Ok, a couple of missed days and today I was distracted with an oil change to my everyday driver, work on the carburetor of the other 36, but I did get the winch in today. I was happy with the hook-up onto the frame. I was especially happy that there was enough cable shipped on this thing to reach the floor, even with the block attached.

The next night, I had to make up a cart for my oxy-acetylene bottles and a caster to roll the cab around once I get it removed. I did straighten the bottom of the doors out. To the purist: Please don't scream, but I am considering chopping the top of the truck. Scott brought in a book to work about chopping tops and I have a good set of doors for a 36 that were chopped by my cousin (Lloyd aka "Skinny"). Chopped tops on 36's look cool if they don't go proportionally too far with the height of the bed. I have seen good and bad chop jobs of other 36 pick-ups with all the research I've been doing lately with finding parts. I am not a very good body man, so this is a big hurdle for me. The reason I am giving this some serious consideration is the chopped doors are in really great shape and the ones on this truck have stretched outer panels and a ton of rust on the bottoms of both of them that would take a ton of time. I am concerned about how the new seats would work for ride height in the chopped version, but I should have a decision on this by this weekend.

I am checking into MIG welders at this point and both Feiss and Joel have provided some good input here. Feiss will be at the big swap meet here in St. Louis on the 24th. Feiss seems to think that I will find the grill shell/radiator parts I am looking for there. Fingers are crossed, but Scott Reed is telling me to get there very early or the good stuff will be gone. I have my list, which includes suspension an drivetrain needs, so hopefully this will be a fruitful event coming up. I have band-jobs in Barnhardt this weekend, if I can get the grass cut at the shop and at home, then I'll be able to devote more time to the truck and get the doors off and the cab removed from the chassis.

By 4-19-05, a few of my questions were answered regarding the viability of the gantry. I was able to pick the cab off the frame by myself and the thing worked great. I am ecstatic with the way it worked out and it looks like this might be one of my better moves in a while.

Got the Welder (5-3-05)

I picked up a MIG welder. Phew, I hate to see that kind of money head out the door, but then again I am a cheap sucker. As my brother Bob nicely puts it, "He's frugal!" Anyway, the bullet is bit and I lucked out big time with a cheapy of a cart I bought at Harbor Freight. My old Lincoln arc welder fit perfectly onto the lower shelf. The screws that hold this thing together were a little shy of being able to hold things together all that well. It was a little rickety with all that weight on the cart. My first attempt at MIG welding was on this cart and I quickly found out that I am as crappy a MIG as I am an Arc Welder. I think my biggest problem was with picking up my frame-of-reference before striking the arc up. I couldn't see where I was until the fire lit up the area. Maybe one of the new battery powered welding masks will help with this issue. At least that is what Trees is telling me. (5-25-05) I picked a solar powered, automatic helmet last weekend and Trees was right. I am already getting much better at my Arc welding skills. We'll see how I do with the MIG on the smaller gage stuff (sheet metal) later on.