Rebirth of Monster Mudder

Finished getting the passenger side inner fender bolted and screwed in tonight. That's about all I got done on the truck, but we did get my son's cab off of the d150 frame via my cherry picker and a 2x12 board and onto my rotisserie. Now he can get busy sanding and cleaning up the inside.

Spent a little time on the mud truck tonight and then had to go start working on taxes. But I did get the interior kick panels removed (had to cut off the heads on some of the screws). I also started making the template for the drivers side floor board. Started with poster board to get the shape and then cut it out again in foam board to make sure it's correct in the fitment.

Take 2 on the drivers side floor board. Found out that the board doesn't go down in the groove, it goes on top. Guess the groove is a left over from when the military versions had wooden floor boards.

Finished getting the drivers side floor board mounted and bolted down. Bolted the transmission tunnel down as well. Had my son design the template for the passenger side of the truck starting with poster board, then he moved on to a foam board template and then we cut it out of 11 gauge sheet steel. Drilled the holes and made the slight bend in it.

Talked to the kids today and they are fine with me moving up to class 3 with the truck and so now I don't have to build a huge wildly bending exhaust pipe to make the truck legal for class 2. They just won't get to ride in my truck during the races and save some weight/room because I won't need a passenger side seat.

I will have to get drive shaft loops built to be legal for class 3.

Tomorrow I'm going to start building the bracket for my drivers seat. The rear fenders will be in on Tuesday and the steering column kit will be here Wednesday.

Drivers side floor board mounted



Foam template for passenger side.



Floor board marked out on the sheet steel



My son playing with the soap stone



Passenger floor board mounted.



With not needing a passenger seat, I now have room in the cab for my w2a ice box.



Setting the seat up to start taking measurements for the support frame.

Today was a lazy day, we got a dusting of snow on the ground and I enjoyed sitting in the house with the wife drinking coffee and watching a little boob tube. I did make it out to the shop and we did several trial runs at seat height for the drivers side and finally decided to make the seat 7 1/2 inches from the floor of the truck. We have the tall side cut out and my son welded it together.

While he was doing that, I worked on getting the window channel taken apart. The upper portion is in really good shape. The lower portion and the center divider are not. I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to fix all the rusted out metal on the lower side.

Upper window channel





Center divider





Lower Window channel

Well, UPS found my house with the little snow we have on the ground, but FedEx declined to delivery my two boxes of steering column parts. I hate fedex, I've drawn them maps and have to call them just about every time they have a delivery to my house and I end up searching for where they threw it.

Didn't get much accomplished, tied up with work again. But did get my rear fenders in so I had to unbox them and hang one to make sure they got them right this time. They did and I think they will work pretty good. Managed to get one bolt hole drilled and the center bolt in.

Got home late today, but Fed Ex finally delivered my steering wheel and column kit. I spent the little time out in the shop looking over the kit and figuring out what else I would need to pick it up.

Then I drilled the rest of the holes on the inside of the fender on the drivers side to finish bolting it on. I ended up having to cut off the lip on the inside so I had room for the washers and nuts. With 7 bolts holding it on, it's pretty stable, but I still plan on adding supports both front and back on it.

Spent the afternoon making fender braces for the drivers side rear fender. Took some 1 1/2 x 1/4 strap to run along the face of the fender and bolted that onto it. Then welded some square 1x1 square tubing on angle where it was square with the bed to the plate. After that I welded to flat tabs on the bed side of the square tubing for bolting it onto the bed. I have both the front and back braces built for the drivers side, the passenger side should move a little faster now that I've built and figured out one side.

With figuring out how I was mounting the rear fenders yesterday, the passenger side went pretty quick getting it mounted and supported.

So today I mounted the passenger fender and built one of the radiator hold downs. Tomorrow I'm going to build the other radiator hold down, build the support for the battery boxes to mount too and finish up the seat mount. Then I can get to work on the steering. The back of the truck is almost finished and ready to be taken back apart for sand blasting and paint.

Radiator hold down bracket really looks crooked in this picture but it really isn't



Support as I was making it.



Passenger side fender supports







Shots of the truck with the rear fenders mounted.... I've used a boat load of 5/16 x 1" bolts

Busy day out in the shop today. I made the last hold down for the radiator and then removed the transmission cooler and brackets and then the radiator so I could drill the last hole needed for the front brace on the fender support on the passenger side. I then cut out a plate for my main power switch and mounted it on the back of the truck with some self tapping screws then drilled and test mounted the switch. After that, I had the spacing needed to mount the battery trays and my water to air intercooler ice chest on the two 1x3 rectangular tubing segments. That finished up what I had to do with the bed of the truck, so then we spent an hour completely dismantling the bed.

Then I moved to the front of the truck and welded on the brackets that I've needed to weld for a while for the grill/fender support in the front and the rear fender support. Once those were welded on, the front fenders, inner fenders, grill shell and hood were removed. Now just the cab is left on the frame. This will make it easier getting the steering column built I hope.

Second radiator support



Rear battery and ice box support bars







Main Power Disconnect





Everything in the bed mounted and ready to tear it down







Front fender brace welded



Rear Fender brace welded, still need to put a gusset on these braces



Disassembling

just curious but why two batteries? no alternator?

No alternator, thus 2 batteries in back. I don't have a drive belt up front anymore. I did that a couple of years ago to shave more weight off the front of the truck. I tried it with one battery in back and it just didn't have enough amp capacity to crank over a cold engine with high timing. For electrical draw, I'm running the single radiator fan, 2 trans cooler fans, my water pump for the engine, water pump for w2a intercooler, fuel pump, trans brake and gauges.

Not a lot accomplished tonight, managed to get the 6 - 1/2" diameter holes drilled through the frame on the front to mount my tow bar. Need to pickup some 4" long grade 8 bolts tomorrow to get it mounted permanently. Was going to attempt to suck out some mud from inside the frame as well and ended up screwing with my shop vac as it's low on suckage. So along with the bolts, I've got to pick up a new filter for it too.

Picked up the black pipe fittings I needed to get my final filter/regulator setup for the shop installed so I can hopefully spray a little primer this weekend on my son's truck cab. Also made spacers for the front tow bar for inside the frame to span across the opening on the inside. Spot welded those in place and bolted on the tow bar. Next I need to weld some flat pieces on opening to close it up. I was going to mount the new water neck onto the block, but I could only find one metric bolt long enough in my buckets of bolts, so I will have to make a trip to Fastenal tomorrow along with a trip to sears to get a filter for my shop vac.

I did some grinding on where the old body mounts were and got the front ones cleaned up. Started messing with the steering, but got side tracked with feeding the animals and cooking dinner. Hopefully tomorrow I can get that water neck mounted and get further along with the steering and seat.

That is a sick toy! Good job man!

Is the np205 you're running have a 23 spline or 29 spline shaft?

It's a ford divorced np205 transfercase, so if I remember from 3 or 4 years ago when I was researching them, it's 32 spline. I upgraded all the yokes to use 1410 u joints. The u joint at the th400 is a 1350, but all of the other's are 1410's now for the drive shafts.

Here is a pic from the back of when I installed it.

Picked up the metric bolts needed to mount the water inlet on the side of the block today, gives me much more room on that side of the engine with this new neck. Spent about 2 hours tonight sucking and blowing mud and dirt out of the boxed frame on the drivers side of the truck. I've gotten all of the dirt and clods out except for about a foot of the frame where the spring perch is to the power steering box. I can't get all of the clods out of the there and the shop vac line won't reach that far due to the narrowing and arch of the frame.

I will clean up the passenger side up tomorrow and then blow everything off.

Yesterday, I sucked more mud out of the boxed frame rails and now have both of them pretty mud free and ready for the foam filling. When I pull it out of the shop to get the cage built, I'm going to spray the inside of the frame rails with water to wash any additional mud out that I can.

I also started messing with the steering column placement on the truck. Think I have a fairly good idea of how I want to mount it and where. Just need to get it done. Removed the rear shocks yesterday and the front mounting box for the passenger side shock. Once I get the shock towers built, I'll cut out the other one from the support.

I received my shock mount tabs yesterday. Today I ordered more leading supplies from Eastwood as well as the Por15 chassis black and the cleaners for it. Also ordered my 5" hood stack kit from Pure Diesel Power and will pick up the 80' of dom tubing from a supplier in Tulsa on Monday.

I did figure out yesterday that as my gas pedal sits, it's not going to work with my throttle cable. The throttle cable is too short to mount where the pedal is located, if I build a raised area to mount the cable, then the pedal is way out there. So I have some more thinking to do on that.

With Valentines day, not a lot of progress was made on the truck, but I did upgrade my 18 year old dewalt 3/8" drill to a new 1/2" dewalt drill. The old one was starting to get a burnt smell when in heavy use. I did get one of the holes drilled for the air to go into the cab for the water to air intercooler. I had to widen it further towards the pedals because I couldn't get the hole saw over far enough. Hopefully I will get some time tomorrow but don't think I will get much.

Today I spent time getting the paint bay closed in, plastic down on the floor. Then blew all the dirt and dust out of my son's cab and then we spent about 2 hours cleaning the metal inside the paint bay with waterborn wax and grease remover and tack cloths. We shot a good coverage of 2k primer inside and out on the 93's cab. Now we need to wet sand the inside, jambs, firewall and back of the cab so we can shoot color on those areas before we put it on the 91's frame.

Took the wife to the Darrel Starbirds Custom Car show for valentines day. We hadn't made any plans because we thought she was going to have to work, so we went there since all the restaurants were all packed.


















While at the car show, I had one of the guys there draw my truck as a cartoon black and white.



The paint bay worked pretty well. I really need a sealed fan to push the air from the bay out the window, so I'm going to find one of those and get that setup here in the future. My fresh air system works well for my own air, but the hose has gotten rotten. I had to fix one break in it before I started and while finishing up, I stepped on it and put another crack in the hose. Guess I'm going to have to break down and buy a new hose for it.