JBNeal

The top half of the air filter is the part pictured; it has the cellulose filter element and drops into the bowl with the oil. There are several modifications on this site that show how to remove the cellulose & replace it with a disposable paper element. A variation on this modification that I'm kinda wonderin' about is using a K&N filtercharger in lieu of a paper element. It'll give ya the cleanliness of a paper element & the reusability of the cellulose element. I still have to do some more research on that one.

I was told waaay back to take an emery board & clean the contacts in the regulator. When I checked my contacts, they were dirty and looked to have been sticking as evidence of some charring. After cleaning the contacts, I could clearly hear the contacts opening & closing at idle & when coasting to a stop. Simultaneously, the amp gauge showed when the generator was sending current to the battery. My guess is that your contacts are sticking instead of vibrating while driving. btw There is an entire section in the shop manual on checking & adjusting the circuit breaker and voltage & current regulators. I made a small adjustment on the current regulator after cleaning the contacts, and it seemed like the battery was able to keep a consistent voltage and I didn't need to top off the cells every month or so.

I put a sheet of pressure treated plywood in both of my trucks until I get around to fixing up the bed. It was quick & easy and can take a beating.

Diesel is a decent alternative...I think they specified kerosene because it was commonly used as heating oil back in the day. Parts cleaner will strip the paint off if ya soak it in a parts washer.

Come to think of it, has anyone put some sort of padding behind the interior to act as a head cushion? The '94 Rams were the first to have a bench seat with some sort of head restraint to help reduce the chance of whiplash in a rear end collision. Since the Pilot House cabs are of tighter quarters, the area between the middle & corner windows is practically in the location of a head restraint. But if an inattentive driver was to smack me from behind, I don't reckon that cab sheet metal is gonna feel too good. When I get to that part of my resto, I'm gonna try to stick some foam rubber or an old throw pillow up in there. I've been mullin' about the location of the shoulder harness anchor. I'm thinkin' that in the event of a crash, the door frame would help to reinforce that area. The anchor area may move around as energy is being dissipated during a crash, but the effectiveness of the shoulder harness would acceptable. I ain't seen a crash test done on this era of truck, but my guess is that any type of body restraint is an improvement over the old thinking that 'bailing out' is the way to avoid injury.

that's gotta be some trick photography or you're David Blaine or sumthin' ruther...removing mine requires the use of four-letter magic words

how'bout a thread with a link to YouTube...that oughta keep bandwidth usage down on this site

here?

Congratulations! I didn't have to trailer the '49 that much, but I understand the aggravation you've gone through. With title in hand, the world seems like a nicer place, don't it?

WOW that had a lot of paint on it...then again, maybe the extra paint was enough weight for some added traction. The '49 tailgate is banged up & warped purty bad, but the 'repairs' that were done used angle iron & gorilla welds. As much work as it will take to get that back into shape, I'm tossin' back & forth on the idea of getting one of those Mar-K tail gates and scabbing on the script...but that's on down the road aways, I gotta fix the steering box first. The '48 is a different story...it'll just need a few dents knocked out and straightened. But I'm gonna do the bushing installation on both of them.

I had bookmarked Juliano's website but hadn't studied it that much...that how-to section filled in the gaps of what I was missing. I had been on the fence on whether to bother with seat belts, but this additional information makes me want to make this upgrade happen. The chrome latch reminds me of the lap belts that were in my friend's Dodge 440.

I have not tried to install the bushings yet for that modification, so I don't know how tight a fit they are in the tailgate. I was thinking that if the bushings were a loose fit, that the tailgate pivot should be flattened a little bit so the bushing has to be driven into place. This way the tailgate clamps down on the bushing to keep it from rattlin' off the shaft. (rattlin' off the shaft...sounds like the name of a Lynyrd Skynard album)

Were there any structural requirements that accompanied those seat belts? One of the problems my '49 had was that the cab floor had split apart at the rear mounts, about the same location as the seat belt retractors you've shown. As I recall, the cab has a sub-frame of sorts that stops just shy of those rear mounts, which is where the sheet metal had torn. I fabricated some plates of slightly thicker sheet metal to scab onto this area, which squared the cab up with the frame, and allowed the doors to open & close without scraping the door jambs. My concern with seat belts in the Pilot House cabs is that the seat belts are anchored to sheet metal rather than structure, so that if the unthinkable happens, the seat belt anchors will pull through the sheet metal and have no safety effect. I have wondered that a subframe would be easy enough to fabricate between the rear cab mounts for lap belts, but the shoulder belt anchor would be a challenge as the only structure in the are is the door jambs. I have been planning on looking into this further when I get around to that stage of fixin' up the '48. I had also thought about the 3-point harness installation similar to what the Dodge Quad Cabs came out with back in '98, where the seat belts were built into the seats. Of course the bench seats in the Pilot House cab don't have the head restraint as the Quad Cab seats did, so some sort of pillar would have to be fabricated to locate the shoulder anchor in an adequate location. This would probably look odd, and definitely be a skull-bopper if it weren't padded properly. Anyhow, it's a thinker I'm gonna stew on for awhile...

I went to a local auto parts/hardware store and found everything I needed. They had the 2/0 cable, sold by the foot; solder battery lugs & terminals; and lead-core solder. I had some leftover shrink tubing, and put all those parts together to make a fine set of battery cables that were sealed up on both ends. Those new cables fixed my hard-starting problem and look just like the originals, but with the soldered ends covered with shrink tube, they are much less likely to corrode.

Patience & perserverance...although using the formed 4x4 would best be used with the 10# sledge, but not like driving in a railroad spike. I've used the 10# Persuader to "tap" stuff loose by having the head about a foot above the striking surface. The head will deliver the blow through the entire 4x4 as long as it is squared up. I try to have the end of the handle balanced on my hip with one hand and my other hand directing the force. This way, the head is being dropped rather than driven. This also has the benefit of applying a consistent jarring force rather than intermittent power spikes. As I understand it, penetrating oil works best when there are vibrations present between the metals. A low level but strong frequency (dropping 10# hammer) would generate a steady vibration as opposed to a high level but low frequency (striking 3# hammer) that would generate an intermittent vibration.

That looks good...with a door panel behind it, that arm rest will look like it fits right in.

It takes a "starter wrench" as my dad called it...it's like a box-end wrench, except it's kinda horseshoe shaped. If ya have some stubby box end wrenches, that'd work too, but you'll need to improvise a cheater bar to get that bolt started. I recall having to place a small anvil on the brake pedal to keep it depressed and out of the way. It doesn't open up a lot of real estate, but every li'l bit helps. Both the '48 & the '49 I revived had some like-minded individuals work on them in their past lives, cuz that particular bolt had a slot cut in it with a band saw so that a lonnng handled screwdriver could be used to withdraw or run-up that bolt, then use the correct wrench for final torque. Be prepared to use a lot of colorful metaphors while working that li'l bolt in & out, cuz as you know by now there ain't no room for a socket and very little room to manuever back in there. Grandpa joked that Dodge did that to discourage starter thievery.

I read somewhar that final torque should be applied to a warm engine. I've also heard that some guys will put more material on the spark plug threads by wrapping them with a layer or two of aluminum foil.

When I first started working on my '48 after it sat by the barn for 20 yrs, I filled the cylinders with diesel and let it sit for a week or so. By then, the diesel had seeped past the rings and into the oil pan. I repeated this a couple more times, and by the end of the month the motor would turn over, but with some difficulty. After pullling the head off, I found that there was some surface rust on the cylinder walls. So I took the motor apart, sanded the surface rust off by hand, and cleaned the engine innards thoroughly before putting it all back together with new rings & bearings. New battery cables on the starter & battery were put on, and that motor spun fairly quick with the 6V battery. Even with the engine compartment left intact when the truck was first parked, moisture still got into the cylinders past the valves that were open. Humid days over several decades caused enough oxidation to make the clearances inside the motor super tight, so getting the engine back within clearances made things go better.

If that truck is all original, it is a 6V positive ground electrical system. Using a 12V battery means that the charging circuit should be disconnected before the innards are fried. Pull the plugs out of the head and pour some diesel or thin oil in the cylinders to provide some lubrication. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but ya might want to disassemble the motor to get an inventory of what has been done & what needs to be done. Since you've got the front clip off already, going through the motor & adjacent parts would be advantageous to getting the truck up & running reliably. Cleaning out the sludge & varmint poo & spider webs would be another reason to disassemble everything so that the engine runs smoothly in the future. And take plenty of pictures, before & after. Ya never know when the noggin might slip and ya cain't recall why you have a coffee can of 'leftover' parts.

The shop manual refers to getting the door straightened out with a strategically placed block of wood and manual force...I straightened the doors on the '49 by lowerin' my shoulder and tee'n off, with a toobafor placed strategically between the door & cab...my shoulder was sore for a few days, but those doors are nice & true now.

The pan can be removed; I recommend jacking up the frame & pulling off the front wheels so the front axle will drop to give ya more room to work. You can pull the pan out otherwise, but it requires a great deal of jockeyin', finaglin' & cussin' to get it removed. The '49 had enough sludge in it to form a softball-sized glob, so cleaning out the pan (and the valve spring area) is worth the effort.

whut did ya do on the battery cover area? does that have a separate piece?

When in doubt, pull it out...the dist.tube is fed directly from the water pump, so inspection requires removing the pump. Removing the freeze plugs is a good idea because they can corrode from the inside out and form pin holes. Removing the freeze plugs in the '49 revealed total blockage on the bottom row of plugs with sediment that creeped up to the upper row. With the head & pump off and the plugs removed, I jammed a water hose in the dist.tube and poked at the sludge with a screwdriver while flushing...WOW there was a lot of crud up in thar. The trick in installing the new freeze plugs is to put sealant in the engine block seats first, then driving the new plugs into place. This oughta keep them plugs from weeping.

I had the same problem and was just as wary about tearing up my guage. But looking at the materials involved, I figgered I'd try cutting the line out completely and making a new one. Now you can put a wrench all the way around the ornery flare nut. But first, the setup: the pickups have the gauge cluster that can be removed from the dash. Removing the other guages from the cluster, you now have a 'box' to clamp in a vise with wood blocks to keep from tearing up the cluster housing. Park the cluster in the vertical position so that you can see the gauge face & the flare nut. Using a small propane torch, heat the nut by passing the flame across the nut slowly, like once a second. Eventually, whatever crud is up in the gauge will start to ooze out. Keep an eye on the threads, crud might start bubbling out of them too. When that happens, put down the torch, pick up the wrench and see if that nut will budge CLOCKWISE...yep, try to tighten it first, this usually breaks any corrosion on the threads on the inside of the gauge. Then back the nut off slowly. If it hangs up, remove the wrench & apply more heat. The trick is taking it slow.