Los_Control

I have no honest answer ... I put brass in mine, then read about others that have the same questions. With the two different metals, the cast iron block seems like the weak link and it will fail before the brass. Nobody seems to have a real life experiences with the block failing after using brass .... maybe it takes many years? A brass water distribution tube is common, no issues reported there. Just saying I have asked the same question but nobody seems concerned with it. I just kinda quit thinking about it myself.

If it were me, I would look for a truck shop that works on wheels. Years ago when I was retreading truck tires, there was a goodyear dealer that did truck repairs, front end alignments and had a wheel shop. They had a machine they would set a wheel on a round table, it would rotate through a sand blaster. They might have to turn the wheel over and send it through a few times, but was all automated. They could put several truck wheels on the table at a time .... Was very efficient and reasonably priced. They were also setup to paint the wheels. May not be any shops like that today, either way you should take your wheels down have the tires dismounted and the wheels inspected by a professional. What you are worried about is rust and no bent lock rings. The rings have a lip on them that fits in a groove on the wheel. So heavy rust could compromise the lip on the ring, making the ring unsafe. Same with the groove in the wheel, if severe rust could be unsafe. While some light surface rust would be expected, as long as strength is not compromised. While many here would change their own tires, at one time I ran a service truck and changed truck tires at the shop and also on the highway ... is hard work and not sure I would want to do my own tires today. But these are the guys that I assume will be working on your tires and they are the one to inspect the wheels and tell you if "they" would mount new tires on them. Was always the #1 rule at the shops, if you see something like a bent lock ring or a unsafe rusted wheel ... DONT touch it, tell the customer they need to replace it. Inspected, if they pass then sandblast, paint, mount new tires. make z00m z00m noises

Yup, thats a true widow maker. While in a perfect world they worked 90% of the time ... Just such a poor design you could never be 100% sure it was locked together correctly. While if it is split rim or a lock ring, The tire installer can inspect for damage and refuse to put it back together, or inspect it as it goes back together and feel safe. On another forum, the users have been buying off of ebay some wheel centers and rims for Hot rods. This way they can get the 15" wide wheels they want and weld in their own center section at the offset they need. There is some pretty good phrase for the quality ... might be worth a look to see if they have what you need. Another option is wheel spacers, bolt to your hubs and have bolt pattern for your new wheels. A build I am watching, the dude is using a 3/4 ton dodge 4x4 chassis and had adapters made to bolt up 22.5 semi super single tires/wheels to it. Just seems like you could do the same with your 6 bolt hubs, make a adapter to fit a modern tubeless rim that is readily available.

Lot of deserved press on the widow makers. ... Thats what they did. Actually the wheel was 2 pieces and had a lip on one 1/2 and a groove on the other 1/2. They just sucked and no matter how sharp you were, you could never guarantee they were locked together when changing a tire. A old timer was showing me how to change them ... aired it up in a cage to 120 psi ... while rolling it out of the cage it came apart. The tire was out of the cage and he was in the cage rolling it out. Made him jump straight up and hit his head on the cage and knocked him out. Just saying he could have been in front of it bolting it on the truck and come apart. While a rim with a lock ring on them are very common and in use today. You can inspect the condition while apart, yours may be junk and need replaced, but you can tell by looking at them. Just asking you to not confuse a widow maker with a lock ring. They are totally different animals.

I had a 1969 Triumph, yeah it was a chopper with a hard tail frame & a 750 Honda font end, wide buckhorn bars ... That bike was so well balanced was almost like cheating. Could actually stop for several seconds and just rotate the bars to keep balance and then creep forward .... I opted out of them and let the big heavy Harley's play. Welcome to the site @Coyle996 and wish you well with your projects.

Those are crap colors and not worth posting about. ... makes me think about what my wife would want ... crap colors!

@pflaming I really appreciate your post. I am hoping in the future you can continue to post. You really have showed many times things I may not follow .... I really do want to follow you. Lesson one, do not listen to idiots on the internet.

Ok I will play, Been here awhile and never seen this thread before. To be honest, I just came to a point in my life where I thought I wanted to have a old truck to play with and drive. I had a 1951 ford 3/4 ton with a flathead v8 I guess was 1975 or 76 in school. I thought I wanted another. I knew my Uncle had a 50th anniversary edition I could talk him out of. Think it was a 1955. Long story short, I waited too long and it was gone .... What he did have was a 1949 dodge pilothouse up for grabs. I remember the old dodges were the most ugly duckling of all in the 70's, would not be caught dead driving one. Then being 55 years old and wanting a old school truck, looking at the old pilothouse ... I fell in love with it. I took on the 1949 B1C project, life happens moved out of state and never got to finish it. Found a good home for her and gave it away. Then in Texas, I saw a craigslist add for a 1949, fell in love again. Here I am today

Heck I am not picky what day I eat pie ..... grabs Ed's plate of pie.

There is nothing wrong with your request ... except need pictures of what you have to give any idea of worth. With pictures I assume you will get a lot of ideas.

I did the angle iron first, was easier to drill holes in. Now I can use it as a pattern to mark pipe and drill holes in them. The Main pipe measures 2 3/8" OD, & 3/16" thick walls ... pretty heavy pipe and makes a solid base. Next step I have 1/2" black steel gas piping, I have 1 1/4" galvanized top rail for a cyclone fence, also 4" sched 40 pvc sewer line. A new pipe leftover and never used I chose to make it 36" long, I have a few sheets of 18 gauge 36" long and assume wont really need it longer. First issue I found, the 1/8" angle iron has a small amount of flex at 3' long. Inserting metal then clamp it down fixes that. Thinking The round pipe may be more rigid ... or not. Time will tell. But as time goes forward I can always change pipe and evolve. Next step is to add pipe, then sand and paint everything.

Great looking car, looks brand new compared to my heap. Sad that it seems to be missing the air cleaner which can allow moisture & dirt into the engine. Just seems to be a better chance the engine is stuck when it has no air cleaner. Same time my truck had no air cleaner, sat about 15-20 years and was not stuck and runs decent with little effort. First thing I would do is put marvel mystery oil, atf/acetone mix or even straight atf in the cylinders and let it sit a few days before trying to turn it over. Then clean the car up and do what you want. These old flatheads are pretty forgiving and respond well to tlc. So simple to work on it is therapeutic. As others have said, is cheaper to keep her. Looking forward to see your progress with it and wish you luck with whatever direction you choose.

Yay for cheap tools! I have been needing something like this for some time, Saw a video Fitzee did and made my own adjustments. Instead of welding the pieces together, I am bolting them in. I have shown is angle iron, but have a few different sizes of round pipe I can swap out with the angle iron and make different radius bends. I have made exactly 2 bends on it so far, kinda impressed how easy it was to make a smooth radius bend or even a 90 degree flange. I need to spend a lot of time on it to learn what it can do. Same time I think others have built something like this and may have useful input. Also Fitzee made his a dedicated stand up tool, while mine for space it can sit in a corner & take up no space, just pull it out and put in vice when needed.

I just wish I used my hands productively and had a running truck .... No I use my hands for entertainment.

You all missing this point ... could be bad news for a 17 year old kid ... unless it was me

Sometimes we do what we have to do to get by. When I was 17 I was working in Las Vegas, fellow worker had a 57 chebby 1/2 ton 216 with factory automatic trans ... cool beater. It ran good. He told me a rod bearing went bad, he used a beer can as a shim behind the bearing, after he dressed the crank. Yeah not the way I would have fixed it either. One day his wife was drunk and pissed off at him ... He also had a 1966 shovel head. She told me He was running around socal claiming to be a Hells Angel. HA caught up with him and gave him 24 hours to get out of town He fixed it anyway he could, loaded his bike, wife, a bed roll and drove the truck to vegas. Point is he drove it from socal to vegas, back & forth to work for a year, then loaded up a small 5'x7' trailer and moved home to Maryland. Loaded with the bike and trailer, made it to West Virginia and rear end went out ... lost track of them then. But that hokey shimmed bearing held up.

OK my 2 cents .... I think the dude is a hero! Joking of course, but I do think his style of making the engine a usable commodity was spot on. When that car/engine was 10 years old, needed repairs .... it was sitting at the local gas station. Today the average mechanic has better tools in a home garage then a professional mechanic in the early 60's-70's ... maybe even the 80's I appreciate the dude showed a video that showed how it was done years ago ... Harmonic ballancer? Get the hammer out and get er did. Today I think you & I may do things different. I think we are spoiled with having better tools available to us. Often we forget what was available in 1960. I honestly do not think the film creator was trying to reproduce what happened in 1960, Just he did what was needed to be done. And with the old mechanics, is why we still have old cars today ... I enjoyed watching the video and appreciated how he got to the finish line ... I never judged him.

I was born in 1962 .... never did understand the x y or z crowd ... just considered myself an American.

I talked with a repair shop yesterday. Was very helpful. All pro clutch and drive line repair. In Abilene. His opinion was it was not common but happens, needs to look at it to see if repairable. Prices seemed reasonable, roughly $160 labor to replace yoke and re-ballance + cost of new yoke. I will be using them in the future at some point. Imho, I probably bent it removing the old original u-joint ... bend it back and it works fine. I drove it yesterday and while only in town, Am sure the problem is solved.

Thanks for the info, I am repeating the story as told to me from my late Uncle. Seems Cadillac did use it for a bit, I am sure he was a Ford guy and never owned a Cadillac back then. At 16 years old.

Dang gm never had a positive ground. Even though positive ground was used by others and seemed to be better then negative ground. Was in the 50's they wanted to make some uniformity so all car manufacturers matched. Chebby came out with the sbc, it was a big hit and all others went with negative ground because chebby was the leader at the time. We all know positive ground is better, just the way the cards were dealt.

10 years old? Heck that thing is barely broke in by my standards I was thinking about buying a air compressor from a estate sale. Was pretty old, kid swore his father was still using it. I could probably still get it for $50 or less. Just to move it would need to hire a tow truck and have it lifted and then delivered. Compression on the pump seemed pretty low I felt would make a fun project to rebuild. It was well over a 100 gallon Horizontal tank, 220 motor. It lived outside the garage under a dog house, would have to be same here. Still happy I walked away from it.

What you do is cut the window & surrounding window frame from a donor car. Then you modify and add the new metal frame with window to your car. You do not take the glass and make a new frame for it. I suppose you could ... those that have done it probably would not do it twice. No I have never done it before. Watching a few vids with chopping tops on cars, lots easier to cut the metal + glass out of another car and then graft it into your project.

Yeah only option I know for used ... if available can drive to Abilene and pick it up. If they allow me back in the store. Last year bought something off car-part and drove to Abilene to pick it up ... They jacked me around on time, I showed up and they went to lunch. I explained I was retired ... I did not have time to sit here and wait on them. Other day I went to the local truck stop, asked for 3 of the daily dinner specials. Sometimes would be wise if I had a mouth filter ... life would be easier. Yeah will search carpart.com tomorrow and call yards to see if can give dimensions and find a match.