My slow upgrade/ customization

[jake97056]

First off I’d like to say hello. Been wanting to own a deuce for a very long time so about a year ago I finally bought one.

When I went to look at the truck it hadn’t ran in 7 years but with some fresh batteries and som coaxing it came to life. Two months later I went back, checked the brakes, aired the tires up, made sure all the lights worked, and drove it from it’s resting place the 600 miles back home. The truck never missed a beat and drove better than a lot of vehicles I ever owned. Ran 50 mph the whole way home in the middle of summer through eastern Washington to Montana. Best $3,500 I ever spent.

Fast forward a month and an operator error ended up with a truck running though a garage. Which led to the truck being stripped of its white paint ( the previous owner used it for a water truck) and painted flat tan ( will be redoing it as I’m not happy with the result, maybe a winter camp type theme).

 

[jake97056]

Sorry it only posted half of what I had typed.

Anywho, from there I installed bucket seats out of an escort, flipped the hubs, and did othe minor things here and there.

Right now I am recentering Lmtv wheels for the truck to put MVTs on. I’ll detail that in a later post.

My plans are to eventually add a camper, upgrade the braking system, add power steering, and do anything that needs to be done to make this thing a safe truck that can at least cruise at 65 down the highway ( I know many people think that is a crazy idea).

 

[jake97056]

Those are a couple from out driving around with the truck. I go out exploring with it a lot.

The next couple are of the summit racing heater I installed

 

[jake97056]

These are the only pictures I took while flipping the hubs. If anyone wants any pictures or more detail on anything just ask. I haven’t really been taking a lot of pictures. Also if I can manage to get the pictures off my old phone I will post them as well.

 

[jake97056]

Refinishing the hard top







Seat at and seat frame

 

[fsearls92]

Does that heater work well?

 

[jake97056]

Does that heater work well?

Yes it works very well. Well enough I had to roll the window down a bit and turn it down even with it being in the teens outside. The only drawback is it is 12 volt. Temporarily I have it pulling off one of the batteries on the truck but in the next couple months I am going to install a dedicated 12 volt system on the truck.

 

[jake97056]

Now for what I am currently doing. I recently bought 7 lmtv wheels and 6 tires for $250 out of central Oregon. I am now resenting them using the centers out of my deuce wheels so I can use them on the truck with some MVTs I am going to go get.

To start with I removed the center out of one of my spare deuce wheels

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It it only took about 10 minutes to drill and knock the rivets out of the wheel. I then sat it inside the lmtv wheel and discovered that the OD of the deuce center is 1/4” smaller than the ID of the lmtv wheel. I solved this with some 1/8” spacers temporarily as I wanted an idea of how it would work out.

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This is setup would work fine and you could weld it all together from here, but, in the even you had to change one of the studs that holds the outer half of the wheel on it would be impossible. So I changed my plan a bit. I makes the center, removed it from the wheel, and attacked it with a sawzall.



This is brought the center even with the outside lip of the wheel and eliminated the issue with the studs.

This is is all I got accomplished this evening but from here all I need to do is make sure it is centered, tack it, test it on the truck and make sure it runs true, burn it together, and repeat the process 6 more times.

In the end I should end up with some fairly inexpensive wheels for singles that most people with some fab skills could build themselves. I will make sure to take planets of pictures as I had a hard time finding any info on this subject when I started looking into it.