1937 Ford Model 805 1/2 Ton Platform Stake Truck update 6/1/2013

[Art Anderson]

I got intrigued by this version of the '37 Ford pickup when I found a small black & white picture of one in the section on '37 Ford trucks in the excellent Crestline book "Ford Trucks Since 1905" about 20 years ago or so. It got me to thinking: AMT added a platform stake body to their '34 pickup kit back in the 1970's (I built one for the box art for their 1976 reissue with that bed), but Ford didn't offer such a body for a pickup until 1937, even though the bed will fit any Ford light truck chassis 1933-40. However, when Ford did introduce it as a production line option in '37, it came equipped with modified pickup rear fenders (in 1937 only), which made for a very classy looking little stake truck.

When Revell introduced the '37 Ford pickup kit in the 1990's, I did master one and cast it in resin, all based on that very small black & white picture. Fast forward to August 2012: Vintage Truck magazine had a very nice color photograph of a restored one, with an excellent feature article inside on this rather rare little truck. I was hooked.

First up was to scale out everything, based on the Revell kit, and the truck in that article. The process of interpolation gave me what I believe are correct dimensions for the platform bed, which is built using Evergreen styrene strip stock to build the steel parts of the bed floor, and 1/16" basswood for the oak planks. Skid strips are something I have made before, using .015" X .100" strip styrene, and homemade .020" half round styrene strips (I have a brass tool I use to lay .020" round styrene stock in, and scrape that down to half-round with an Xacto knife--works very well). The stake pockets surrounding the bed in the "steel" framing were done by laminating bits of Evergreen to create them. Here's the bed floor:

The stake fences required not only some precision, but also absolute uniformity, so that they are interchangeable side to side, front to rear, and have to match the stake pockets exactly in order to be easily installed and removeable. I built a simple jig on a sheet of thick Evergreen styrene (for stability), with strip stock to make the guides to hold the stakes and the fence "boards": Here's thei tool, with a couple of fences in their respective jigs (the empty jig at the top was the first attempt, it came out very wrong!):

These beds were mounted to the pickup truck chassis on very large oak planks set on edge, cut to match the shape of the tops of the frame rails (bear in mind, Ford, just like almost every other carmaker of the era, used passenger car chassis for their early pickup trucks). That made for some carving, starting with 1/8" X 3/4" basswood strip--this took two attempts to get them right!). Here's the bed, test fitted to the frame, with cab and front fenders included. Some adjustment will be needed, as I was guessing at the final height of the wood beams, they are a bit too tall. The tops of the pickup truck rear fenders were "notched out" in production to clear the side rails of the bed floor:

Art

Addendum! In checking reference pics, and doing some measurements based on those--the wooden support beams for the stake platform are surprisingly the correct height! There is, however, a bit of incorrect dimension to the pickup rear fenders as Revell molded them: They are approximately 2 scale inches too low at the front, and on the real trucks, the fenders were mounted with a bit of upward "angle" toward the rear, making the rear bottom edge of the fenders a good 3" higher than the line of the running boards and lower edge of the front fender--adding .080" to the front edges of the fenders, then angling them upward toward the rear will make them correct. In addition, Revell molded the rear fenders far too narrow, which was probably done for parts fit, seeing as the pickup box is a bit too wide as well, and the running board unit having its valance panels spaced out too far from the frame rails. On the real trucks, that valance panel (splash apron if you will) is of course, 20'gauge mild steel sheet, and is fixed very close to the frame rails. Of course, on this truck, the splash aprons don't extend past the rear corners of the cab, which makes for a serious gap between the kit fenders and the frame and wood beams--they will need to be split down the middle, and widened out approximately .100", which will give them a very correct cross-section as well.

Art

Edited June 1, 2013 by Art Anderson

[FIREMODELMAN]

nice job so far Art. It's going to be a really good looking truck I'm sure. I'll be watching.

[Danno]

Neat project!

[Alyn]

save me a chair on the front row.

Nice to see an accurate stake bed going to gether.

[Wonderbread Kustomz]

Wow! That's gonna be wild!

[Dr. Cranky]

It's got all the right flavor and character so far, Art.

[Art Anderson]

I really didn't much care for the oversimplified, almost crude frame from Revell's '37 Ford pickup kits, but what to do? I got to researching Ford V8 chassis, and discovered that except for minor details, Ford passenger car and light commercial frames were essentially the same design (and a lot of identical parts) from 1933 to the end of the 1940 model year (1941 in the case of pickups and sedan deliveries).

Knowing that Revell's '40 Ford convertible/coupe kits have a really nicely done set of cross members, I did some comparisons, discovering that with just a bit of cutting and filing on the '37 frame, the '40 parts fit like a glove.

Here's the result:

The result speaks for itself, I think. While it would be neat to have the side rails molded in channel section, like the real thing--that would have meant a completely multi-piece frame, and aligning that could be a real nightmare--I am OK with the side rails as they are. However, the oversimplified crossmembers in the 37 kit frame just don't hold a candle to the '40 units, given their "swiss-cheese" holes, and at least a hint of the channel section for the X-beams themselves. Another consideration is that I want to install complete mechanical brake detail, along with a fuel line, spedometer cable--and some of that detail, along with the exhaust system, will run through the X-member framing. Oh well, one complication leads to another, I guess!

Art

[doggie427]

Beautiful start on a neat little truck. Very nice planning and layout Art.

[crazyrichard]

realy cool , going to be sweet @@

[southpier]

subscribed to this one

[Ace-Garageguy]

Ford passenger car and light commercial frames were essentially the same design (and a lot of identical parts) from 1933 to the end of the 1940 model year (1941 in the case of pickups and sedan deliveries).

Sorry, but no. Your sources must be confused. '33-'34 are the same.

'35 thru '40 (and '41 light trucks, as you say) are very similar to each other. This is easy to verify, as aftermarket frames are ALWAYS separated into these two periods.

Your work on this looks great, by the way.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Ace-Garageguy

[Art Anderson]

Some more progress: After almost taking a very wrong turn with the brake system, I finally discovered that '37 Fords did away with the older "pull rods" to carry the action of the brake pedal to the wheels, in favor of a much less reliable system of steel cables, which were partially housed in armored flexible conduits from the frame rails to the brake backing plates.

After studying what few pics are available online, and not having a Ford service manual for 1937-38, I decided to use the brake backing plates from the Revell '40 Ford, as in appearance, basically they look very much alike, the major exception being that '37-'38 backing plates have a very prominent raised almost-box-section shape which captures the ends of the flexible conduits--so those were made from bits of modified Evergreen .100" half round styrene stock, with a .020" hole drilled in them at an angle for locating the outer ends of the conduits.

Making the flexible steel conduit was actually one of the easiest jobs--simply wrapping 28-gauge soft copper beading wire tightly around a length of K&S .020" brass rod stock. Along the way, I kept bending that brass rod stock, but not to worry--the actual conduits are curved when installed, so maintaining a perfectly straight piece was not an issue.

For alignment, I decided on drilling a hole at the beginning of the rear kickup on each frame rail, at an angle matching that of the rear legs of the X-member, then using some 1/8" Contrails (long discontinued stock) styrene tubing. That was installed with gap filling CA glue, and then the outer ends were filed and sanded smooth with the outsides of the frame rails. On the real frame, the tubing would not have been needed, given the fairly thin section of the steel channel frame rail, but with a model kit frame, it gets a bit more complicated. On the finished frame, there will be the sheet metal splash shields covering that exit "hole" and it's alignment tubing, and that will be visible once the running boards and rear fenders are installed, just as they are on the real Model 805 platform stake pickup.

I built the actuating brake shaft from 1/16" Contrails styrene rod, with the brake arms made from the same material, with bits of .020" X .040" Evergreen strip styrene to make the "ears" of the clevises themselves. It's a rather tiny assembly: In this pic, it's the rod with 4 arms attached, the other arms were spares just in case: (The excess shaft ends were trimmed down for mounting in the frame)

For the brake cable, I found, at Hobby Lobby, some excellent thread--Coats & Clark upholstery thread, which is a synthetic thread looking very much like miniature steel cable. Being synthetic fiber, there aren't any stray fibers sticking out, unlike with say, cotton sewing thread. This was glued in place into the sections of tubing used for locating and securing the flexible conduits to the frame rails, then pulled taut, and cemented into the clevises with a drop of CA. All this leads to the next pic: The chassis, with the basics of the cable actuated mechanical brake system:

Link to larger pic: http://images46.fotki.com/v295/filevKxT/51f82/4/43743/3168549/omviewwithbrakecablesinstslled.jpg

And, a pic of the chassis taken at a high angle from the side:

Link to larger pic: http://images14.fotki.com/v218/fileezk4/51f82/4/43743/3168549/wshowingbrakecableinstallation.jpg

Next up will be those splash guards, then the steering system; and then it's on to the engine.

Art

[Art Anderson]

Sorry, but no. Your sources must be confused. '33-'34 are the same.

'35 thru '40 (and '41 light trucks, as you say) are very similar to each other. This is easy to verify, as aftermarket frames are ALWAYS separated into these two periods.

Your work on this looks great, by the way.

Bill,

Essentially, Ford passenger car frames are the same from 1933-1940, in that while the overall length of Ford cars in those years did change, most markedly in 1938 with the introduction of the 1938 Ford Deluxe series, which very much predicted the '39 and '40 Ford bodies with their much greater rear overhang--the wheelbase stayed the same at 112". Additionally, the essential shapes and design of those frames were very much unchanged, except where alterations in suspension, ride height and such dictated different front and rear crossmembers. And some parts did remain the same as well, except for the shapes and sizes of say, the lightening holes in the legs of the center X-members over those years. That is a Ford characteristic from that period: Pretty much like the old VW Beetle ads in the early 60's, many major parts from newer Ford cars would fit older ones, certainly to a much greater extent than other makes of cars back then. Certainly my statement earlier was not meant to even imply that those frames were completely identical, just that their basic design, and a great many dimensions did not change from 1933 through 1940.

While I seldom (if ever!) suggest comparing one model kit to another for say, accuracy or the lack thereof, somethings were learned from studying the '37 Ford VS the '40 Ford, at least in kit form: the outside width of those frames is the same, and the X-members are the same length front to rear, which made it possible for me to substitute the far more detailed, and "accurate looking" X member parts from the Revell '40 Ford coupe for the very crude version in the middle of their '37 pickup frame.

Art

[Danno]

Wow. Very nice, Art!

[Ace-Garageguy]

ART: "And some parts did remain the same as well, except for the shapes and sizes of say, the lightening holes in the legs of the center X-members over those years."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No Art. It's not just semantics, and I don't have a pathetic need to be 'right', but my statement that they're "similar" is more correct than yours that they're "essentially the same". And a lot of folks are going to simply disregard your modifier "essentially" and see only "the same", and leave here with the wrong information. You're a respected source, and because of that you have a responsibility to make sure anything you present as fact is in fact, FACT, and clearly understood fact.

The 1:1 '33-'34 rails ARE NOT the same shape as the '35-'40 if you lay them out on the floor. Have you ever done it? I have. And I'm not talking about trivial (rivet counting) differences like the "lightening hole" example you wrote above. The rails are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. So are the x-members. The '33-'34 X member was commonly used to stiffen the Model A frame rails when building an early A-V8.

I also just checked the rails in the '37 and the '40 kits as well (that you mentioned), and assuming I'm still capable of interpreting what I see with my own eyes as objective reality, though they SHOULD be the same in primary shape and dimension (as both '37 and '40 fall within the '35-'40 range), they're not. There are steps and flats on the Revell truck frame that do not occur in 1:1. However, exactly as you state, they are similar enough to use the X-members interchangeably. (as they SHOULD be)

While the wheelbases of the '33-'34 and the '35-'40 are indeed identical at 112", and the fact that the frames are BOTH double-drop ladder-type, channel-rail with center-X-members, that's where the similarity ends. Have a look at ANY supplier of aftermarket frame RAILS, as I suggested above. '33-'34, and '35-'40 car (-'41 pickup). The RAILS are entirely different and do not interchange as you imply. Same story on X-members.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Ace-Garageguy

[southpier]

hey Ace; sit this one out, okay?