do need a shifter for it if someone has one, let me know! Also I saw Red's Headers has some cool looking headers for 225 bucks that go outside the frame rails on a truck. They would be perfect for this one.

This is a shot underneath to show how the van clip is attached to the body mounts.











This shows the doublers that go from the truck frame rail to the astro van clip. We wanted to make sure that it is plenty strong, nothing would be more embarrassing than the welding class truck project, snap in half the first time it encounters the evil speed bump.









So here it is with the front tilt nose sheet metal set back onto the new frame. We have to design the hinges to make this part work, but it is coming together. I need to research an airbag rear end now too...

Dixie High Welding-Chop Top Shop Truck

Hey welcome to one and all! We are Dixie High School Welding in Saint George Utah.
We wanted to show off some of our welding projects, and so we created this blog.




The big project is the Chop Top 62 Ford unibody truck. This truck had been scavenged for all of the parts that were valuable leaving an empty hulk. Someone had previously started a chop on the top and a tilt nose. We are in the process of grafting a chevy astro van front suspension clip onto the ford frame. Check back often as updates will follow. And thanks for checking it out.







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