Once that was done I bolted on the special bell housing that I bought that allows me to use a later GM transmission mount and my early truck brake pedals. The bell housing actually must be put on before the flywheel. So I put all that on and started to drop the engine on the truck when I noticed that the rear motor mounts are too wide. They are supposed to work with 1937 through 1955. They didn't. I called Jim Carter where I got the mounts and they quickly said oh you need the other style. Part number 218 instead of part number 217. These aren't mentioned in the catalog anywhere. The guy on the tech line said "or you can simply drill new holes in the mount that line up with the holes in your frame". So I did. but I will eventually get the right mounts. More on that later. 

The pictures you see on the right are for the aluminum flywheel I picked up. This is very old NOS speed equipment. Notice the 1954 date on the back of the flywheel. I got into this flywheel before I learned about clutches. This flywheel limits the clutch to a 9 1/4 inch clutch disc. That is kind of small. There are flywheels that work with this engine and the foot starter that allow either a 10 1/2 or 11 1/2 inch clutch. These might be more robust given the weight of this truck. I was able to find a 9 1/4 inch clutch disc with the 26 spline hub. It was used on some variant of the Vega back in the eighties. That all allows me to mate the T-5 transmission I rebuilt (check it out). I did have to do a little modifications to this flywheel. The bolts on the back of the crank-shaft where bigger on the 235 than on the flywheel. I drilled them out to 7/16's on the drill press. Everything went smooth and silk. 

The third picture is the engine flywheel and bell housing mounted on the frame. The modifications I had to make to the rear engine mounts was substantial. The cross member for my truck angles up after the mounting hole. That meant I had to cut away the bottom of the mount so it would fit in the space on the cross member. That made me very nervous, but didn't want to wait for parts to come. After that the clutch and pressure plate went on very nicely.

Copyright 1954?

Engine, bell housing, and flywheel.

The next job was to install the T-5 transmission. This is a T-5 transmission from an S-10. That brings the shift lever forward, to a point not that far from the original. Most T-5's shift lever is out on the tail shaft. I understand that now there is a Tremac transmission that has a shift lever even further forward. I still need to find a shift lever that is much longer and bent in a way to move the knob even more forward and away from the eventual seat. Genie shifter makes a swan neck lever that looks promising. T&F shifter makes a nostalgia shifter that looks good too. I saw that in a magazine, but can't seem to find the company on the web anywhere.

The transmission is a very close fit on my truck. When I first measured the fit, it looked like everything was going to fit perfectly. The next cross-member that supported the original four speed transmission looked as it would be just low enough to allow the transmission to hover above it. The downward angle of the engine was greater than I thought and the cross-member just interfered with the original rear mount on the transmission. This was quickly rectified with a little angle grinder work to remove about 1/4 inch of material from the bottom of the transmission. I angled it to match the engine. This mounts great now and you can barely slip a piece of paper under the transmission if you try.   

Next I will start to work on the intake and exhaust manifolds and the break and clutch pedal assemblies. I actually started this and that was the final nail in the rear engine mounts. The drivers side one rubs on the clutch pedal, so out it must come. 

T-5 all mounted up.

One thing I was fretting over was the drive shaft. Since I was switching from the torque tube to an open drive line I would need to have a drive shaft made. I had no idea how to do this. I asked on the oletrucks list and got great advice. I searched on the web for "custom drive shaft" and found a few sites that describe the measurements needed for a good fitting drive shaft. According to the emails and the websites I needed to take some measurements of the yokes and the distances between the transmission yoke and the rear end pinion so the shaft can be made. The first thing was to determine the diameter of the u-joint cap and the width of the u-joint. Mine was 1 1/16 inch diameter and 3 1/4 inch width. That made the u-joints a very common  GM 1310 design. The next was the distance. One site said to measure from the center of the transmission yoke, pushed all the way in, to the center of the yoke on the rear end pinion. When I called the drive shaft shop ("Fleet Pride" 805 Spencer Street in Syracuse NY) they actually had me measure from the lip of the tranny seal back to the pinion. I took my measurements and my transmission yoke in and they made up the shaft that day. It came with the yoke and u-joints mounted, balanced and painted for about $ 180.00. It fit great. There is a little over an inch of gap between the tranny seal and the yoke for movement of the rear end during suspension travel. Another job done!

Custom drive shaft, complete with my name painted on! The pedals you see are the clutch and brake pedals I'm using to mock up the brackets for the new master cylinder . 

No matter what else I did to this truck, I knew I wanted to update the master cylinder to dual chamber. I knew I wanted to try to keep the original pedals if I could. I didn't want to change to much in this area because I want the inside of the truck to look very original. The whole idea is to make the truck look like the work had been done in the forties or  fifties. The 1940 originally had two methods of mounting the master cylinder depending on what transmission you had. The 4 speed had the MC hanging off the back of the pedals bracket. That is what my truck came with. 3 speed transmissions mounted the MC to the frame pointing backwards and used rods and a swing arm to push the master cylinder from the back. I actually found a guy parting another 1940 that had this setup and I bought it thinking I could use this and move the MC to the frame rail. Well it was a good idea but the cross members used on the different transmissions are very different and I had to find a way to use the original bracket. The end result was cutting the bracket off and welding a new piece on the would allow me to hang the new master cylinder off the back off the pedal bracket. I used 1/4 inch steel and mad a small u shaped filler that I welded to the bottom of the original bracket and then copied the shape of the bracket that came with the proportion valve. I welded that on and set the angle to get the MC level. The gap between the old bracket and the new one allows me to get the bolts in and out. Since I didn't engineer this bracket, I will have to watch that it doesn't sag. If it does I think I can add some support on the top to tie it all together. The nice thing about this is no one will be able to tell I have this upgrade without crawling under the truck.

New pieces to hang the master cylinder from

Here id the whole bracket with the brake pedal and master cylinder in place.

The winter months have made progress slow way down on the truck. The one project I have completed is a rebuild of the original 1940 steering box. I have no plans to covert to power steering. I used NOS bushings, seals and pitman shaft I got from Ebay. I also used new bearings and races I purchased. The final piece to this project was the 1200 wt Steering box oil I got from a restoration shop in California. It is perfect, thick as all get out, but just what the shop manual calls for. It is made in Australia. I also obtained a 1946 steering box, that I will rebuild. These are superior to the 1940 steering box and an almost direct bolt in. If everything works out I will sell the 1940 box to pay for the rebuild kit.

The other project I am working on is lowering the truck an additional 2 1/2 inches. I miscalculated the amount of drop I needed for the look I want. When I got the truck, I thought I only need to lower it a couple of inches. The mono leaf springs I used advertised a 2 1/2 - 3 inch drop. Problem was the springs in the truck had already settled that far. I checked some restored trucks afterwards, and the bumper bolt on an original truck sits 17 1/2 inches off the ground. My mono leaf springs bring that down to, you guessed it, 15 inches. So I decided to look into some of the ways to keep lowering the truck without changing the suspension travel. That meant dropping the axle or buying CPP's lowered axle. Since the theme of this truck is tied to what someone might have done in the 50's, I decided I need a Chevy truck axle in this thing. So I sent the axle off to Mor-Drop Axle in California along with a $275.00 money order. 3 weeks later I had an exchange axle from a 1954 Chevy truck with a 2 1/2 inch drop. CPP's axle is a 3 inch drop but it runs over $400.00 with shipping. 

The exchange of the axles went great, but the surprise of the transaction was the shape the return axle was in when it arrived. It was to put it mildly, crusty! The scale let over from the heating and hammering is pretty nasty and it is everywhere. I am going to have to cleanup the outside and the inside of every thing on the axle. The king pins nor the locking pin will go into their holes because of the scale. I hope it is easy to remove. I'll put more pictures on here once I get it all cleaned up and back on the truck. 

This is the 1955 1st series axle I originally put on the truck.

This is the 2 1/2 inch dropped 1954 axle that Mor-Drop sent back to me. Crusty! .

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