Here’s where the project stands right now. The truck was in very good condition rust wise, but it clearly was a hard worked farm vehicle. The previously posted pic was taken after I had used a hydraulic ram, bars, levers and 2x4’s to remove the most massive of the dents. With the exception of the doors and hood, every panel had been bashed at some point, and the tailgate had a hole punched right through it as if the truck had been backed into something very solid and pointy. The truck was also covered in “farmer fixes”, which involve the use of a stick welder to firmly attach anything that has come loose or been knocked off. This included the running boards which had been firmly welded to the rear fenders. All of this is however OK, as my plan for this build is quite simple. This truck took over 70 years to reach this state, and I plan to leave it looking exactly as it is. The build formula will be:
-Keep the body the way it is
-Use as much as possible from the S10 donour
-Make the interior quiet and comfortable
-Do everything myself and use junkyard or other second hand parts rather than aftermarket stuff
-Keep the cost to an absolute minimum
So far, the work has been the usual prep stuff. I started out with a good cleanout, and was fairly disgusted when I filled an entire, big contractors garbage bag with mouse nests/droppings. It was so bad inside that after scraping, vacuuming and high pressure air blasting I had to soak the entire interior in Nature’s Miracle to get rid of the lingering stench. After that I spent a fair number of hours loosening every nut, bolt and fastener that I could find so that I am not battling stuck hardware when I am trying to concentrate on making parts fit. After that I took a ton of photos, measurements and notes. I also planned the wheelbase and stance that I wanted. I am aiming at keeping the front roughly at or just slightly below original ride height. The rear will hopefully be several inches lower than original as these trucks had a pretty serious rake to them when they were unloaded, and realistically I will never be putting any serious weight in back of this thing.
To get a better picture of the wheelbase and stance I want, I made these “wheels on a stick” out of scrap lumber and cardboard. In addition to making it easy to picture things, its a lot easier on my back to move these things around:
My donour S10 took me a year to find, as I did not want a rust bucket, and was waiting for something that would likely be in good enough repair that I would not have to spend a ton of money replacing parts. This truck had been oil sprayed often, and it only had 129,000 km on it (80,000 miles). It had also been through a safety check about 18 months ago, so hopefully not a lot has gone bad since. Its a 1996, standard cab long bed with pretty much no options (which is exactly what I was hoping for). Waiting so long for a good donour was a double edged sword. While its going to make my life a whole lot easier not having to deal with rusted parts, its gonna break my heart to cut up a perfectly good truck!
With all the measuring and figuring done, I moved on to disassembling the Fargo and doing the few bits of rust repair that it needs.
I started off with the tailgate which was a bit of a mess. In addition to being badly twisted and dented beyond words, it appears that someone had backed into a very solid object which rammed a big hole right in the middle of the tailgate. A little persuasion with a hammer got rid of most of the big dents, and by sticking one end of the tailgate into my shop press and twisting by hand I was able to get it back into shape.
As for that giant hole, here’s what I did. The truck looks exactly like what it is, namely a farm vehicle that was worked hard and then parked in a field for a long time. I am leaving most of the “farmer fixes” in place, as they are part of the truck’s character. In order to patch the tailgate, I did not want a new piece of metal sitting there, looking like I just did the repair. Some of you may have access to old truck panels that you can slice up to make patch pieces, but if you don’t there is a simple source of aged metal available: old agricultural equipment. I have access to a ton of this stuff, and a few months ago I collected a small pile of farm implement sheet metal of various ages. I went out to the pile and found a piece that I believe came off an old seed drill thats about as old as the Fargo, and cut a chunk out to use for my patch.
The section that needed a patch had a bead in it, and I don’t have a bead roller, so I grabbed a piece of MDF and used a carbide bit on a die grinder to carve a groove down the length of the MDF board.
The patch piece was then clamped over the MDF board, and a piece of solid bar was hammered on it to conform to the shape of the groove. The pic shows the rear of the patch piece, which still has some of it’s original red paint on it (that’s the side of the seed drill that was protected from the elements), but the side that I was trying to match to the tailgate’s patina came out way better than I expected. My father was over the other day, and he asked me why I cut a rectangle out of the tailgate, just to weld it back in place. Thats how close the patina from the seed drill matched that of the Fargo.
I still need to do something to rust the weld lines where I welded the patch and the cracks around it, so that the repair looks older. More to follow!
Stephan