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rglowacki

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About rglowacki

  • Birthday 02/05/1979

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    United States
  • Interests
    History, mechanics, preservation, outdoors, tractors, trucks, carpentry/building, farm history/family history
  • My Project Cars
    1949 Dodge B1B (my great-grandfathers)
    1953 Ford Customline Sedan
    1925 Ford Model TT Stake truck
    1929 McCormick 10-20 tractor

Contact Methods

  • Biography
    Live on a farm in Illinois about 60 miles west of Chicago
  • Occupation
    Higher Education

Converted

  • Location
    Illinois
  • Interests
    Old Trucks, Cars, Tractors
  1. My great-grandpa worked on cars in the 20's and 30's, and 40's. The ravines at the farm were filled with cars from the teens, 20's and 30's. He would always take good parts off the cars people would give him before tossing them in. I bet he customized a toolbox when he bought this truck...
  2. Sorry this took so long to get. Here's a picture of the tool box that has always been in the back of the truck
  3. Just curious if any of you guys have run across Dodge "themed" tool boxes. There was one of equivalent age in the back of my 1949 B1B, tried looking it up online or on Ebay to see if they were given out with the trucks, but could find no information. Mine has 2 Dodge emblems on either side of the top, and an emblem of a sailing ship in the middle. It is definitely old. The bottom has rotted out and been replaced I think. I'll post a picture when I get home but just curious if anyone else had one that came with their truck in the 40's/50's. Heck, maybe it's older (my great grandpa worked on cars in the 20's-30's) and it just got added to the truck later...
  4. Ggdad, I remember you saying somewhere how similar these stories are. Your truck looks somewhat better cared for than mine, or at least less rust. It turned out beautiful. I think the last picture in your gallery for that truck is the most important.
  5. What I would love to have been able to do is find a way to keep my old headliner. Take it off and either reapply it to a new backing (that wouldn't sag) or something like that. But after the sag, mice found their way up in the pocket and chewed some holes and made some pretty nasty stains/smells that I'll want to get rid of. What would be awesome is to find an old headliner that someone is discarding from a dusty dodge and put it in mine. You are right, what I don't want is something shiny new in my old truck....it will stick out and look weird. 54illinois, of course I have heard the Plano Bologna Sandwich joke! My granny told me that one as a kid! I'll take some photos and post for you guys to see. I appreciate all the help everyone is offering up. Reg, I'll send you an e-mail for those plans. I think since my seat will need reupholstered, I may be able to get close with a brown faux leather vinyl for the seat and match it for a covering for the headliner if need be.
  6. I've got E-85 sitting in the tank right now. I'll see how well it works on what's inside and let you know. I'm considering either renu or a new tank. That's funny our trucks have had very similar lives the last 40 years. I hope you and your kids get it running soon. Mine may take a while as I'm on my own. Work always goes slower that way. At least I got the whole thing cleaned last weekend.
  7. That's the old "hose-er-down-right-before-the-pictures" effect. It definitely has a better look when the rust is dark. I'll probably treat the rust spots like I did the rust on my McCormick 10-20 as it worked great. Water beads off that tractor now. The black paint has enough shine to come back with some wax. I'm just glad it is clean, especially on the inside. So here is a question: my interior panels are in pretty good shape except for the "headliner". I know there are are some expensive kits out there to replace everything. Are there any piecemeal kits? Is there somewhere where I could just buy a new headliner panel? Mice got up there and built a nest which caused damage to the point of needing replaced.
  8. Well I didn't get as much done as I had hoped this weekend. I hate getting hung up on things. New plug wires arrived so I was gonna try to install them but ended up deciding to clean the thing first, especially the bed and the cab. The bed had a hodge-podge of stuff: fishing poles and a tackle box, tool boxes (Do any of you have a Dodge tool box??? There was one in the back of this truck!), Model T headlights, Dodge Brothers drum headlamps, road flares and flags (grandpa was county road commissioner for a while), and tons of odds and ends tools. The cab had: a mouse nest and an inch of mouse poop in the glovebox, 2 inches of mouse/rat poop under the seat, and behind the seat were rubber dipped gloves, every type of portable jack you can imagine, a pack of Salem cigs, a meal ticket for the "Brite Spot" drive in...someone ordered a triple thick shake. God that sounds good. Anyways, cleaned it all out with the shop vac, then took a wire brush to the mouse turds to free them up, vacuumed again, then Mr. Clean and water with a scrub brush, then hosed out, then blown dry with my air compressor and there went the day. Here are some pictures of it with all the dirt off.
  9. I'm just glad there is a forum for these trucks. When I first started looking a month or so ago, I didn't think I would find one. I have a recently purchased Model TT truck, and the Model T forum is understandably extremely active, considering there were 15 million of them made, but this was an unexpected find for a truck that means waaaaay more to me than the Model T. I'm a younger guy with little knowledge of these trucks so you guys who have literally torn them down piece by piece, and put them back together and run them over the years are invaluable to guys like me.
  10. I'll definitely replace the brake lines. I know one of the reasons the truck was parked was because the brakes went out.
  11. I'm glad you guys appreciate the truck so much, and I'll be sure to keep the forum up-to-date on my progress in getting it back on the road. Your remarks really are encouraging as so many people I know have absolutely no interest in these things, or the preservation of them. I do a lot of the work on my place alone, so I have been using the forum heavily to get info for what I'm doing. My number one supporter for this truck, and my old car too, was my dad and he checked out a little early a year ago so I'm doing a lot of this on my own. I've got tomorrow off of work, and the weather is going to be nice so I plan on working on the fuel system again, draining the E85 out of the tank (its been in there for a few days eating at the varnish) and blowing out the lines. I also want to give it a wash and see if I cant get that wax off the side of the truck bed where some overly eager kid tried to wax the whole truck (including the rust) about 25 years ago. I'd kick him but I can't reach my own rear end with my foot.
  12. This truck is an easy one when it comes to the question about body work/painting. Lets just say the look I'm gonna aim for is "Old Farm Truck", in which case, we've got her there! My entire place shows its age, so a restored truck would look out of place. I'd like to get the motor running strong, all the lights working...Brakes would be nice, and possibly some minor interior work, like a new seat and headliner. The interior is a bit mousey....lets say. If I wanted to make this truck straight, no rust, no dents, I would end up replacing a lot of the sheet metal, and would be left with someone else's truck, not my family's farm's truck. We just have to get it to run now. And this truck has way less rust than my tractor! I had to search forever to find one of these running that hadn't been restored to the battleship grey with red wheels (which looks awesome...just not what I wanted). I found this tractor that was all surface rust, gave it a scrubbing and treated it with a linseed oil/mineral spirits coating and it came out looking awesome. From afar it looks like it's made out of chocolate. Rust can be beautiful.
  13. I thought I would post some pictures of my great grandpa's Dodge truck since I pulled it out of the barn. This thing has only been out in the daylight 3 times since it was parked in 1971, the year my grandpa died. Once was when I was a 10 year old kid...I asked my grandma's brother to get his Farmall over to the "Dodge shed" and pull it out so I could wash it. My uncle said "Hey you know there are stakes for the bed of that truck somewhere around here....I'll see if I can find them.." He dug around for a while and came back with all the wood. The farm in the 50's had a sawmill up and running, hence the "fire wood, slab wood, rustic slabs", and also had hundreds of goats too, hence the "Get your goat at Timber Edge Farm". The second time this truck got pulled out was about 10 years ago. The Dodge shed was right next to a massively tall sycamore tree. An impressive tree well over 100 feet high. In a pretty bad storm the top 25 feet of that tree broke off, flew over the dodge shed, and embedded itself like a 12inch diameter spike in the ground on the opposite side of the dodge shed....meaning that thing, in any less wind, would have smashed the truck to pieces. So I cleared a new space for it in the barn, chained it up, and dragged it out of its shed. 2 weeks ago, I finally got the engine unsiezed using the "jack-up-the-rear-tire" method. I didn't have a breaker bar or a lot of room to work, so I read about this method and it worked. Poured WD-40 and liquid wrench into the cylinders and let them soak over the winter (I've got no timeline with this truck), then this spring I jacked up 1 rear tire, put the truck in high gear, and turned it as far as I could to one side. When it stuck, I jerked the tire a few times, then sprayed in liquid wrench and left it a few days. Came back, turned the wheel as far as I could the other way and did the same thing, figuring I was creating some pressure cracks in the rust that the oil could get into. Came back a few days later and could turn the wheel all the way around. This weekend I got it out, changed the oil and hooked to my neighbors tractor, and we pulled it in third gear down the lane and back at my place with the plugs out and a capful of oil in the chambers. The truck went about a mile. When we got back, we put a battery on and it turns over easily with battery power. I also drained the gas tank and added 2.5 gallons of E85 to soak in the tank to work on the varnish and will drain that out before I move the truck again. Anyways, I thought you would enjoy some pictures. The Dodge also got to formally meet "Mr.T." when he drove by. Mr. T.'s flatbed comes in handy as a mobile work station. We were headed down to check on my beehives in the woods. Interesting how modern the dodge looks next to a Ton Truck from 25 years prior.
  14. I don't get all the "You should paint your truck now!" and "This is no longer a patina" comments..... We are here to support each other in this hobby. We all have somewhat rare machines here and if a guy wants to enjoy the look of his truck without a standard paint job, let him. Debating what is considered "patina" is so subjective we might as well be debating favorite songs or art or something. Its all subjective. As many guys that there are that like to see an absolutely perfect "fresh-out-of-the-factory-like-it's-1949" restoration, there are just as many guys that are bored looking at them that way, and want to see what age has done to a truck. Pflaming....you are going for something different here. You will figure it out. I think once your truck has some glass back in it and matching wheels it will start coming together for the rest of us. But I can tell you've got a vision for it, stick with it and keep your truck unique. I personally like the look of the drivers side, top of the cab, and the hood of your truck. That kind of baked-in silvery bronze look is cool! Is there any way you can set a fire to do the same thing to the passenger side?!?! Kidding! Kidding!
  15. Dude, all you are doing is what so many guys did when they first got their truck....they customized it! Put their name on the side, name of the business, etc. Absolutely appropriate. And when you consider that otherwise everything you have would just be a pile of spare pieces, you are absolutely doing the right thing, and doing great work too! Love the look you are achieving so far.
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