57 Ranchero based on Fairlane?

[jvo]

Good.  Thanks for the comments on the welding.  I ground it down some and tried welding a few spots this afternoon.  Some areas were fine, but most were just god awful, kind of like mig welding without the gas turned on.  So, I think I'll just put a few stitch welds on the un welded areas for peace of mind.  Then maybe seam seal the rest of the weld seam?? Or should I leave it open so water can drain out the cracks? 
Just adding some more progress pics to this thread.  Got the frame inside and painted now. 

Okay, a couple pics of the sway bar and front end crossmember mods I made.  I got a front sway bar from a late model Dodge pickup, 1 1/4 inch, heavy duty sucker.  It might be controversial, but I did a lot of reading about modifications, and I don't want to get into a pissing match about whether its right or wrong.  Its fitted, and I'm gonna try it.  I read that lots of folks heat them and bend the arms to fit their application, with no problems.  The centre of it is untouched, not heated at all, just the arms.
One engineer I read even stated that a sway bar doesn't necessarily have to be made of spring steel, as they never get stressed past their yield point of mild steel anyway.  Regardless, I don't want to get into a bad discussion of this.  Its done, and mounted, and I'm gonna try it.
So, I cut the bottom off the rad support and made a new crossmember that still has access for the bumper bolts on the ends.  The rad support is welded to this crossmember.  The sway bar tucks up under the rad support quite close to the original crossmember, and I fabricated a set of mounts for it.  I will take a few better pics in the next couple days with my camera, that show a little more detail.  That's that.  Thanks for looking.

Forgot to add, I kept the front suspension from the rusty Ranchero around just so I could easily work on the sway bar, and rack & pinion steering mounts.  Took up less space in the garage, and its all mounted to the new frame now, or at least it will be tomorrow.

[jvo]

So, frame was blasted and painted with KBS rust control.  Got it up on all 4 wheels today so I can push it outside, as I work in one stall in the garage, my tools take up the rest of the space.  For the body on the rotisserie to come back in, the frame has to go out.
And, there are a shot or two of the rear swap bar from the Tahoe.  It is a hollow sway bar, 1 1/16 thick, but my racing buddy tells me the hollow ones are not as still as the solid sway bars.  I think I might mount it up backwards, haven't decided yet, per the picture.  Doesn't have to be right away anyhow. 

[jvo]

I started another post in the suspension section, asking about the 79 T bird spindles and Aerostar springs.  Don't know if you can tell from the pics, but there is excessive camber, wheels out a ways on top.  I might have to move the mounting points in a little for the upper a arms to get it into perspective.  I think I read somewhere that some spindles cause this to happen.
In the shot from the rear of the car, you can see the right front tire is leaning out a bit on top.  The front is not set proper yet anyway, as I have a 14 inch bias tire on the left front, and a 15 inch radial on the right front.  The rears are still original Ranchero 14 inchers. 
The 79 T bird rotors and calipers actually fit over the one 14 inch rim I have with a large hole in the centre.  I need to get another 15 inch rim for mockup for the front, and a matched set of tires,  so I can take some decent measurements. 

[lalessi1]

I think a lot of your camber issues will go away when the car is at ride height. My car has the same spindles I think and it was lowered around 3" when I got it. I raised it back  to stock and noticed the positive camber issue. In my case there were an excessive amount of shims that had been installed to correct the issue at the lower ride height.

[jvo]

Okay, now for the fun stuff.  I am a little ahead of myself on this part of the project, but it has been bugging me all winter, so I just had to dive in and do it.  I whacked the top off the drivers side Ranchero door, in order to fit the vent window assembly to it.  I wanted to see just how much work it was going to be, and how similar the retractable donor door I have is similar to it.  That is what the vent windows are from.
First pic, is of the back end of the Ranchero door, (brown), and the white retractable door.  The retractable door will not close into the B pillar on the Ranchero, and I want  to retain the stock Ranchero B pillar of course, as it will help with alignment of the back wall of the cab.  By using the Ranchero B pillar, the side to side alignment should be bang on.  If I used B pillars from a donor car that fit the retractable door, I would have to worry about side to side alignment as well as front to back alignment.  Been there on a model A truck project.  I want to keep it as simple as possible.
This set of pics shows the difference between the Ranchero door, and the retractable door.  There are subtle differences, and I circled the areas that I have to modify and/or use to mount the vent window. 
You can see in the one pic, the hole on top that is circled with a sharpie, is on the Ranchero door, but it is there for the one adjusting bolt for the vent window for the hardtop cars.  Ford obviously used this one inner panel for all models.  I just had to mark and cut the hole in the outer part of the Ranchero inner door frame.  Hope that makes sense.

[jvo]

Actually, the second pic in this post shows the hole I talked about in the post above.  This fit is very preliminary, but it looks like its going to be a winner.  I have to modify the "lands" I made to mount the vent window assembly slightly, and I had to elongate some holes from my original measurements, but overall, it looks like its gonna work quite nicely. 
You can see on the upper part of the vent window, on the inside, that I will have to cut back the door frame slightly for clearance.  The top of the vent window needs to go in a bit more, but it will not until I made the clearance cut on the door frame. That is one of the big conundrums I have had with this project.  I don't know yet how to cut and rebuild the door frame so I can put weatherstripping along the top of the window frame that will seal "just right".  Will have to play with that after most of the modifications are done and the new roof is in place.  I am not going to cut the Fairlane sedan roof off till I get the quarter panels welded to the back of the cab.  I'll try to build all that with the present roof in place so as to retain as much structural integrity as possible.  So far, the plan is to do the roof after the doors, cab back wall, and quarter panels are in place.

[jvo]

That's about all for now.  As I stated above, I am a bit ahead of myself on this, but I just had to whack it apart to see how it was going to work.  I am glad I did this, as it seems now that it might just be easier than I thought.  Lots of fiddling around with mounting points to get the vent window sitting just right, and I'm sure there will be some nightmares down the road when I get the door skin repaired and mounted.  The front end of the door should be just fine, as long as I don't modify the inner door structure. 
That's one of the things that got me started on this in the first place.  Once I read that all 57's are the same from the cowl forward, I knew I wouldn't have to modify the front end of the doors, only the window opening area. 
I hope to be able to use the Ranchero window regulators, so they just bolt in.  Should be able to, I think.  We'll see.

I took the back wall of the cab to the sheet metal shop last Friday so they can measure up and bend me new panels.  My brake isn't wide enough to do those panels, as they are over 4 feet wide.  I will be replacing all the back wall with new sheet metal from about 4 inches below the rear window.  Its all very rusty back there, and pretty simple, just time consuming.

[jvo]

I'm kinda jumping around on this project, but I had the parts for the back wall of the cab, so I decided to start putting them in, mostly because I couldn't stand looking at the rusty mess any longer.  The whole back wall of the cab needs to be replaced, and my sheet metal man did a really nice job of bending up 3 pieces just like the factory did it. 
Out with the old rusty piece, shown leaning against the Ranchero roof, and in with some new stuff.
I am cutting out the back wall where you can see the paint scraped off in the one pic.  There are a bunch of small dents in the old panel, and its the same amount of welding if I weld it in up top, or weld it in down below.  I will replace pretty much the whole panel, have nice new sheet metal with no dents. 

[jvo]

The side panels are the inside of the B pillars, the pieces with the oblong access holes in them.  ( the holes I posted some time back asking why those holes were there)  I made new side panels and they are 2 inches longer, so as to facilitate moving the back wall of the cab back 2 inches, to stretch the inside of the cab, and take up two of the 4 inches that the Fairlane will be longer.  I don't want to lengthen the Ranchero bed any more than I absolutely have to, and this will help that issue, along with giving a little more interior room.
The last pic is one of the side panels I used for a pattern to make the two newer and longer panels.

[jvo]

Lots and lots of measuring and standing beside it scratching my head, trying to make sure I don't make any mistakes.  I sure hope it all fits the car when I get it put together. 

[jvo]

I still have to blast the B pillars and clean them up some.  They are not in bad shape, other than the bottom couple inches and I can deal with that. 
I can't weld the side panels to the back wall just yet, and I just noticed while looking at these pics, that I forgot to punch holes in the flanges for plug welds.  Oh well, I can still separate them and drill some, just have to do it the hard way now.
There was a bolt in each side panel when I started on the old ones, and I don't know if the factory did that, or if someone did it as a repair to hold the rusty panels together.  Regardless, I put a bolt in each side, and won't weld them till I put the back wall on the Fairlane floor pan.  That way I can move the cab back wall back and forth slightly if I need to, then plug weld the side panels on, once the B pillars are lined up with the doors, and everything is where it needs to be. 
So, the old junk is removed, and I have the new panels in place, and the back wall is spot welded along the top.  I'll grind the spots down tomorrow, and run a nice tig bead across there, then metal finish it.  It is a 16 gauge panel, so I hope to keep the warpage to a minimum, but I can always use the shrinking disc on it, if I need to.
Now I can throw the old rusty cab wall outside so I don't have to look at it.  I will keep it around for reference till I get all the new stuff welded in place, then it can go to China to be reincarnated into some other junk. And one last pic of the junk before we started.

[Jeff Norwell]

John, I never mentioned I got the rack all delivered safe and sound.Thank you very much

Jeff

[jvo]

No problem, glad you could use it.  Did you see the post I put in the morning coffee thread about the power brake unit in Hamilton Kijiji?  No price, but someone should be able to use it. Just thought I would mention it.

[jvo]

THIS DOOR THING.  Well, my friend Jer and I made the trip down to Alvin Stadel's in Montana and got a Fairlane passenger door.  It is gonna work.  I wish I had met Alvin a lot sooner.  He is a wealth of knowledge.  He told me the Fairlane door from a two door sedan is the same as the retractable driver's side door that I have and he was right.  Well, its not quite the same, his was yellow and mine was white, but other than that, they are identical. 
Very glad I made this trip.  I was going to use the Ranchero doors, with Fairlane door skins.  Turns out the Ranchero doors are 1/2 an inch taller from the bottom of the door skin to the top of the door, than the Fairlane doors.  I'm glad I found this out before I got too far into it.  I sure don't want to section half an inch out of the door height.  So now I have two good doors that I can use, except that the door posts that they close into are not the same. 
I could modify the ones I have from the four door sedan, but they might not be perfect, and might not seal properly against the weather stripping if I make even a slight error. 
So, I contacted Alvin and I'm gonna make another trip to his place again in a few weeks time.  He has the Fairlane two door sedan that I can take the door posts from that will work with these doors.  I should have removed them when we were there, but oh well, I thought I could make these work.  It was a fun trip last time anyway.

So, the pics.  On the left side, is the brown Ranchero door.  The back end is sort of ribbed, and the door post is as well.  The Fairlane doors will not close into the Ranchero door post, and they also will not close into the Fairlane four door sedan door post, on the far right. 
The white door is from a retractable, the yellow door in the middle is the Fairlane sedan door that still has the window frame bolted on.  That's the one I got from Alvin. Nice door.  The yellow door on the far right is from the four door sedan.  You can see the difference in the way the weather stripping is attached to the doors, and the different shapes. 
I need the Fairlane door posts that fit the doors. 
I could cut the back end of the four door sedan doors, and weld them to the Fairlane doors, and they would close and seal properly, but that's a lot of work, and if I ever get into a wreck and need a new door, I would have to build a door like it from scratch again.
Way easier to drive back down to Alvin's and cut the door posts off his Fairlane two door sedan.

[jvo]

In this pic, you can see the measurement of the door height.  The Fairlane door is 26 1/8 high from the bottom of the door skin to the top edge of the rounded over part of the door on top. 
The Ranchero door is 26 5/8 high from the bottom of the door skin to the same point where I would have to cut the window frame down flush to make it work. 
Definitely don't want to go there.  Wish I had found that out before I repaired the rust on the bottom of the Ranchero door, and hacked the window frame off the top of it.  OH well.
This is quite a learning experience. 
I am still sort of dead in the water till I get the proper door posts.  I have the trim I got from Alvin, but I can't start mounting panels till I get the door posts, and fit them to the car in the proper place. 
Hope I'm not boring everyone, but I want to document all aspects of this build.