What about having it double framed all the way up to the cab and dropping a dump bed on it. This truck is a bit of an orphan given that it has a small cam engine and the day cab was from the removal of a sleeper. Adding a dump bed would give me more options to use it here (we haul gravel at times) and may make the resale easier if we go that route? Thoughts? John
A decent used bed is going to cost around $5k. plus the cost of the pump/pto and labor to install it. New beds will be close to $15k. installed. Unless you have enough dump truck work to recoup that expense I wouldn't rig it up. My thinking is there would be more available buyers as a tractor than as a dump.
John, if you keep it and pull end dump. You want to keep it light as possible cause you get paid by the ton. Keep that in mind as well. Nice to meet you guys.
Steel weighs IIRC 40 lbs per square foot x 1" thick. For two 20 foot insert rails you'd add around 400 lbs or so to the tare weight.
A359 @ 205" will be a kidney buster. Better to auction as is than spend any more money on a $4000 truck
Classic is in the eyes of the beholder, some get it and some don't. We were working on it yesterday and started pulling all of the old, worn air lines and wiring. Will redo all of that - cheap and effective. Pulled the platform and started looking at the jacking closer. Some parts not too bad and some parts really bad. One of the welds we had done on the crossmember a few weeks ago already split again. Hell, if we can't get close to our money back, I will repair it and drive it. #### cool truck in most trucker's opinions. Drive down the road in your volvo and see how many guys make a comment about the cool truck on the CB... Just venting a bit... Thanks @wore out for the support. John
I managed to dig up some photos I snapped while I was disassembling mine. That big crossmember in the center was all welded together and a couple cast iron suspension brackets were actually broken right off from the rust jacking. Most of the frame bolts had broken or rusted away until there was virtually nothing left. Like I said the original frame rails cleaned up pretty good and I could have re-sleeved it and put it back together no problem.
