Power Wagon mud race truck build

[NakeDiesel]

Not a lot accomplished tonight, managed to get the 6 - 1/2" diameter holes drilled through the frame on the front to mount my tow bar. Need to pickup some 4" long grade 8 bolts tomorrow to get it mounted permanently. Was going to attempt to suck out some mud from inside the frame as well and ended up screwing with my shop vac as it's low on suckage. So along with the bolts, I've got to pick up a new filter for it too.

[NakeDiesel]

Picked up the black pipe fittings I needed to get my final filter/regulator setup for the shop installed so I can hopefully spray a little primer this weekend on my son's truck cab. Also made spacers for the front tow bar for inside the frame to span across the opening on the inside. Spot welded those in place and bolted on the tow bar. Next I need to weld some flat pieces on the openings to close them up.

I was going to mount the new water neck onto the block, but I could only find one metric bolt long enough in my buckets of bolts, so I will have to make a trip to Fastenal tomorrow along with a trip to sears to get a filter for my shop vac.

I did some grinding on where the old body mounts were and got the front ones cleaned up. Started messing with the steering, but got side tracked with feeding the animals and cooking dinner. Hopefully tomorrow I can get that water neck mounted and get further along with the steering and seat.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

Picked up the metric bolts needed to mount the water inlet on the side of the block today, gives me much more room on that side of the engine with this new neck. Spent about 2 hours tonight sucking and blowing mud and dirt out of the boxed frame on the drivers side of the truck. I've gotten all of the dirt and clods out except for about a foot of the frame where the spring perch is to the power steering box. I can't get all of the clods out of the there and the shop vac line won't reach that far due to the narrowing and arch of the frame.

I will clean up the passenger side up tomorrow and then blow everything off.

[NakeDiesel]

Yesterday, I sucked more mud out of the boxed frame rails and now have both of them pretty mud free and ready for the foam filling. When I pull it out of the shop to get the cage built, I'm going to spray the inside of the frame rails with water to wash any additional mud out that I can.

I also started messing with the steering column placement on the truck. Think I have a fairly good idea of how I want to mount it and where. Just need to get it done. Removed the rear shocks yesterday and the front mounting box for the passenger side shock. Once I get the shock towers built, I'll cut out the other one from the support.

I received my shock mount tabs yesterday. Today I ordered more leading supplies from Eastwood as well as the Por15 chassis black and the cleaners for it. Also ordered my 5" hood stack kit from Pure Diesel Power and will pick up the 80' of dom tubing from a supplier in Tulsa on Monday.

I did figure out yesterday that as my gas pedal sits, it's not going to work with my throttle cable. The throttle cable is too short to mount where the pedal is located, if I build a raised area to mount the cable, then the pedal is way out there. So I have some more thinking to do on that.

[NakeDiesel]

With Valentines day, not a lot of progress was made on the truck, but I did upgrade my 18 year old dewalt 3/8" drill to a new 1/2" dewalt drill. The old one was starting to get a burnt smell when in heavy use. I did get one of the holes drilled for the air to go into the cab for the water to air intercooler. I had to widen it further towards the pedals because I couldn't get the hole saw over far enough. Hopefully I will get some time tomorrow but don't think I will get much.

Today I spent time getting the paint bay closed in, plastic down on the floor. Then blew all the dirt and dust out of my son's cab and then we spent about 2 hours cleaning the metal inside the paint bay with waterborn wax and grease remover and tack cloths. We shot a good coverage of 2k primer inside and out on the 93's cab. Now we need to wet sand the inside, jambs, firewall and back of the cab so we can shoot color on those areas before we put it on the 91's frame.

Took the wife to the Darrel Starbirds Custom Car show for valentines day. We hadn't made any plans because we thought she was going to have to work, so we went there since all the restaurants were all packed.

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

While at the car show, I had one of the guys there draw my truck as a cartoon black and white.



The paint bay worked pretty well. I really need a sealed fan to push the air from the bay out the window, so I'm going to find one of those and get that setup here in the future. My fresh air system works well for my own air, but the hose has gotten rotten. I had to fix one break in it before I started and while finishing up, I stepped on it and put another crack in the hose. Guess I'm going to have to break down and buy a new hose for it.

[NakeDiesel]

Spent most of the day at my son's votech open house today, but spent a little time out in the shop working on the piping for the w/a intercooler in the cab. Have it pretty much laid out and setup. Now I just need to make the 4 mounting brackets to the firewall.

[NakeDiesel]

Finished mounting the water to air intercooler tonight. Reused the old mounting brackets I had for the 96 cab. Two worked fine with no changes on the passenger side. The other two I had to drill new holes on one end and shorten them.

After talking to my brother tonight, I'm going to delay building the steering column until we weld the cage in and then use the cross bar that goes across the dash to mount the steering column too. So I'm going to pull everything off the cab and get it removed so I can start welding up all the holes in the cab, sand blast it and replace the last bit of metal I need too on it.

[NakeDiesel]

Didn't do anything on the mud truck tonight, but we shot 2 coats of Mineral Gray with titanium accents onto my son's cab. Turned out pretty good. We do have a few spots on the inside roof of the cab where it peeled some. So those areas will have to be sanded down and redone when I paint the rest of the truck.

Here are a few shots of it:

[NakeDiesel]

[NakeDiesel]

Ended up working till 2 am last night on a failing data process for work, so I didn't accomplish a whole lot this evening. So tonight, I just worked on removing the floor pans, transmission tunnel, and removed the intercooler.

Also started cutting out the other half of the seat bracket that I haven't made yet. Got one piece cut and started cutting the second one and my chop saw blade reached the point of uselessness and needs replaced, so I said the **** with it and called it a night.

Hoping to have the seat bracket made tomorrow, brake booster removed and cab unbolted as well and ready to move it off. Friday evening we are planning on moving my son's cab off of the rotisserie and onto his frame and then I'll put my cab on the rotisserie, weld up all the holes and then get it sand blasted. By then I hope my por15 chassis black will be in from Eastwood so that I can coat the firewall and underside of the cab with it. It's backordered till the 26th of this month. If it's not in by when I need it, I know where I can pickup a quart of por15 in Tulsa up to get that area covered.

No pictures tonight....

[NakeDiesel]

I accomplished a little bit this evening. I finished up the seat bracket for my racing seat. I haven't drilled the holes in the floor yet for it because I want to wait till I get the roll cage built to make sure I have enough head room, but I want it as far back as I can get it.

I received several shipments today, including my hood stack, the condom for it, my lead kit from eastwood, por15 marine clean and por15 prep.
Everything is out or off of the cab now, just 4 bolts left to remove it and then I can start working on all the holes on it.

Lead body solder kit



Hood stack



Hood stack condom

[NakeDiesel]

Por 15 products



Seat brackets