I decided I put in new rocker panels while I was reworking the ol' gal.  If any of you know anything about Studebakers,.. You know NOTHING on the M5's are straight.  There is a pretty big curve in the rocker panel, and I bent a piece of 7 gauge steel 2" x 2" and then cut notches in it and welded them back to make a heavy duty support as seen in the pic on the left.  As you can see in the pic on the right.  I then welded some steel braces to extend out to help support the floor itself.

This is kinda hard to look at and know what it is,.. so I'll try and explain.  This is the seat riser.  (no floorboard)  The view on the left pic is from the front, and the view on the right pic is from above.  Those familiar with M5's know that the seat risers do NOT go all the way to the edge of the cab, that way there is a place to step into the cab.  Since I am using this part of the riser as basically the the upper floorboard where the seats mount down, then it needs to be level all the way side to side.  The additional seat riser I add will look like a normal M5.  You'll see as I go along.

You can see where we put in a heavy X brace to stabilize the two sections of the cab.  If you look 'into" the cab you can see where the pieces in the above pictures went so the seat riser extends out to the very edges of the cab.  Next we put the sheet metal on the sides.

Here you can see where we put in the sheet metal for the sides that extended the cab.  Since we bought two cabs, we had a spare set of doors, and that gave us the same shape and form to match the cab perfect.  Of course the bottom of the doors were bad, so the sheet metal wasn't long enough,.. and it also would of only come down to the rocker panel.  We had to fab up a piece to come all the way to the bottom of the cab and weld that in so it looked like one continues piece.  You can see it installed in the pic on the right

This is the roof after we got it extended.  Again all you M5 Studebaker enthusiast know that there are no bracings in the roof.  And with an extended cab I am going to have have something to fasten my headliner to.  I bent some steel bars and as you can see I made me a pattern out of plywood so I could make four of them the same.  In the picture on the right you can see one if them installed.  It makes for good extra bracing, and also will make a good support to fasten my headline to.

Well it was time to make another trip to the salvage yard in the Fall.  Winter was coming, and we wanted to get some stuff we were going to need to work on over the Winter.  We found a Chevy S-10 pickup that had the pop out windows I was wanting.  Here you see Dad cuttting them out.  The pic on the right is when we got them home.  We also got a nice set of seats.  $50 for the set.  Can't beat that deal.  They are pretty comfortable.  Wrap around seats, and a nice headrest.  I plan on doing some embroidery on them, and with the headrest built in like it is it should look pretty cool.  Look nice when they get recovered.  I also found a set of seat belts from a almost brand new car.  $40 for the set.  Mounting hardware and everything.  It's like Christmas when I can go to the Salvage yard and get almost new stuff, and save a TON of money over buying it new. 

Well,.. winter is coming before long.  As you can see I got wood all cut and split. (about 9 cords worth)  Now I need to make something to heat the garage with.  First take one 55 gallon barrel.... cut 1/3 off of it...

Weld up the ends of it, then make a nice fairly air tight door for it,.. then make a good stand and saddle for it to rest in... and vent it out the window.  MAN this thing can put out a lot of heat.  Don't take much wood to heat the garage for the whole day. I just threw this in in case some of you work in winter garages, this shows how you can make your own cheap heat system. Now back to building the truck

OK,.. next we installed the windows from the S-10 pickup into the extended cab.  We put in the fill width of the window, but since we chopped the cab, we had to cut the windows and make them shorter.  They come out pretty good.  Looks better in person than in the pics.  When the interior, and upholstery goes in it will look pretty sweet.

Here we started installing the floorboard.  The bottom part of the floor was already cleaned and painted.  ON the left pic it is just fitted and laying in there.  We took it out, cleaned it, painted it, and welded it into place as you can see on the right pic.  Also on the right pic you can see the seat riser is almost completed.  Pictures below show how we made them.

OK,.. let me see if I can explain what you are looking at.  I wanted to stiffen up the seat riser since this is the part thats gonna be holding the bucket seats.  IN the picture on the left I took a piece of 7 gauge steel and bent a ripple on it to give it even more strength.  Welded it to the flat side, where the seat will sit and bolt down.  The picture in the center is the riser standing on the 'front'.  I welded another piece of 7 gauge steel and turned it back an inch onto the top.  This gives a good firm base of the riser to set on the floor on.  Also I welded on steel bolts where the seats will bolt in on the front,.. and also bolts on the sides where the seat belts will bolt on.  The picture on the right shows the seat riser in the final install.  Also welded a piece of 7 gauge on the sides of the riser.  It's there, and it's solid.  If you look closely where the black and gray meet on the risers, you can see there are 4 grade 8 bolts sticking up.  Those are already welded in to bolt down the back of the seats.

NOW this is the best little item we have made since we started.  Dad had got me a chain hoist last year to work on my lawn mower.  We built this roller to pick up heavy items, and MAN it sure works good. We took and old floor jack that had broke.  Used the wheels off of it for rollers.  If you look at the left pic you can see the rollers on the steel I-beam.  Them we made two steel sides, and bolted them together with a coupe pipes and all threads.  Then welded on a loop to put the 'hook' from the chain hoist on, and it'll sure pick up a load.  This I-beam runs the full width of my two car garage, and I can pick up something on one side with NO effort,... and move it to the other side, and set it down.  Very nice.  I'd had the motor in and out of my Studebaker several time with no effort,.. and we also been boxing the frame,.. putting in the transmission cross member, triangulated rear end, rear axel, etc... so we have been moving the frame up and down, twisting it over and over numerous times.  The pic at the right shows the system holding the front 1/2 of the frame. Back is sitting on a saw horse.   This makes it very easy.  I recommend everyone make one of these if you have one of these I beams where you work on your vehicles. 

Well,.. we had a few issues with how we wanted to install the motor and the area around the frame, and crossmembers.  We finally decided we just go the "functional" route and build us a motor mount that mounted on the front of the motor and mount it that way.  Then weld up a couple little brackets out on the frame so our rubber bushings could set on that and take the vibration out of the motor.  Maybe not as "pretty" as some... but it'll be function, and in a pickup it won't show much anyway.  The picture on the right shows the little 'square' bracket welded to the frame.  The rubber bushing will sit between the motor mount and this piece. 

Got the rear end all cleaned up, media blasted, and painted.  Sure don't look like the same one you saw in the picture earlier huh..??    Kinda hard to see everything, but If you look you can see there are brackets welded on for a coil spring kit.  The pic on the right shows it hanging in the frame waiting for the springs to come in and the bolts to finish bolting it up.  For those not familiar with a triangulated four bar kit.  Here's one installed.  Two bars run parallel with the frame, and two short bars are angled in towards the center.  The short bars keep the rear end from moving left and right, and the long (bottom) bars keep it from moving forwards and backward.

We welded a couple steel plates in between the B post and also to the X bracing we put in to the extension.  It's very strong, and makes a good way to mount the seat belt back to the original installation in the original vehical.  This is shown in the pic on the left.  The pic on the center shows where we welded a grade 8 bolt onlt a piece of steel, and then welded that piece of steel to the B post.  It'll serve as the mount for the shoulder restraint.  In the pic on the right I hung the seat belt in the so you could get an idea how it would look.  It'll be much better with upholstery... LOL

OK, last for today (3/22/07)  Pic on the left just shows the frame completely boxed.  Looks real good... and it's real strong.  Also you can see the front part of the lower bars for the 4 link.  The middle pic is the transmission x member.  We used the one out of the old M5.  Little modification, and it went right in just right.  Finally we got back to working on the cab.  I been dreading putting the upper part of the doors back on after chopping the roof.  Just was afraid it wouldn't line up right, wouldn't be straight, etc etc. Gotta be just perfect when you do all that.  Doors gotta close tight so it don't leak or whistle,.. but then it gotta be straight and not bind so you can put a glass in it.  MAN I been sweating this part of the project.  Good Lord musta been looking out for us on this one.  This is how it turned out.  Gap is the same all around,.. closes smooth, no binding.  I am well pleased. 

OK... run into my first major "SNAG".  We planned all this out to fit here perfect.  Did all the measuring, preplanning, everything we could do for this part of the project.  We kinda knew we would have to do a little "massaging" to the firewall.  but somehow we ended up with this..??  Now sure exactly.  Some folks say I should use a 'short' water pump (I never knew there was a difference) etc.  You get the idea.   It's nice to have folks jump in and volunteer suggestions.  I'm mulling over what I am going to do.  Hate to have to cut the motor mounts loose and move all that.  That's not a good option.  On the other hand, as you can see in the pic on the right, the distributor is sitting almost entirely inside the cab.  I'd have to cut about 8" into the cab, and rework all that,.. and when I get it done,.. it's still gonna look rather odd.  So that's not a good option either. 

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