1961 Rust-O-Mod Pickup Build thread

Some pics of widening the wheelwells.



I used panel bonding adhesive to glue flanges to the bed sides where I didnt want to burn the exterior paint.   Guess only time will tell if it'll hold up.

The bed came out pretty good - in my humble opinion....

I like that it looks almost stock even though it's a ton of custom work.

Somewhere I have more pics of building it - can't locate them in my mess of files right now.  Will post when I locate them.

From that second pic, looks like you’re in a somewhat precarious position...

The bed looks Fantastic!!!

Thanks Vanny - appreciate the good word.

Luckily I had my supervisor on site to keep things safe!

Is he the one who took the pic???

Found the pics of constructing the bed.  



These little corner pieces were the most tedious parts.



A spritz of primer to see how it's turning out.



The fuel filler neck is going in the flat area with yellow marks.

The fuel filler neck needed to be much higher with the tank sitting on top of the old bed surface.  Was thinking to incorporate it into the wheelwell somehow but this turned out to be simpler.  A pretty straight shot to the inlet of the tank.

A few more shots of fabbing the bed supports.

The front part of the bed opens up like a hood or trunk.  I'm going to keep the air ride stuff, the battery and the spare tire under there.





I originally got these hood hinges from a 90's Chevy pickup.  Couldn't figure out how to get them to work out right.



These hinges were from a Jeep Gladiator pickup.  They were cheap and seemed like they'd fit the space pretty well.  I think any hood hinges of this type would have worked OK.  I had to modify the pivot arms a little bit to get it to open up wider/higher.

Great skills! Nice work!!!

Here are some shots of the "trunk" with the decking on it.

Yes, I was walking on it! Stress test....


Open!  Says me....




The springs on the hood hinges are strong enough to hold it open really well but still closes easily.  Was a little afraid the deck would be too heavy.

It has been a while since I've posted any progress on my pickup.  We bought a cabin over in Colorado and spend the summer working on it and on the property.  So many projects...!

One fun thing I did was build a bridge.  Actually didn't get it completed but the structure is all in.  Here are some photos - just to show I wasn't just napping all this time.



I built it from dead timber found on the property.  Mixed concrete with a cheapo Harbor Freight mixer and generator.  Milled the logs using a Granberg chainsaw mill.









Added two more beams in the center after this photo.  The deck boards will be 2 1/2" thick.  I'm milling them with the chainsaw.



Too much snow up there now to finish so I'm back in Moab.  Back to cutting metal - instead of wood.  Will post more Econo progress photos in the coming weeks.

Nice work! Do you hire out?

Maybe... But I'm so slow that at $10 per hour everything will end up costing $10,000.

OK.  Back to the P'up progress.

Here's the latch I used for the bed/hood.  It's one of those generic VW latches sold for hot rods.





I have the release cable tucked up under the passenger bed side.  Don't have a pic of that yet.