Its been about 6 weeks since I posted, so here is an update.
Next on my list was sorting out the steering column and brake pedal, but to do this I needed a seat in place so that I can test everything for access and comfort. So my dilemma was which seat to use. Here were my 2 choices:
Option A is the stock bench seat, which as you can see needs just a little bit of work (and money). Option B is the seat that came with the donour S10. This seat is comfortable and free, but it’s “period incorrect”. My goal is to drive around in a cool, reliable old truck, and I had originally wanted it to look as “period correct” as possible. This however comes with a price and adds complexity. If I am gonna go through the time and money to fix up the old seat, what about the steering column? I plan to use the existing S10 wiring harness, and the existing S10 steering column has a giant plug with a zillion wires in it which will plug right in and work (and it's free). The bad part is that it’s clearly decades newer than the original. Since I am not doing body work & paint on this truck, its no big deal to make changes later on, so I decided that for now I will use the S10 seat and column.
The first thing I did was toss some plywood onto the existing Fargo seat support (or whatever you call that apron that’s welded to the floor), and then tossed the S10 bench seat on top of the plywood. I got in and sat down, and thought “geez this is comfortable”. Visually it looked a bit high, but when I checked out the dimensions of the Fargo bench seat I realized that the seat bottom is extremely tall, and is within a fraction of an inch of the S10 seat’s height. The next question was how to attach the seat. The simplest way for me was to cut a couple of 12 gauge plates to bolt to the apron, and add attachment points to give me my desired angle. Here’s how it ended up:
Each plate is bolted down in 7 spots, and then the S10 bench seat is held down by four 7/16th bolts. This is a far cry from the original bench seat which was held in place by not much at all. The original seat bottom sat on a couple of pins in the apron (not bolted down, just held there by the miracle of gravity), and the seat back was held to the cab by 4 tiny screws at the hinges. I may try to reupholster that original bench seat myself in the future, and if I do I can remove the 2 plates and pop the original seat in place within minutes.
With the seat in place, I could now focus on the steering column and the brake pedal assembly. I like the bolt on design of the first generation S10 brake pedal assemblies, but after a ton of phoning wreckers and checking local yards I came up empty handed. There are zero first gens around here in the wrecking yards. This left me with either using the donour S10 assembly, or fabbing something up from scratch. I’m quicker at modifying something than I am at creating something new, so here’s what I did.
First step was to cut out the old assembly, which actually was more work than I realized. The S10 dash assembly is made of layers of steel in weird shapes, all spot welded together and to the firewall. A few quick measurements revealed that I would not be able to use the combination brake pedal & steering column assembly as the column would be pointed in an inconvenient way, so I separated the column portion of the assembly and got to work on the brake pedal section of the assembly.
Here I extended the assembly downwards with a piece of plate steel (you’ll see why shortly). Like everything I did at this stage it's just tacked in place.
I spent a lot of time playing around with the brake assembly. I mean a LOT of time. The Fargo cab and front end is a tapered shape, unlike the more boxy AD truck, so clearances quickly become problems. Finding a good spot for both the pedal assembly inside the cab, and the master cylinder and booster under the hood took a lot of measuring and fiddling around. I finally found a good spot where things seem to work nicely with the exception of the brake pedal arm. The pedal arm is just a steel bar though, so I can make adjustments on its shape. I temporarily bolted the brake assembly to the firewall and got to work on the column.
Did I say I spent a ton of time on the brake assembly? Well that column was far worse! First problem: That S10 seat (which is darn comfortable) puts my butt in a position where the original steering wheel is slightly offset to the right. This would drive me nuts, so a minor shift of the column to the left would be needed. Of course the dash is stamped in a shape that makes using the factory mounting holes a little challenging. So out came the original dash brace (which was both bolted AND brazed into position!) and a new brace had to be made to stiffen the dash and support the column. The Fargo dash also has tapered shapes, it rises up in the middle top and it comes out (towards the bench seat) in the middle face. There isn’t a 90 degree angle to be found anywhere, so the first brace I made was pure misery to do. I spotted some problems with the first brace, and spent an entire day on an improved version (2.0), and at the end of a long day I had it in place and was pleased with how things should bolt up. While playing around with it, I noticed that it was less rigid than I thought it would be, and on closer inspection I realized that I had grabbed the wrong sheet of metal that morning and had done the whole thing using the wrong gauge of steel.
I was a bit dejected for a moment, but it occurred to me that 90% of the day had been spent measuring, trimming, figuring angles etc., so cutting fresh pieces wouldn’t be that big a deal (I now had a bunch of rather nice templates to simply trace out onto the heavier plate and cut out). Thank god I only tacked stuff together.
The next day I got to work on version 3.0 and after a couple of hours it was installed in the dash. Version 3.0 was way too big, but I did this on purpose as its easier to cut it down than to make it bigger, and figuring out the additional gussets and bracing to tie the column brace to the brake assembly is easier to do in place.
The length of the S10 column turned out to be rather inconvenient for a Fargo. The end of the column sits inside the cab, and the factory u-joint cannot be reused as the bend angle exceeds its limits. The best orientation for the S10 column turned out to be the same orientation as the original Fargo column (with just a slight shift to the left to line it up nice with the driver seating position). This also provided me with a nice, straight run from the base of the column to the steering box, with only one minor obstruction (the power steering pump low pressure steel fitting). Actually there was one other obstruction: the engine oil cooler lines. This however proved to be an easy fix, as I followed Joedoh’s instructions in his “Bickle” build and got rid of the entire assembly. It took me 30 or 40 minutes to get rid of the entire assembly, and this freed up some valuable space:
Here’s how I tackled the column in the Fargo:
First thing was to make a template of a u-joint to allow me to make precise measurements. I attached the wooden u-joint (shaped at the 22 degree angle that the real one will sit at), and bolted to the bottom of the column. Then I hung the column onto column support 3.0 and adjusted it until I got the best fit. It was still inconvenient as the end of the u-joint was right at the firewall, but I had a solution in mind for this (more on this later). I had to bolt column support version 3.0 to the existing holes in the lower dash edge, and the bolt heads looked ugly and didn’t line up nicely with the column (due to the slight offset to the left that I wanted), so I made a plate with hidden studs so that bolt heads don’t show. I also extended the plate so that it hides the fact that I have offset the column to the left.
With the column hung on support 3.0 I could sort out the lower support. I had to remove the factory S10 lower support that’s welded to the tube as it interfered with the brake pedal. Here is the column during this mock-up. The sturdy section of plate that I had earlier added to the bottom of the brake pedal assembly was meant to provide a secure attachment point for the lower column:
After this mock-up I did a final test (I sat behind the wheel and checked comfort, alignment, fit, etc) and then cut and tacked the lower support pieces, and trimmed unnecessary sections of 3.0 away (thereby creating version 4.0). Final welding and some more gussets will be added later, but this got me to the point where I could continue other work that required final placement of the column & brake assemblies. Here they sit:
I did some test wiggling, and then some test heaving and was very pleased with the results. The brake and steering assemblies are solid as a rock. The dash, firewall, steering column and brake pedal assembly are all bolted to each other in a triangulated fashion with heavy steel plate & brackets, and the Samsonite Gorilla couldn’t budge this thing (I may have dated myself a bit with that reference!). I’m hoping that 4.0 will be the final version, as I don’t want to end up at version 6.3 (unlike somebody on this board who shall remain nameless, but whose current build name rhymes with “pickle”!!!).
Next I had to deal with the brake pedal. It was a little too far out from the firewall, and of course it hit the steering column part way through its range of travel and its overall shape was just not right. The pedal arm is just a nice thick steel bar so I figured I would persuade it into shape with a torch, a vice, a hydraulic press and a BFH. I worked away at it for a while, but my torch set is one of those mini-portable jobs that takes a long time to heat up a thick bar, and of course it empties out awful quick. I realized that this was not going to work so I went to my fallback plan: the old “slice & dice”. Using a thin cutting wheel on the 4 ½ inch grinder, along with my bench vice and the aforementioned BFH I managed to get it into a shape that curves around the steering column and sits at a safe and comfortable height. I still need to do some welding and grinding, after which I will post a pic.
One thing that went well was the gas pedal. I had a box of leftover parts from my last build in which I used Blazer parts for my 56 Chevy wagon, and it turned out to be wonderfully simple to use one of those assemblies. I simply added a flat plate to the underside of the factory plate (which is shaped like an amoeba!) and did some fine tuning of the pedal arm shape.
Due to the shape of the Fargo cab, this assembly will bolt directly to the inside face of the firewall, without the need for a specially shaped mount (I think!).
After having done the steering and brake assembly swap, I have to say that it was the most difficult work on this project so far. Unfortunately there is still lots to do under that dash, so I see a lot of upside down squirming around in that cab in my future.
More to come!