When it comes to classic trucks short beds rule the coop for desirability and resale value. Most enthusiasts turn their nose up to a long bed truck. What’s slowly happening though is that nice, clean examples of short beds are becoming few and far between and when they do pop up you’re going to pay a premium. Recently some guys have started shortening the bed and chassis of long bed trucks to get the same look but without the price gouge of a short bed truck. Our friend Sean Ramáge of Empire Fabrication recently took on the big job of taking an original-paint set of long bedsides and repairing the damage and shortening them, all while keeping as much original paint and patina as possible. He shared the process with us and gave us an insight into what it takes to tackle a job like this.
Tag: tig 200
Project Pile House Shaving and customizing the original dash and glovebox.
While I had the column out I decided to start cleaning up the dash and sort out my brake pedal dilemma on the truck. In order to get under the dash for fabricating the new brake pedal setup and to shave and smooth the dash I needed to pull it out. ….
How to Repair Rust With a TIG Welder- Rusty Door Skin Repair
There’s a handful of ways you can tackle repairing rust in your vehicle and all of them have their place. The most common would probably be cutting out the metal and MIG welding a patch panel in place. While this method is the easiest to accomplish, it can be difficult to blend the weld seam into the surrounding metal. I’ve done repairs this way for many years and they’ve turned out ok, but I’ve always wanted to master TIG welding patch panels and metal finishing the area for a seamless repair. I’ve recently begun switching a lot of my welding projects ….
Shaving the Column- Custom Steering Column Mods
I had previously covered in a few steps how I had come up with the steering setup on the truck. To make it short, I’m using a Packard steering column housing, a custom column shaft, and a Ford steering wheel. To make all of this work together took a bit of work, but I’ve got it all bolted up and it should all jive pretty good when done. Now I need to finish up the small details that will make the column not only look good, but also work smoothly together. I’ll be covering the latter in another post, but for now I decided to show you how I went about shaving the unneeded holes from the column housing.
Sheet Metal Fabrication: Basic Machines & Techniques
Sheet metal fabrication is the act of forming, shaping, and joining metal together to build and or repair a tangible part. There are many techniques and tools. It’s been done since the beginning of time when even the simplest tools were used. In this article we will share the most common and important tools, machines, and techniques for the DIY fabricator.
Building Custom Mini Wheel Tubs for Pile House
One thing a lot of longterm builds have in common is that the builder or owner tend to change their minds throughout the build. This has definitely been the case with Project Pile House. Over the past two years I’ve changed Pile House from being a “thrown-together” type build to something a bit more thought out and nicer. Even small items like wheel and tire combo have changed and caused me to go back and adjust things as needed.
How to Build Custom Cafe Racer Motorcycle Handlebars
I’ve had my hands full with my four wheeled projects lately and I haven’t been giving my little “cafe” motorcycle; a DKW RT125 much attention. I recently decided to build a set of clubman style drop bars for it. My problem with off the shelf parts are that I usually […]
Chopping The Top On A 1950 Dodge Pick-Up – Eastwood’s Project Pile House- Part 3
In the last posts we had quite a mess, the roof was in numerous pieces, A-pillars didn’t line up, doors were in pieces, etc, etc. Fast forward a bit and the roof is one piece again. I decided to use the TIG 200 to weld the seam back up. I […]
Chopping The Top On A 1950 Dodge Pick-Up – Eastwood’s Project Pile House- Part 2
Time and money seem to always be the deciding factor in how long a project takes to complete. After preparing Pile House for a chop my time ran thin and it took longer for me to get to cutting the roof than I’d like; but I’m sure everyone can relate […]