1956 Chevy Pickup Project

Back to the build...

So, the week before last, Daryl emptied the shop and it was time to get my frame down there and jigged up. We are under a bit of a time restraint, as the school will be locked up July 2 and we won't have access to the building untill late August. We still had lots of clean up and inventory to do, so didn't get as much time on hour government jobs as we'd like. He had two 13' "I" beams and I had a few shorter pieces, from which we made up a jig. My buddy Lee had a frame jig he has finished with, but the thing was so big and heavy that it was to cumbersome to move around, so we fabbed this one up.

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A few pipe clamps were used to help align the frame as we put in the uprights that would hold the frame in place as the straightening and welding took place. There was a bit of tweaking to do, but from my inexpereicned perspective, it seemed to go pretty quick.

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The centerline was established ( I like Daryl's welding wire for string) and the work could begin.

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As you can see, there were a few ripples to take out. When I did some checking at home, everything seemed square, yet one of the frame rails was inboard by 1/4". So when we got it to the school, Tinn checked for square further back and we found the problem. A little heat, a little persuasion and things started looking good. One tack weld did let go, so we back tracked a bit, but got everything looking good.
 
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Today was a big day. Tin started at 6 and I rolled in about 9. With all the ripples and imperfections taken out of the rails, we could concentrate on getting the boxing plates in. Here you can see some of the areas that needed some attention.



The frame was upside down at this point, so we didn't have to do any overhead welding. Daryls welds looked as smooth as butter, but he dressed them up nice and sexy like. I dont think they needed it, but SOMEONE is a little, how shall we say... [you fill in the blank].



After some careful checking and measuring, we decided to add about 4" to the plates to give a little more support in front of the location of the cross member. The cross member was tacked in at this point and everything was checked and rechecked. We even went over to Leadfoot's place to steal some dimensions off his 57 pickup to determine if the kit places the wheel correctly in the wheel openning. Again, more measuring and eyeing things up; we decided on moving the cross member forward a bit.


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After more checking and discussion about wheel location, we took the plunge and welded in the cross member. When I say we, I really mean Tinmann. My welds look like doggy dukey next to his. (Yes, I am sucking up. I need him to finish the job tommorrow :D ) Here he's grinding a bit of a valley in between plate and frame to get good penetration.

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Here you can see that the lower control arm mounting points are parallel to the ground, just like the doctor ordered.

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I called TCI at one point last week asking about ride height. During the ensuing discussion I was told the kit was set up to give 2 1/2 degrees of rake. Well, after the thing was flipped and we set the frame to that spec, this is what we got... wow! 2 1/2 degrees is a lot over 15 feet!

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So, by the end of the day, boxing plates were welded top and bottom, the cross member was in and everything was looking pretty good. Tommorrow we will tackle the hats, fill a few frame holes and mock up the control arms and spindles.

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Looking good there Butcher, it's a funny thing, out here you can not get a truck rego'd with a front clip like a Camaro etc but you can get them rego'd the way you are doing that, they say the reason is two fold, how well do you know the welding was done with a front clip and the front clip is only suitable for a car, you figure that one out. Beats me if it is in a rod anyway.
 
...watching every update....your helper seems to be catching on....he'll be good someday if he keeps at it.....
 
...watching every update....your helper seems to be catching on....he'll be good someday if he keeps at it.....

It's your kind words of encouragement that keep me going Davey B. Looks like you've lost your avatar...... do something about that eh? Ya looks nekkid!!

Front crossmember kits seem to make rod building easy, don't they? Except of course when you do enough measuring to discover that they've got the geometry wrong. If I were to just go ahead and weld the crossmember and top hats in as instructed, there would be 0 to 1 degree of anti-dive. A stock MII hat has about 8 degrees. Huge difference. Today. I tackle that little discrepancy.

Your avatar is back.......
 
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Very nice work, guys. Tinnmann has this talent of causing the metal to just magically fuse itself together, it's quite amazing really. Those boxing plates look like they grew there!
 
HOLY COW!!! The old guy acctually works?!?!? And you got it on camera too!!

It's called photoshop, Grace. Look closely at the image, he doesn't have his cheater lenses on! I couldn't air bursh them in (now everybody knows the truth).
 
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Glad to see my school tax's finally getting put to good use...keep up the good work, and tinmann I think you should go down to praxair and invest in one of them fire proof beard covers with all them sparks flying around... god forbid you burn off your Ike the hudderite beard... just my 2 cents...:D
 
Woody......... that frames lookin mighty spiffy. I too am shocked that you got some pics of Tinny @ work. Im sure PG wont be the same after this social find! Very nice work Woody & Tinny. The boxing plates look great and buttery smooth welds make finishing soooooo much easier. Congrats guys.
 
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OK., now I'm up waiting for my teenage daughter to come home from the movies with her "not-boy-friend", so I may as well get started on this weeks update.

So, the frame is in the jig, set at 2 1/2 degrees of rake, the boxing plates and cross member have been welded in and the frame has been straightened. The next step was to install the hats, or upper spring mounts.

When I arrived at the shop, Tinn had already had time fill a few bolt holes in the frame and then our next challenge. It turns out that the left spring perch will cover the serial number on the frame. Since this is a US truck, I will have to have the serial number sighted in two places when it is back together and being registered in BC. Had this happen before, with my Nova, and had to pull the passengers inner and outer fender off the car to access the heater fan box where a serial number for the body is stamped (the one on the top of the cowl being illegible). Being a guy with waaay too much time on his hands, Tinn decided to cut it out and move it forward 8”, replacing an area on the top of the frame that had 3 holes that needed filling anyways, thus, killing two birds with one stone.

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A couple of hours later the next problem challenge reared its ugly head. Tinn brought in a stock mustang II cradle assembly to check some measurements...

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You can see in the pic above, the upper control arm does not sit level in stock configuration. This angle is called anti-dive and is critical in maintaining a feel for the road when the driver gets on the brakes really hard and the body pitches forward, dropping the nose of the vehicle. You can see that the Mustang suspension has lots of anti-dive geometry built in, about 8°. TheTCI hat only had 2°, plus the 2 1/2° rake we built into the frame for a total of less than 5°. Tinn wasn't happy with this, so after an hour or two of trying different things, we gave a call to TCI. We asked very pointed, specific questions about the geometry, thinking that we'd get someone who didn't know squat, but instead, got into quite an interesting discussion in suspension geometry from a gentleman who had been with the company in the R&D department for about 28 years. He must have been one of the original founders of the company. He felt that the Mustang suspension was designed to be very forgiving, and that we are thinking too much (haven't been accused of that very often!) He said that we were about one in a thousand people asking these types of questions, and that we didn't need to worry because all the measurements had been engineered by TCI. Tinn led the discussion, while I kept my mouth shut for the most part and learned a lot. Without spending too much time at this, but not being completely satisfied, lets just say that we thanked him for his time and decided to run with the anti dive angle of 5° that we currently had.
 
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So we go back to the shop and tack them in place and bolt the control arms and spindle to check the rest of the geometry, you know, for kicks. We had decided that the stock location of the wheel would not suffice when the truck was lowered, and after checking Leadfoots truck with a tape measure, we determined that the hats needed to go 3/4” forward. We checked caster (rear inclination of the spindle) and camber (outward inclination of the spindle).

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Now, to get the required geometry the cross shafts ended up being twisted in the adjustment slots. While it is functional, it doesn't look very good and I can hear the voice of my buddy Lee ringing in my ears. He contended (bitched) that TCI didn't engineer these kits right, and me, not having put one in at that point, just nodded and smiled (kinda like the penguins in Madagascar, those of you who have kids, you'll know what I mean). Now I know what he was talking about. Look how far the cross shafts are skewed.

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This required some “creative engineering” of our own, to twist the hats to center the cross slots and maintain correct geometry. This process gave us a new centerline 5/8" forward of the stock centerline. Not what we wanted, but is something we can live with. Its funny, the TCI instructions are over-simplified; they cover their asses by saying “shim or grind as required” and “allow for variations in the frame”. LMAO! Did more grinding, adjusting and re tacking couple of times to get things right.
 
Thinking we were home free, we made one more measurement to check the center-to-center distance from one adjusting slot to the other. It's supposed to be 34 ¾ on this chassis. Wrong, not even close. So we had to cut the hats off, yet again, and space the hats out to get close to the correct dimensions. Due to this adjustment, when it came time to weld the hats in place, Tinny welded on the inside of the hats as well, to ensure there would be no warranty work in the future (you know how prickly PTP warranties are ;) )

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We mocked up the spindles one more time and checked everything one more time. Finally everything looked good, so Daryl welded the hats in place. As you can see below, the hats now sit parallel to the frame and the cross shafts sit parallel to the frame. Everything looks nice, and more importantly, we now know that all the geometry is set up correctly with plenty of room for adjustment when the truck gets aligned.

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Finally we could cut the frame off the jig. After cutting the front tacks, I noticed that the very front of the rails pulled in a bit, so we had to use the port-a-power and give it a bit of a tweak. Everything is now straight and true.

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Its interesting, having gone through this exercise, thinking about the instructions and expectations of most TCI customers. I now understand why we had to tack the frame to a jig, as things move a surprising amount during welding – and we had a lot of welding to do. Most customers would just sit the frame on some sawhorses or jack stands (my original thought), tack and weld without much checking (without much knowledge) and trust TCI thinking that everything is hunky dory. I'm glad I had an experienced fabricator on this project and have to take my hat off to Daryl for his tenacity and focus on doing the job right. It was quite a marathon. I can drive the truck knowing that the chassis is done right and not have any doubt at all. Thanks a million, Daryl! Or is that Ike the Hutterite?

I know this is getting a little long winded, and its hard to cover such a huge topic with so few pictures, so I here is a link to photobucket where all the pictures are hosted.

http://s357.photobucket.com/albums/oo20/bc_woodbutcher/1956 Chevy Shortbox/
 
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