A few pictures from Yesterday

I took my DSLR and had time to take a some quick pictures.


Thanks to the awesome folks at Classic Instruments for the custom gauges
Paint by Jerry Sheppard at Custom Auto in Ogden, Utah

Here some shots of the custom dash and gauges:

1947 Dodge Custom Dash and Gauges

1947 Dodge Custom Dash  & Pinstripes

 We cut the pedals from the original cab and are using them for gas and brakes:

Full Interior of the Cab

1947 Dodge interior

Note the Angled metal below the dash to accommodate the 5.9L Cummings Diesel Engine

Here is s shot of the bed.  The Fan is the Transmission cooler

Dec 2014 Update

Well lots has happened in the last few months.  The biggest items is that in July 2014 I finally got frustrated at the lack of any progress on the Dodge so I formed Redbeards Wicked Rides with Ashley Wheelwright and moved the Truck to our shop in Ogden.

You can follow Rebeard's projects on Facebook

There has been lots of small items finished and as of December 18th we are working towards final fitment.  Almost every detail has presented a problem that had to be custom engineered and then parts sourced and fitted to the project.  Many of the original design choices have  proven to be unworkable and required me to get directly involved in proper engineering and re-working.  Including the entire cab "Dog House" which is the metal plates we installed to cover the motor and transmission.

The interior was finished in July by Mike Gallagher at Fabric Magic in Kaysville.  Mike is an old school guy but does great work.  unfortunately we had to remove some of the interior due to the shoddy work on the dog house and it will have to be re-finished.

Here are pictures of the dash and the gauges mounted.

In September Trevor Oldham joined the project and he has experience  in Diesel, he works full time and has come it a few hours a week and completed some of the systems.

The custom electrical harness and fittings are completed including custom toggle switches.  This has been a tedious process from front to back but its finally finished and looks great.
The Fuel system now has a new pump and filters and is fitted in the fuel tank.

We cut the pedals off the original chassis and mounted them to the new chassis and frame.

Because the engine is so tight in the nose there was no room for brakes or fuels or battery so we used a utility box for the battery and fuel and found a way to mount the brake cylinder to the frame.

Rear Dually hits springs

Monday Dec 15 the custom wheel were test fit and they were too large.  We have ordered a new 2" spacer which should allow the rear dually wheels to be mounted properly.  Here is a picture of the front wheel.  Its a 10 lug semi wheel on 35" Goodyear Wrangler M/T tires.




























The remaining items are the Power steering plumbing.  Lower radiator hose and then we can assemble this front end and fire up the engine!

Gorgeous Paint

Even though the fenders were done quickly the Cab and other components were in worse shape than expected from the original body work guys.  They  needed a couple weeks of re-priming and sanding.   After that was done then the process to lay down Candy paint starts.

Several coats of a base primer, because the Candy base is so expensive.  Then several coats of Candy Base, Several Coats of tint to get the perfect 3D color, then 6 layers of clear.

The reasons this takes so long is the no catylizers can be used and the paint has to sit and dry over night. Thus the Candy paint is difficult and took 3 weeks to paint properly.

The pictures look a bit red but the paint is really a beautiful dark orange and has an awesome 3D luster!

As a surprise to me Jerry had included his signature special paint.  He hand painted the dash wood grain to match the bed color.  It looks like real wood, its incredible!

Fenders and Custom Bumper

For the color scheme of the truck I selected black and candy orange as the color scheme.
If you have not read about our problems with the body work please do so here.

After our problems with the body we decided to use Jerry Sheppard of Custom Auto in Ogden.  Jerry is a Paint Master in the Ogden area and has won several awards for his restorations and paint.  However Jerry is very busy and we knew this was going to be a difficult project.  He took some of the parts in Mid March and with in a couple weeks had sanded, block and painted the fenders  of the truck a beautiful black.  He even did a rust coating on the underside of the metal.

His work is first class and we hope to work with him and his body man Steve in the future.

I had also asked Jake to make a custom bumper that followed the curvature of the grille.  He made the bumper in just a couple days and we took it to Ogden Chrome.  The Chrome process is tedious and takes a ton of man hours. Here is the finished product several weeks later.  You will have to decide it its worth it.

Heart of the Beast!!

The engine was done quickly but the custom Turbo took a while, then due to the delays in body and frame we decided to improve the engine.  We added several custom powder coated elements and upgraded the exhaust manifold.  As a result of the changes it took several more weeks for all the color and polished parts to show up.  The transmission was rebuilt to a stage 3 truck pull / Drag transmission.

Here is the engine finished except for intake and exhaust.  Thanks to Courtney and the crew at Outlaw Diesel in Ogden for this killer engine!

Projections are 550 HP and near 1000 ft Lbs of Torque.  I can hear some rubber screaming in pain already.

Wood Bed

Back in November and December of 2013 when I was planning the project a problem surfaced with the wood.  The original wood on this truck was exactly 1" thick hardwood.  Over 60 years later we dont use 1" wood.  For example if you buy a 1" x  wood at Home Depot its really less than 1" .  Its the same with a 2 x4 its not really 2" thick.

After some research I was able to find a solution.  I had to buy raw hardwood lumber from a mill.  The most common use was for hardwood floors but I had to find a size called  5/4 raw hardwood or (1 1/4 ) and then have it cut and planed to fit.  I found a source for raw hardwood and settled on African Mahogany as it should last outside and provide a great look.  I purchased the wood in December but finally by March the guys were ready to plane it and size it in the final Bed.

One of the reasons it look so long was we had to find another 47 Dodge truck that had the flat bed frame intact.  Eventually we found one but it was buried in snow and ice and we had to wait until the weather thawed to go torch the bed frame for the parts we needed.   After Ashley Wheelright found the truck then had to go remove the bed in the back of a yard he was able to get the final dimensions for the bed correct.

Here are the results of this several months of work to get the wood bed to look right.

The Frame work

The only thing that was accomplished in February was the frame.  I was busy with work and did not go up to drive the project.  Unfortunately unless I push the project things seems to come to a stop.

The entire frame was stripped and sent to sand blast then epoxy painted.  Here is when it was finally back.

The rails for the wood bed were also worked on but it would be a while before they are finished.

Custom Suspension

As part of the fame build Jake Winterton was asked to make some custom control arms.  The bottoms looked so cool that I had him make some upper arms to match.  This truck is going to have some awesome suspension.

Custom Control Arms for 1947 Dodge Truck by Jake Winterton

After the control arms were done as I was looking at the shock towers they looked ugly so I asked Jake to make some better ones.  This is what he came up with.

Original Dodge Shock tower

Custom Fabricated shock tower

Here is the Finished Version after paint.

These will get mounted to some Fox Shocks for a cool ride!

Ordering all the parts

At the end of December I ordered all the miscellaneous parts for the truck.  Including all the seals, windshield wiper motors, glass, new steering wheel, and tons of little bolts and clips etc.

Steering column for 1947 Dodge with Nathan

This is the steering column and billet steering wheel that I found thanks to eBay.

I needed a little gremlin to hold the steering column in place and this is what I found.

1936 Dodge Ram Car hood ornament

I also  found a 1936 Dodge hood ornament that I hope to custom mount on the truck.  But it will require some custom machining work to get it to fit as well as re-chrome.

I also ordered the 950 CFM Intercooler and custom Aluminum intake pipe for the engine.  

Body Work and more Body Work

After starting out with high hopes and getting the cab and engine fitted into the 1998 frame in early November the guys started on the body work.

I expected the body work to take 10 to 14 days with the 2 guys doing it.   However  the body work seemed to move very slowly and mostly on weekends.  I came to find out that they were only working part time in the evenings but even at that I expected things to go faster that they were.  Week after week I would stop by and saw little progress on the body panels.

 The owner of DNA was only at his shop part time and it was clear that without direct management the body guys were not putting much effort into the project.  Eventually what really frustrated me is that the body guys logged hundreds of hours against my bill but did very little for way too much money.  It became clear they were shafting me, and I became angry!

After a month and a half at the end of December  they had primed and sanded the cab about 80% of the process to be ready for paint.  For over a month they had been  charging me outrageous hours but not producing much.  At this point I did not what them to continue on the project, they were terminated.

Since this time I have learned that a good body man could do the priming and sanding on this truck in about 8 days for about 1/4 the cost of what I paid for the labor for the pictures below.

Halloween and Metal Work

During late October I was traveling outside the USA and returned just in time to set up our annual Halloween surprises.  For the last 15 years I have celebrated Halloween with lots of music and props, over the years my collection has grown and how includes flaming pumpkins, an 11' anamatronic reaper Demon and lots of props.  A few pictures below.

Since I had been traveling there were numerous business issues to take care of before I could get back to working on the truck project.  

DNA had disassembled the old truck and sent it to media blast, when it came back there were numerous holes in the body that would have required significant repairs.  They are well connected and were able to find a 1946 Cab that had some of the parts we were missing and they disassembled that and sent it to Media Blast.  

Then they wen to work and dissembled the 1998 Dodge 3500 truck and disposed of the unwanted cab and bed.  When the 1946 cab came back from media it had a few holes but was in good shape.  Then came the slow part, working to fit a 1946 cab around a modern Cummins 5.9L engine that was 3 times the size of the original engine while at the same time finding the right placement for the body components.

In order to get all this to fit the Engine had to be removed off its mounts and moved back on the frame about 6" and down about 4".  Then the nose of the cab had to be stretched 5"  to accommodate the big inline Diesel engine.  Jake Winterton fabricated new mounts and welded them in, he also fabricated mounts for the cab to allow it to fit into the frame.  

The Frame itself was too big and had to be cut almost 9" to fit the cab, even after stretching it.  During the process the cab and fenders came off and on the truck many times.

Once everything fit and cleared the Cummings 5.9l 12V engine was sent off to Court and his crew at

Outlaw Diesel Performance, after consulting with Court I decided to upgrade the injectors, timing plate, exhaust, and intake.   When its done I hope it looks something like this.

The Turbo will be upgraded to a 61mm 950cfm Turbo which should result it about 550 HP 850 Ft/lbs of torque in a modern Diesel engine.  

Two weeks after Halloween I was finally able to stop by and see the progress.  While Dan had kept me in the loop this was the first time I could check on the progress myself.  Here are some of the pictures from my visit that day.

This is the 1946 Dodge cab sitting on the 1998 Dodge Frame with  5.9L Cummings engine out.  You can see the doors from the 1947 fit perfectly into the cab of the 1946 model.

On the left side of this picture you can see the 5" extension in the nose.  They used 5" cut from the front of the original hood to weld in place and the made a custom center piece with hinges to attach it together

The fenders required a pie slice to expand them properly to fit on the frame.  Lots of hand pounding and welding here.

This is the passenger side fender that needed the same expansion and the body had some rust as well

The original 1946 dodge used a wood floor board this will need to be replace.  This picture shows the custom cab and engine mounts as well as the work on the floor to attach the body securely.  Eventually a custom shaped cover will be made to fit over this hole.  The engine will come into this opening about 3 to 5".

Progress seemed painfully slow but a fair amout of trial and error was required to get everything to fit