[Scott2]

I never liked the way the 1951 lever door handles hung down and obviously there can be issues with the latches and the doors staying closed. Also prefer one piece windows and planned to upgrade to Altman latches. When I looked into the new latches I realized that you can no longer lock the drivers side with the Altman's from the inside and there isn't a stock lock on the outside.

So I did a bunch of research and finally went this path:

- '49 doors with one piece windows, door handle mounts reworked to use '52-'54 pushbutton handles by welding up the old handle holes, cutting new holes, and transplanting the handle reinforcements inside of the door
- Used the Altman latches for '52 - '54 doors to get the lever action latch that works with the pushbutton
- New '52 - '54 pushbutton handles with new lock cylinders for the pushbuttons so the doors will lock with a key
- also identified some actuators and a remote from Watsons StreetWorks that hook right up to the Altman latches if I want to add this feature later.

Since this approach eliminates the stock striker plate issues - you just use the Altman plate which works on all the '47 - '54 trucks as far as I know. Here's a couple of pics - let me know if any of this doesn't make sense the way I explained it.

First pic is the rotating handle action and pushbutton versions of the Altman latches. Next, a fellow truck guy in Colorado Springs had extra doors and let me cut the handle mount area out so I could get the reinforcements on the inside. Then a pic of the older style inner reinforcement that you have to remove. More pics next post.