- Hey, this is Davin with Hagerty
and a Redline Rebuild Updates
back at her on the 1950 Chevy pickup truck here,
and today we're gonna start after
kind of making some adjustments to this bed.
Specifically, it's not attached anymore
because everything is completely rotted out
as you'll see here.
So, I have some new center rails for it
and again, we're just gonna shore this up.
I'm not after restoration,
but it would be nice to actually set something
in the bed of the truck
and not have it fall through to the ground.
General process today is going to be again,
taking out the old rails, getting rid of them,
and then these running boards,
you can see the mount is broke.
Now, they sell brand new mounts,
you can go get those, the riveted in.
What I'm gonna do for this pickup truck
actually is just take a jack lifted up back in position,
and I'm gonna weld the daylights to it back to the frame,
and it will certainly suffice.
Now for those of you that want us to restore this truck,
I am gonna do some sandblasting today on the frame
specifically around where I'm gonna weld
because I can't get a grinder
in there to get the metal cleaned up well,
and if it's all rusty, it won't wanna take real weld
and I wanna get a good bite with a welder.
So, I'm gonna roll this out into the parking lot,
hit it with a sandblaster, clean up just that little area
and then put some weld to it.
That's the first step.
Second step then will be to, like I said,
take all these other rails out
and start getting everything laid in.
(upbeat music)
The running board braces are now welded back together,
and I tell you what it made a substantial difference.
So now, instead of being able to lift this up
about four inches, it's nice and solid,
and it'll even take a lot of weight.
We have two out of our three crossbars
in there bolted down blocks are in.
I'm moving on to the front,
I have a little problem here though.
This front panel is obviously rotted off about two inches
or better, and it needs to connect to this cross beam.
So what I'm going to do is go get a chunk of steel
that will come down angle across,
and then it's straight down
and then I can spot weld it to this panel
and then bolt it to this one,
then that front end will be done.
Then we'll get the back end, cut out, put that new piece in,
then the next step will be to take and get some wood
and fill all the way across with slats.
Similar to what this is, it gives you a mockup thickness
and I will figure out something for that.
Nice, and here we are.
Look at that, that's what we're really have.
Sweet, how about that?
(upbeat music)
All right, so I just wrapped up
putting the front brace back in.
It's all locked down.
It is tack, welded up to the face of the bed
so now we're actually attached
to at least the face of the bed is attached.
And then I come back through with the torch
and torched out all the old stuff back here,
and that rail that was in here.
Now, this is ugly.
Again, we're not restoring this, we're making it work, okay?
If you're a farmer, you understand that you fix things
to make it work to the next day,
it's not gonna be pretty, but it's gonna be functional.
That's what I'm after here.
There are certainly right ways and wrong ways to fix things.
One of them would be to strip this bed right off
and get a brand new one and stick it on here,
but that's not what I'm after.
So, what I'm going to do,
is I'm gonna put a piece in here, okay?
What's missing is a wood,
so we're gonna have a piece of wood in here,
that's the bed, okay?
So there'll be wood slats going across, that will sit here,
I'm gonna put a piece of steel in here, kind of like it was,
and it's gonna be a little bit taller than this one,
it's going to actually come up about five
and a half inches up.
That'll shore up the side of this bed
as far as the bed to this rail
and we'll kind of eliminate that flapping function.
Now, I'm real tempted just to flat out,
get rid of this piece.
And that may be what I do, is cut this right outta here,
it's not really doing anything for me right now obviously.
Best case is, I have to put another piece in here
to kind of hold it to itself,
but I'm gonna look at that a little bit closer.
It looks to me like there's only one spot
where it actually functions
and it holds the outer fender to the box side
so if I had a piece of metal
that went from here to here, right?
And connected this to here,
then my fender is not gonna fall off.
This stuff doesn't do anything, it gets out of it's way,
actually cleans things up.
It'll even make it easier to reach this dirt fitting,
and I can do the same thing on the front
because it doesn't attach again until the very front.
So, I think that's my plan of attack.
Again, we're gonna throw the board in here,
gonna put a piece up on there to hold the board down
or give it that edge and really hold box sides up.
And then last to shore this up,
is getting this new piece cut in here
and attached here, of course, attached to the rails.
Now, again, we're not restoring this,
we're trying to make it function.
I cheated and basically bought the aftermarket piece
that I could pop in here
and not have to fabricate everything
and for the price of it, it made sense.
(upbeat music)
Not only the tail gate is on, okay?
Well, we've also stiffened up our side rails on this bed.
Now this is certainly an exercise of how to get it done,
not necessarily make it pretty, just make it work.
So, one of the things I was fighting with,
without completely, you know, redoing these bed rails
is how I can piece them together and enough to function
and of course this bottom corner
was rotted out like they all are.
And ultimately what I did is I took a piece
of inch and a half angle iron
and pushed it down through the bed steak
and reattach it to this, the rear brace for the bed,
and basically welded everything back together
and now it's nice and solid,
did the same thing on that side,
had to make a little bit of a patch panel in here.
This is not ready for bodyworker paint,
but it is ready to go down the road
and we'll shoot a little bit of black paint
or green paint on there just to kind of blend things in.
But I was talking about for the bed,
I'm gonna have all the wood slats in here,
just some rough-sawn and that I needed
to have a piece of angle bent up
to put over here on the side.
So what I'm going to do is, this is our piece of angle,
and I had a couple of boards in here
just to kind of mock things up.
and that's how I'm gonna clean up that inside edge
relative to the box.
And again, just to make it functional,
I can, fill the bed full of peanuts now
and they won't fall out.
So that's a step in the right direction.
So, at that, I'm kinda stuck a little bit
because I can't well,
based on today's economic circumstances,
the local shop here that does rough-sawn wood
is backlog like crazy,
and I'm waiting for wood for the bed.
And yes, I could go buy a kit, that's not what I want.
I just want some rough-sawn lumber to make it work
so this can be functional as a pickup truck again.
And, so until then, what I'm going to do,
is just to have this prepped,
I need to put a little notch in here
and clean some things up.
And then also, you can see, I already have a mark here.
I'm gonna take and clean this up, with a grinder,
so I can basically, rosebud all the way through all these
and, I should say rosetta weld,
I'll put holes through this panel
and then attach it to this runner here
and that'll shore that back up,
but I'm not gonna finalize this
as far as install welded in until that wood darken
is laid out because it sets on top of it.
But really until that point, I'm a little bit stuck,
but, I got some grinding to do, I'm gonna get dirty
and then it'll be time to go home and take a shower,
so which will be long overdue.
Hey, get out of the garage though, get your work done,
go enjoy the day, enjoy your truck, your car,
your motorcycle, whatever it might be,
that tickles your fancy, and go have fun.
See you.
(upbeat music)