bkahler

Unfortunately, not to many things last 20 years anymore

Put those tires on the front and big wide slicks on the back 😁

Yes, they bends are tighter than the original bends. The portion where the tail light mounts is fine, just the lengths of hole locations were off. The holes were off by about 3/8".

Yep.

I'm not so sure its from Chyna. I'm guessing someone with a CNC water-jet cutter and either a manual or CNC bender. I'm leaning toward manual bender because the bends are somewhat over bent. It was nicely made, just made wrong.

Sometimes the simple things bring happiness And sometimes the simple things bring sadness... The bracket on the left is a reproduction piece. The bracket on the right is an original bracket. The original bracket needed some straitening and repairs so in order to save time (and energy) I bought the repro bracket. After painting and installation I found that the tail light housing was up against the stake pocket and could not be bolted into place. At this point I went ahead and repaired the original bracket, which is shown in the top picture. Take note of the differences in dimensions. I really appreciate that there are vendors out there willing to fabricate reproduction parts, but it would sure be nice if they matched the originals in fit and function.

The tail lights I'm using came from Roberts, bought back in 1997, turned out to be poorly made at best. I ended up removing the bulb sockets and silver soldering in new replacement sockets. I also had to remake the lens gaskets out of 1/4" thick cork in order to get things to fit properly. The body, trim ring and glass were ok but for $100 I expected much better product.

I've been buying the fabric wire loom from Amazon. It's relatively expensive and if I was smart I should have just used plastic loom like you did or wrap in harness tape, which is what I did for the main wiring harnesses I made.

They look great. Are they original bars, or something you fabricated?

I'm happy to say the planks are finally done Five hours start to finish, two coats per side. Depending on the temperature, they will have to dry for around 48 hours. Starting tonight the temperature is supposed to start dropping so I probably won't do anything with the planks until this weekend.

It makes for a good day when you accomplish a lot of tasks. I don't think my name and the word sexy have ever been used in the same sentence before 🤣 Thanks for the laugh This looks great to me.

You definitely do not want a leather seal, they are out dated technology. I'm not sure what seal you should get so hopefully someone will chime in with that info.

Got the kick panels installed and got the bed plank staining done. Overall the staining process went fairly well, but there was one board that just wouldn't darken up. The second board from the right has three applications of stain, the other boards only one. There's always one in every crowd..... Either late tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning I'll apply the Flood CWF Oil.

Installed the new ABS door panels and the arm rests today. It looks so much better than the brown cardboard. I might do the kick panels tomorrow in between staining boards.

This his how my doors looked when I first got the truck, I'm pretty sure it wasn't factory original I don't know that I have ever seen pictures of the arm rests in 51 and later Dodge trucks. At least none that I can remember. I guess I need to pull out Bunn's books again and take a look. The Dodge truck arm rests in the link below resemble mine but the construction is definitely different. The Pontiac and Chevy links look identical to mine. Pontiac Armrest Chevy Armrest 1950-1956 Dodge Truck Armrest Edit: I searched for Plymouth arm rests but couldn't find anything that resembled mine .

As DJ suggested, an electric pump on a toggle switch helps a lot. I have an electric pump by the tank on a switch and two weeks ago I started my truck after it sat for 6 months. It only took about 2 turns of the flywheel before it fired off and idled great. I let it run for a minute or two and then turned the pump off.

Starting to make progress again on the bed planks. The new planks have now been fitted and according to the weather forecast the weekend temps are going to be good for staining. We'll see how that goes I finally managed to track down a new Upholstery shop. The shop that did the seats closed their doors last summer and I have been searching off and on since then. The new shop is a guy that works out of his home. He's Cuban, doesn't speak English and uses an app on his phone to translate Spanish to English and English to Spanish. I won't say his work is perfect but it was more than adequate for my truck. I'm happy with the results. I forgot to clean up the arms so I'll take care of that this weekend. I believe the arm rests are probably out of a 40s/50s Chevy but they were in a couple of Pilothouse trucks back when I was going through all of the yards looking for parts. The B1/B2 arm rests don't work on a B3, the hole spacing is different. These arm rests fit the B3 hole spacing perfectly. I can't wait to get them installed!

All of mine were badly worn, so I replaced them.

Not until it's been properly re-chromed

You should read about my Steering Gearbox Rebuild. David's description of his gearbox shows what can happen if adjusted incorrectly. In my case the steering was so sloppy the wheel could be turned a full 1/4 turn before anything happened. Upon inspection of the gearbox there was severe galling on the worm. I opted to rebuild rather than replace with a used one.

What I think will most likely happen when he passes on is the kids will contact an auction house and have them deal with clearing out all of the vehicles. This sort of thing happens all the time. Don't put too much into the truck having the wrong hood ornament. Lots of people like the looks of the ram ornaments and frequently that sort of thing is what attracted them to that particular model in the first place. On my 51 the ornament was optional but I have one that is the correct ornament, now I just have to decide if I want to drill the holes and install it. The odds of finding a completely stock truck in great shape are pretty slim. You can always buy replacement covers from vendors like DCM Classics if you want the original look and fee. Looking forward to more pictures

I knew I could count on everyone keeping their mouths shut...

I'm sure I could find a way to bend it it but that would set me back time wise even farther. I would also need to get another quart of paint mixed which is not cheap. Add to that my painter moved to Wisconsin so I'd have deal with someone new. Rabbiting the planks is a lot easier!!

Some of you may remember that a while back I was having trouble with fitting the planks under the shovel strips that are welded to the bed sides and the rear cross member. After it was all said and done I ended up rabbiting the back ends of the planks about 1/16" to get them to fit under the shovel strips. The planks I was attempting to use were pretty much spot on 3/4" in thickness. Well today I unpacked the new planks from DCM Classics and started looking into what I would need to do to get them to fit. The DCM planks (actually sourced from Horkey's) measure out about .765", so slightly thicker than 3/4". Obviously this exacerbates my problem with thickness issues. By the way, I'm not complaining here, just pointing out what I'm dealing with. After taking a much closer look at the new planks sitting in the bed I think I found the main problem as to why I'm having to rabbit the planks to fit. In the two attached pictures you can see where the planks are not sitting flat on the rear cross member. It turns out the bends in the cross member are not 90 degrees. If you notice the gap on the trailing edge, that's how much how of square the cross member is. The cross member is a reproduction part that wasn't made quite right. There's nothing I can do about it now except rabbit the ends of the new planks. I hope to complete that task tomorrow and start the staining process in the next few days.

I was a little concerned when I found that the back panel was in one piece, mainly because when I was installing the brown cardboard panels they were really tight fitting around the windows. After comparing the two I don't think I have to much to worry about. The ABS panel opening is definitely larger than the brown cardboard and should be a lot easier to install. The stars finally aligned where I had all the bits and pieces ready for installing the fog lights, so I finally finished that task today. Only remaining item is plugging the two lights into the wiring harness. I just didn't feel like crawling under the truck today This picture makes it look like the light is contacting the grille, when it reality there is about 1/2" clearance.