g741.org

Ha! I beat you to it. John sent me some decal / stickers a few months ago and the oil filter is all restored now.

Humm...... I did all that welding on Sunday and got back to the house and the wife tells me the dishwasher is leaking. So up and down getting tools and laying in the floor, and later that night my knee was killing me!

I gave up hobbling around on crutches and went to the Dr on Wed for a medrol pak. I am pulling though it now and might can be grinding those welds down this weekend. Getting old I guess.

Amazing how that happens. (both the plumbing and the getting old) I just had the same thing with the plumbing and it was extremely sore ribs from laying over the edge of the cabinet under there.

My Saturday was taken up with our local organization at the downtown airport. The Collings Foundation flew in a B24, B17 and P51D.

We took our vehicles down to show them to the public. On Sunday I was able to grind down those welds.



There were still some places where the weld didn't fill well after grinding.



So more welding was in order.



Now ground down again. This is a smooth as it will get. I will have to use a thin coat of bondo to make it smooth to paint.

I didn't want to come across like an a**hole since I am a relative newcomer on the forum here but grinding a "V" in sheet metal is not worth the effort and will actually cause you to burn back the edge to a wider gap. And you absolutely have to clean back on the sides where you are going to weld. It is not like painting where the paint sticks to the clean and not to the dirty. In welding the dirty will pull inclusions into the weld and leave exactly what you had there. You had the spacers in there for the proper gap between the pieces but you always need to clean back the edges. Live and learn.

inclusions

Humm..... I just thought it was my crappy welding.

Just like painting, prep is everything. It is even more important in welding thin metal. There is only so much you can do in this type of situation since there is still crap on the back of the old panel but if you are using a MIG welder and have your gas flow set around 25 then it will keep a lot of the stuff from the back away from the weld.

Rick is fo shizzle , you get what you give or weld.

and I sometimes have trouble even soldering two wires. No way I could ever begin to be accomplished at something like welding. My brother in law has a certification for welding, and out in rural NE is often called to drive his truck out to some farmer's field, and weld something so they can get back to work. Hope your back is better today, SG.

NV

It was a rainy Sunday so I decided to knock out replacing the rear cross member.

Here is the side welded closed that I had to cut open (cheat) to get the cross member off.





John at Midwest Military really did a great job creating this cross member.





The other end.



I have no idea what this extra hole in the floor of the bed is that does not match up with any of the holes in the cross member.

Today I got home early enough I decided to pull the bed off on the M37. Well....... Bubba got me this time.

I rigged up two big straps under the bed and started to hoist the bed. I went slow and the bed just didn't raise up like I thought it should.

Sure enough what I thought was a hard piece of rubber was a piece of metal jammed in between the support and the frame. At least Bubba only welded it to the frame and support on one side where he could reach from the fender well. After grinding for some time in the tight space I was able to free the bed. I ran out of time though and will have to pull the bed another day.



Here it is finally loose.

Eh, That is just a REALLY hard rubber mount.

keep at it, having recently "been there." I wonder if the square hole in the cross member is something there as part of the stabilization for the bending and machining and drilling of the metal in manufacture.

Hal

NAM VET wrote:keep at it, having recently "been there." I wonder if the square hole in the cross member is something there as part of the stabilization for the bending and machining and drilling of the metal in manufacture.

Hal

That is for the big carriage bolt that attaches to the frame- square lug on the bolt fits in the square hole.

I should have highlighted the hole I was talking about. It's the hole in the bed floor just to the right of the phillips head bolt. The round hole with nothing in it. You can see the cross member in the hole.

I am guessing one of the previous owners drilled for something.

sturmtyger380 wrote:I should have highlighted the hole I was talking about. It's the hole in the bed floor just to the right of the phillips head bolt. The round hole with nothing in it. You can see the cross member in the hole.

I am guessing one of the previous owners drilled for something.

my bed doesn't have that hole,
I was answering Nam Vet's question about the square hole.