Radical change of plans...maybe

A big part of the process is the planning. I like musing over possiblities in my mind, anticipating problems, formulating solutions, etc. To me that is part of the fun, really. Don't cost anything to change things in my mind. Nonetheless, I like to have a pretty solid plan in place before I even begin a project; have all the steps figured out, all the parts sourced, and costs estimated. I have about 6 solid pages of notes already for this project. It is disruptive and costly to make big changes in mid-stream. Even worse, a project can lose it's way, and become a jumble of half-baked, unrelated ideas and themes. Of course, this is balanced by the need to be flexible and open to new ideas as they present themselves.

I had originally intended to pull the gas motor from the truck, install the electrical components, and that would basically be it. Done. Truck.

But: I have already planned to replace the bed with a fabricated aluminum box to hold the batteries. A 1-piece fiberglass front end would actually be easier to install (and lighter) then to rebuild the front end sheet metal. The trans I hoped to keep in it doesn't look like a good candidate. I want to do a power disc front brake rebuild, so most of the front suspension would not be reused. The rearend is useable, but is 50+ years old, and has the funky (stock) 5 x 5-1/2" bolt pattern hubs. The wheels and tires, which I love, because they are totally period-perfect, are probably too wide and will have a lot of rolling resistance, which is not good.

I am sourcing an S-10 or Ranger for a manual trans to use. Might as well swap in the newer rearend as well. And driveshaft. Somehow using the newer front suspension would be an easy way to get discs and a matching wheel bolt pattern.

So what does all this mean? I am considering doing a full frame swap. WAY more radical than I planned: Get an S-10, rebuild the chassis. Keep the S-10 manual trans, driveshaft, and rearend. Put the F100 cab on it. Install fiberglass front end, and aluminum bed/battery box. New lighter wheels and skinnier tires.

The downside is I would be really only using the cab of the F100, and for what it cost, that seems like a wasteful thing to do. But if I parted out the remainder of the F100, I could probably make back most of the purchase price. These parts are in NICE shape, and hard to find up here.

The good side is that the truck will be much more purpose-built; it would be a better EV. I would probably be time and money ahead in the long run. I have to find some dimensions of S-10 frames and think more about this.
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photo: Ford Motor Co.

Related- Scrapping Mom's Geo

First, a clarification: When I said I pledged money to buy the dragstrip, I didn't mean I sent any money. So no worry.

This past saturday, we scrapped mom's Geo Prism. It had become very rusty underneath, so much that it could literally not be fixed any more. Just putting a wrench on any part underneath would unleash a shower of hunks of rust and loose metal bits. It would not pass safety inspection for the same reason.

So we loaded it up, and mom and I took it down to A&W scrap metal on 9D. The place was crowded, because scrap metals of all types are way up in price right now. I explained to her what we were doing; getting on the scale, then they take the car off with the loader, then they put it on the pile. We get back on the scale, then they gave us some cash.

Nice bit of change for a couple of hours work. Mom said she wasn't too sad to see the car go, although I know she was fond of it while she had it.

I think she had fun. As I asked her: "I'll bet you've never been in here and done this before, right?" So I think she enjoyed it as an adventure. No matter what, it was nice to be with my mom.

Related- Real estate...investment?

I browse and sometimes post on a message board for hot rodders (I will get into that another time) and came upon this: A defunct drag strip in Piney Woods Texas is going to auction. It's 93 acres, with the drag strip, and a few buildings. Apparently in the middle of nowhere; I didn't even check. The person asked about the possibility of message board members all chipping in and buying the property as a cooperative of sorts, with the drag strip jointly owned. Opening bid is $465,000.

Now I'm not going to get into the practical questions of land development, group investments, liability insurance, people to staff the strip, or eventual use restrictions, etc. I don't think this will get that far.

But I do know about the trend towards "special interest" communities. There are certain groups that buy or build houses and communities around a common, usually hobby, interest. For example, people that own small planes build houses next to a small airstrip. I have heard of horse people doing something similar. Awhile back I read about an auto road-racing deal being built where members had a plot, could build a house, and paid common charges for exclusive use of the race course and pit buildings. Oh yes, how could I forget; condos built right on golf course property!

So the precedent is there. Unbeknownst to K, I pledged $10k, or shares equalling 1/50th ownership. I figure we'd get about a solid acre, acre and a half. Build a small house, couple of garages. It's be nice and warm, no snow. Wouldn't really need the duallie or trailer, as I could just fire up, motor over to the strip, and make some runs.

This is probably not what my wife envisioned as a retirement investment property, although I'm sure the Gulf of Mexico couldn't be more than a few hundred miles away. See honey, I'm thinking of you.

Truck photo

If I did this correctly, you will see a photo of the truck. No, this is not my house. This is Tampa Florida, where the truck came from.

If I did this photo thing right, that would be AWESOME!

Motor and trans have to go

I had considered tuning the existing gas motor and fixing all of the other small bloop-blops so I could drive and enjoy the truck for the summer. Instead I have decided to go right into the conversion. I figure, why spend the time, effort, and money to fix up systems that I will be discarding later anyway. It's also, I suppose, good motivation to get going and make progress on the project. Once I pull the motor, trans, fuel system, cooling system, etc, it will be easier to keep going forward than to chicken out and go back. Which I have considered. More than once.

I have a couple of ads out for selling the motor and trans. The motor actually does run really well once it's warmed up. The trans is more of a truck trans, so it's not really suitable for my needs. Perhaps I'll ebay them or something. Ebay, so easy, yet such a hassle.

I wanted to keep the motor in the truck until I have a prospective buyer, so he can hear it run. But how long is that going to be? So now I'm thinking I can just take a movie clip of it running as proof, so I can remove the motor and get on with the build. Maybe put a link of the movie clip right in the motor for sale ads! That would be cool. Wish I knew how to do all of this.

Weighed the truck

I took the truck over to a scale this past saturday to get a baseline, or pre-conversion, weight. The ride itself was a B-I-T-double hockey sticks. The carb is horribly out of tune, so the truck would stall and reluctantly restart at every stop. Very unnerving, even on a sparse saturday morning. One it was up to speed though, it actually did drive like a barely-running 50 year old farm truck.

Passed a cop on the side of the road. I think he envisioned so many violations on my truck that it would put him past his shift ending time, so he didn't come after me. Plus the truck would only do like 35.

The truck weighs a hefty 3350 lbs (with fluids and gas). I had guessed 3250, so I was close, but it is still way over the 2800 shipping weight I had hoped it would somehow magically be. Looks like I will have to pull out all the stops to get the weight out of this thing.