Back to work.
With the arch cut off and repositioned in its new location and marked, its time to get serious. The excess metal needs to be removed. Since I'm going to flange the metal and weld the arch back on top of it, we need to trim off enough metal so the flanging tool will put the edge of the flange just outside of the arch, so the weld can be right at the edge of the flange and the arch. If properly placed, the weld should fill the dip between the two pieces of steel, and little or no filler will be needed. I measure from my line at the edge of the arch cut, and draw another line 3/8" under the arch piece, all around the arch piece. (I use the arch piece to draw this line as well.) When I cut the excess off, I will cut right on the line, I do this with a pair of aviation snips, they can give you a very accurate cut. Aviation snips are available is a right hand cut, a left hand cut, and a center cut. I have the right and the left hand cutters. They are also available with a low angle hand position and a raised hand position. For me, the high hand position is easier on the skin on my fingers, I get less cuts on my hands from them.
Pic 1, The lines. The two blue lines are the correct lines, the upper line is the desired location of the welding edge and the step of the flange. The lower blue line is the cut line.
Pic 2, The aviation high hand right hand cutters.
Pic 3, The aviation cutters in operation.
Pic 4, The final cut. Before that cut lies was drawn, I had already cleaned up the edge of the arch piece, and smoothed out the gaged edges for a smooth flowing welding edge and gotten to shiny steel on both sides of the arch piece.

With the edges cleaned up, flanged, and clamped into place, I went ahead and made the pieces I needed to fill the space where the arch was moved away from the cut zone. This filler piece was also step flanged, cleaned up, marked and clamped into position.
Pic 1, This is the bottom rear of the fender filler piece that fills the space caused when the arch was shifted forward on the fender, clamped in place. Notice the top of the filler piece is also flanged, and you can see the blue line that is where the edge of the arch will be, the area between the step on the flange, and that blue line is where the weld bead will be. The weld will fill most of that step and will be level with the metal beyond the step in the flange once ground flat. It is hard to see but the step and the edge of the filler piece has about the same amount of space. Also notice the fairly equal spacing of the clamps.
Pic 2, Actual welding has taken place! This is how I always do a sheet metal joint. A tack on each side of the vice grip clamps.
Pic 3, The clamps are moved to about the middle of the previous clamp location.
Pic 4, Another round of tack welds. again, on each side of the clamps.

Keep going.
Pic 1, At some point you loose the clamps, but the process stays the same. Add another tack weld mid way between 2 others as you move around the piece.
Pic 2, As the tack welds get closer together, you need to put the new tacks a little farther apart, you want to keep the heat down as much as you can.
Pic 3, The filler pieces are welded and the high spots on the welds are ground down. You need to be careful grinding, it can make nearly as much heat as the welding does, and car warp the metal just as bad as welding it hot. The arch is clamped into place.
Pic 4, Lots of clamps. Bet you can't guess how I'm going to weld this in place.

Still going.
Pic 1, Still got to line up those marks.
Pic 2. Its magic! Or a lot of clamping, welding, and grinding. Before you call it done, you have to look it over and re-weld anything that is in the least questionable. Its not done until there are no pin holes. Pin holes in the metal come back and bite you every time.
Pic 3, When I grind off the high spots of the welds, I use the edge of a thick 3" cut off wheel. Its pretty easy to grind too much off, I've found its easier for me to take the highs off with the edge of the cutoff wheel then with any other tool. A lot of guys like to use air sanders, and that is OK once the welds are pretty flush. The air sanders tend to remove the surrounding metal faster then they cut the high spots off the hard welds.
Pic 4 This is what the all metal welded on that arch move looked like after it was smoothing it out. The grooves will be filled with filler on my truck. You can take the time to fill the grooves with weld if you choose. I brushed on some old primer after all the welding was done. Body work will start later this spring.
With the fenders ready to go back on, inner fenders were probably next They had to be built without the fenders in place. Gene

Inner fenders.
The original 49 truck had inner fenders that bolted to the top edge of the outer fenders along the top edge, the radiator support at the front, and somewhere near the door on the back edge. I've owned 3 or 4 of this era Dodge trucks over the years, and have never seen a complete inner fender for either side! I've seen parts and pieces of their remains, but never a complete version. Originally, Dodge never painted them, and they just didn't survive very well, at least around here.
Since the goal was to drive this truck year around, not having inner fenders really wasn't an option. When I built my 50 all those years ago, I just took a big hunk of 18 gauge, bent it into a big curve, and added another piece of sheet metal to bolt it to the outer fender at the original location. It was OK, but there was more space available on that truck (it had 6" of fender clearance above the tire) then there is on this one. A new plan was required.
My donor Dakota actually had decent inner fenders, and they actually would match the current frame, but they were not quite wide enough because of the shape of the actual Dakota fender. To see if the Dakota inner fenders will even be a starting point, you need to hold them in place and evaluate.
Pic 1, Here we see the Dakota inner fender sitting on the tire. This pic is the driver side, most of the rest of the pics are of the passenger side. I don't have a pic of the inner fender laying on the tire on the passenger side, so you will have to believe me when I tell you it looked about the same. One thing I do want to point out on this pic is the angle the firewall makes at the floor level (just above the back edge of the tire). Hind sight is 2020. I should have removed about 2" off the sharp angle. That is where my slight tire rub is on that inner fender on both sides of the truck.
Pic 2, There is a lot going on here. 1st, that angle iron you see that is clamped to the front panel and to the firewall flange is what is holding the front panel in place. It is bolted at the bottom, but the outer fender locates the top. For this to work, I'm going to have to be sure the front panel is properly located. You can't see it in this pic, but the other side got braced also. A couple of other things, the coffee can on the Dakota inner fender is the carbon canister, it is bolted in its original location on the Dakota inner fender (and remained at that location). Notice the upward bend on the inner fender just outside of the carbon canister? That entire edge of the inner Dakota fender bent up in the same fashion, front to rear (you can also see the bent inner fender at the rear edge of the inner fender). The missing area between was rusted out on the Dakota part (both sides of the truck). Between the pretty bar stock clamped to the fender mount (and a lower bracket bolted up with a piece of scrap metal), the inner fender is held in place at the rear, and the ratchet strap hooked to the carbon canister bracket, going over the top of the angle iron holding the front panel in place and connected to something on the motor at the front has the inner fender in the proper location to the frame.
Pic 3, This is a better view of the clamped bar stock, and a lower bracket that is bolted through an existing hole on the inner fender, and the cab mount bracket that the outer fender would be bolted to. With a bit of imagination, its not hard to see why the tires rub on the inner fenders by looking at the position of the inner fender, the firewall/floor angle, and the tire position. I wish I would have noticed that then.
Pic 4, This gives you an idea how the frame and the inner fender align. The bolt you see about the center of the pic is the top of the shock. The rubber flap on the inner fender rests between the tire and the shock.

So the inner fender doesn't look real bad, I just need to add metal to fill what is going to be the gap between the Dakota inner fender and the 49's fender. Should be pretty easy..... Until I gave it some thought. I'm either going to have to bolt the inner fender to the cab/front panel/chassis, or I'm going to have to figure out how to bolt it to the fender and make it sit in the correct position. If I bolt it to the cab/front panel, I will be reaching way under that fender trying to bolt the fender to the front panel. I have no idea how I would be sure I could hold the fender, the inner fender, the front panel, and the other fender and inner fender in the proper location. I reluctantly optioned for choice one, bolt the inner fender to the truck, and fight the outer fender bolts into place. My last thought on that was maybe I could be able to bolt the outer fenders to the front panel, then slide each inner fender into place and bolt it to the chassis and then to the outer fenders.
The next thought was that I needed to know where the edges of the outer fender would be, without actually having them there, but where to start?
Pic 1, The inside of the front panel, looking at the frame and lower part of the inner fender. This perspective is looking at the radiator support from the wheel side of the passenger side of the truck. The flat piece on the right upper side of the picture is the panel the headlight will be mounted to. The rusty looking piece below it is the inside of the front panel. The bolt on the extreme right is one of the bolts that would hold the fender to the front panel, the edge all along the right edge of the pic is the area the fender and the front panel would bolt together. Going towards the left side of the pic, the new shiny piece of steel is what holds the front panel to the radiator support (this piece was the shiny piece visible through the grille opening posted earlier). The piece welded to the top of that shiny piece is the actual radiator support, and the vertical bolt you see is the actual radiator support to frame mounting bolt for the passenger side. The big piece to the left (and covering the entire upper left corner of the pic) is the Dakota inner fender. The part that looks rusty at the bottom edge of the inner fender is actually the rubber protector that is part of the inner fender. The "rust" is dry dirt. The parts below the rubber is the Dakota frame front crossmember and the bottom edge of the frame rail. The stuff under the frame rail, and to the left of the bumper cutout on the front panel is the lower sheet metal that attaches the front panel to the radiator support.
Pic 2, The front view of the inner fender, from the clamped bar stock supporting the rear end of the inner fender. See the carbon canister with the ratchet strap going over top of the angle iron that is holding the front panel in place. All of that was viewed earlier, what is new here is the 1/4 round piece of wood (it was what I had the was stiff and long enough to tell me what I needed to know, in this case, that would be where the top edge of the fender would be. One end you see is laying on top of the front panel, the other end is clamped to the top of the fender edge of the door. The distance between the wood and the inner fender is the space that will be between them.
Pic 3. Using the same piece of wood, this time on the side of the fender edge. Again, the front is against the side of the front panel, and the rear edge is clamped to the outer edge of the door. The space between the inner fender and the wood is what I need to fill with metal, and figure out how to hold it in position, and still be able to remove it. That edge will also have to be bolted to the outer fender somehow..
Pic 4. This is what that gap that will have to be filled looks like towards the front.

At some point a guy has to quit just looking at it and do something. By this point, it was pretty obvious that I had to attach the inner fender at the cab first. On the inner fender, about the point it made contact with the seam on the firewall, an elongated hole that was used to mount something on the inner fender. Whatever used to be there was going to have to move anyway, so I might as well use that hole for something. That area formed an odd shaped triangle, and looked to be a really good place to make a brace.
Pic 1, Cardboard to the rescue. Cut a piece here, cut it there, bend it here, cut it there, see how it looks.
Pic 2, So this edge had to be curved to fit the shape of the inner fender at that location. The green dots are mounting holes, the one on the right is drawn through the actual hole, the one on the left is speculating. Transferring this to steel will also have to be two pieces.
I just know your asking "Well Gene, just how are you going to hold this piece in place with bolts?
Pic 3, These gentlemen is what they call U-nuts. They come in a verity of sizes from a #6 screw up to a 3/8" bolt, in American and metric. There are long reach versions, medium reach versions, and short reach versions (these are 1/4" x 20 short reach versions). You drill or punch a hole in the two pieces of metal ( a slightly larger hole gives you more adjustment, and they clip over the edge of the top piece metal nut side up, and the bolt screws into them from the bottom.
Pic 4 The U-nut with a bolt screwed into it. I can buy them locally for around a buck each, or you can buy larger quantities on line for a lot less. I bought a box of 100 1/4", a box of 100 5/16" and a couple boxes of 25 for #6 screws.

the bracket.
Pic 1, The holes on the inner fender. The oblong hole on the right was the original hole. After the bracket was tack welded together, I put it in place, bolted to the the inner fender, and clamped it to the firewall, and marked the left side hole. Then I pulled the inner fender away far enough to drill the left hole.
Pic 2, The bracket set in place after the holes were drilled. The bolts are in the holes to be sure everything was going to be in the correct position.
Pic 3, The bracket bolted in place using the U-nuts.
Pic 4, The final step with the bracket, welding it in place.

With that bracket welded to the cab, and the inner fender bolted to it, I welded a piece of sheet metal to the front that went forward and bolted to the headlight cover piece. Then I added another brace at the bottom edge of the fender.
Pic 1, The bracket in this picture that is at the fender support was removed after the lower rear bracket was added. I don't have a good picture of that lower bracket, but it bolts to another bracket that got bolted to the cab mount bracket. With the addition of the rear bracket, the inner fender was pretty secure. There are 3 screws across the front, the bracket at the firewall, and the bracket across the back of the inner fender.
Pic 2, This is the fender, laying on my steel saw horses. The black part is the Dakota inner fender with the rubber flap at the top. The big rusty piece on the left side is the new piece I added to the front of the inner fender. It is plug welded to the inner fender in tis pic. Later it was fully welded. The rusty piece between the Dakota inner fender and the steel saw horse is the under side of the outer fender. I made pieces that filled the gap between the inner fender and the outer fender. At this point, everything is probably just clamped together. I see that the fender arch is not welded to the fender, I suspect this was the point I determined the fender would need the arch fully welded in place. After the arch was welded in, i could determine about what the filler piece would look like, but the fender and the inner fender would both need to be bolted in place. I added a strip to the outer edge of the inner fender, then welded tabs onto the outer fender to hold U-nuts. With the fenders and inner fenders bolted in place, I could drill the bolt holes through the inner fender and the tabs. The u-nut went on the tab, and the bolt passed through the inner fender and into the U-nut. There are 5 bolts holding the inner fender to the outer fender. When I first put it together, I had a little over lap between the inner and outer fenders when bolted together. I soon discovered that gave me a huge number of squeaks so both have been trimmed to eliminate the over lap except where the tabs are.
Pic 3, This is what the front junction between the headlight panel and the inner fender looks like from under the fender.
Pic 4, This is one of the bolts that hold the edge of the inner fender to the tab on the outer fender, from under the truck. The bottom of the pic it the inner fender, the top of the pic is the outer fender.

Just for the record. These last few pics were taken this afternoon. The truck has been driven all winter. We got 3" of snow that followed a day of freezing rain. They have dumped huge amounts of salt on the roads in the last 3 days, then yesterday the temps hit 40 and we got sunshine. The streets are a mess with all that melting snow, the huge amount of salt, and the warm temps yesterday and today. Today the roads are finally drying out, but I didn't have the chance to wash the truck.
Also, after all the welding and bare metal, the truck was taken apart and was cleaned up and painted with at least 3 coats of Rustoleum black. Needless to say, the Rustoluem isn't nearly as good as it was even a couple years ago. There are a lot of places that paint has failed already. The truck will be taken apart again this spring so I can do body work. The underside failing paint will be addressed then as well. This is my transportation, I have to drive it until I can get my coupe out.
Pic 1, The intent was to add a piece of rubber to cover the gap. Obviously didn't happen. I'm almost afraid to see what the inside of the fender looks like, but to put it in perspective, when Dodge built the truck, nothing was here, and nothing was painted at all under the truck. The bare spots on the right side of the pic is the rub spot on this side. Only rubs when the wheels are turned tight and you hit a bump.
Pic 2, Another outer fender/inner bolt. This was a new cad plated bolt last June. Fender is at the top, the inner fender is at the bottom.
Pic 3, My tire rub. It only needs about another 1/2" of clearance. The fender is on the right, the inner fender is on the left. The weld seam is right in line with the worst rust. probably poor prep on my part.
Pic 4, Another fender/inner fender bolt. This bolt was installed the same day as the last one pictured. The fender is on the right, the inner fender is on the left. Sure looks like the paint on the fenders held up better then the paint on the inner fenders. Gene

After the front and rear glass, and after the inner fenders and the wheel arch move, functioning door inside handles, and door glass was the next thing on the list.

Mostly that amounted to removing the original parts, cleaning, and greasing them up, and reinstalling them to see if they actually would work. Once cleaned up and greased, those parts actually functioned on this truck. Yea, that surprised me! It was actually a pleasant surprise, something pretty rare on this project.
Before installing the new weather stripping and glass, I sanded and painted the upper door frames around the window area. That area on both doors had years of accumulated rust, crud, and built up junk. I probably spent 6-8 hours on each door just around the windows on the inside and the outside before I did any painting. Again, like around the other glass, I used Acrylic Enamel spray bomb primer and semi gloss black paint. After that dried a couple days, I installed the vent window rubber, the vent windows (I also made sure the pivots ands latched worked on them). Then I installed the window run channels and the inner and outer door glass fuzees and installed the door glass. I didn't take pictures of the process, but I have a few of the finished job. Its kind of hard to see but all 4 pics are with the vent window in place and the door glass down.
Pics 1 & 2 are the passenger door, inside and out.
Pics 3 &4 are the drivers door, inside and out.
You can see the tan seat sitting inside of the cab on both outside pics, that bench seat is a bench seat out of a Dakota pickup. It was the cheap seat that used to be in my coupe and was starting to get a bit uncomfortable from age and miles. The bucket seats from the Donor Dakota were put into the coupe. In this truck, that bench seat was about 4" too narrow. I through it in this truck before the glass was in, so I could move the truck in and out of the garage. It was never intended to be "the" seat for this truck, but it sat on top of the original 49 seat riser and adjusting brackets at about the right height and position. The tan seat worked pretty well to rough together the new dash.

It was time to cover the dash mess.
Pic 1, This mess! A few things to take note of. The instrument cluster is mounted in a bracket that is attached to the brake pedal reinforcement bracket just above the steering column. This cluster mounting bracket is made from sheet metal, and copies the original Dakota plastic bracket. I would have used the Dakota bracket, but the side towards the door would have interfered with he window crank, and by the time I would have cut clearance, There would not have been enough strength left in the plastic to support the cluster. As it is constructed, the column can drop, the cluster can be removed with 4 screws, and the cluster bracket can be removed with 4 screws. The black piece just below the windshield is the intact Dakota defroster duct. It actually sat perfectly in that position. The white box attached to the bottom of the defroster duct is an extension I added to meet up with the ducting for the heater box. The rusty looking bar across the bottom of the dash with all the wires drooped across it is the modified Dakota lower dash piece. Its hard to tell from this pic, but that green foam square on the heater box is just about the center of the truck. The white box on the defroster duct connects with a piece that shifts about 3" to the left to align up with the defroster duct. The heat control switch panel will sit under the right side of the instrument cluster, and the right side ends up about 4" to the right side of the instrument cluster. There is nearly 5" between the heater box and the lower dash support piece.
Pic 2, This might not look like much, but it took nearly 2 days to get this piece to this point! The top triangle piece is actually the top of the dash cover. It was originally made from two pieces of cardboard, a right side (not in this picture) and this left side. The 1st design had the the two pieces jointing at the center, but that didn't work out so well. What you are looking at was probably the 3rd design, and is not the finished design, but pretty close, lots of cardboard died to get to this point. The top of the triangle sets against the windshield framework. The slots are where the defroster duct meets from underneath. The red piece surround the top of the instrument cluster. It is built from 3 separate pieces welded together. It sits down over the top of the instrument cluster. In the final configuration, the area that is tack welded is screwed together. I couldn't get the pieces inside the truck when everything was welded together. The top piece is separate from the instrument cluster cover.
Pic 3, This is the left side of the instrument cluster. The 3 switches in the inset level are for the OD switch on the right side, the power remote mirrors on the right side (no longer present), and the headlight switch at the bottom. The round tube sticking through the panel is the Dakota's door window defroster. In the original Dakota dash, all of theses three switches would have been on the same level as the instrument cluster and the side glass defroster would have come through the side of the dash, but all of that would have been in the path of the window elevation crank. There are 3 separate panels here, the side of the instrument cluster is part of the cluster cover. The panel below the instrument cluster goes across under the cluster to the other side of the steering column, and the remaining sheet metal is the 3rd panel. You can see the fuse panel behind the left side dash cover.
Pic 4, The big red box on the right side is the glove box. The back of it is about 3/4" out from the heater box. You can see the basic shape of the dash cover here. The unpainted sheet metal lip above the glove box got 5 screws across the lip to connect the top panel to the glove box. The glove box and the red panel under it are all one piece and is mounted to the lower dash structure which you can see on the lower right corner of the pic. The area between the glove box and the steering column was not completed at this time because there is more stuff that had to be added under the dash cover, the right end cap was also not completed at this time.

Gee, seats that are actually attached to the truck would be nice. The tan bench fit and worked, but it did tended to slide around when you got in or out of the truck, or moved around too much.
I was at my buddy's shop helping him out with a little day project and we got talking about seats. I told him I was going too have to make a trip to LKQ and get a pair of seats out of a Dodge mini van for the 49, and he offered me a set he had bought for a project car that he went a different way with. At a get them out of here price, I took them home. One seat was still mounted on the mini van pedestal, but the other's pedestal was long gone.
the last pair of mini van seats I bought from LKQ cost me $40 for the pair on their last holiday 1/2 price sale weekend a few years ago. When I went there with my son a few months before, I couldn't find any that were not messed up. This pair was cheaper then the last pair I bought, and I really didn't think the missing pedestal was going to work anyway.
Pic 1 These are the seats my buddy had. Notice the seats are on the wrong side, the seat on the left side in the pic is the driver seat because the female seat belt buckle is on its right side and that would be incorrect in the van.
Pic 2 This is the original 49 seat pedestal that was in the 49. The tan seat sat on top of this mess, but these buckets didn't, even with their pedestals removed.
Pic 3 This is the passenger side seat sitting on the driver side, with the 49 pedestal still in the truck.
Pic 4, This is the same seat in the same position, with the mini van pedestal removed. It is sitting on the 49's pedestal. Notice the wood block under the front of the seat? That was so the seat would sit close to correct. Also notice the space between the top of the seat cousin and the steering wheel? That means the seat has to be lower. That means the 49 pedestal has to be removed, and I needed to come up with seat tracks and seat mounting brackets.

Time to remove the 49's seat pedestal and seat tracks. I already knew the seat tracks were bad and I would not be able to use them, so the order was placed for two pair of seat tracks from Speedway. The Speedway tracks are about 1/2 the price of everyone else has, and they are probably not the best quality, but the reality is, once the seat is positioned, it likely won't be moving very often, if at all.
Pic 1, The 49's pedestal removed.
Pic 2, So this hole in the floor has an interesting story. It is an opening for a Dodge Factory option, heated seats! About 4" under this hole was where the exhaust pipe off the manifold ran. As an option, Dodge had a tubing that surrounded the exhaust with the back end closed around the pipe. the exhaust still flowed through the original pipe, the outer pipe just caught the hot air around the exhaust pipe. Then a duct went up into the cab where they installed a closable gate. When the gate was opened, the heated air from around the outside of the exhaust pipe was funneled through the duct work into the cab, under the seat. Since the seat sat on an enclosed metal pedestal, the captured heat would be bottled up under the seat and would warm the seat springs. Once the area was warm, the air could escape out from under the seat between the seat and the back of the cab. the gate lever controlled how much heated air entered the area under the seat. This particular truck didn't have the heated seat option, so Dodge installed a snap in cover.
Pic 3, As you can see in this pic, the snap in cover (on the right) didn't fair very well in this truck. I'm not going to have that kind of heated seats, so I welded the patch (on the left) to the floor covering the hole.
Pic 4, As you can see, I had a couple more patches to weld in as well.

This was about the time I thought would be a great time to put in seat belts along with the seats. Not just lap belts, but shoulder and lap belts. Stay tuned. Gene

Really great build thread, I appreciate your "build it, don't buy it" approach. Always looking forward to the next installment.

Seat belts are an interesting topic. Some people hate them. Some people love them. Some people won't ride in anything without them. Some people use them because they are there. I suspect that anyone that has been in an accident where the belts left a mark but they walked away has a completely different attitude then someone that knows someone that was involved in a crash and the belts didn't save their friends life.

I have installed seat belts in a lot of vehicles, many that never had any belts in them. Some of those seat belt installations have been crash tested. Some were hard tested, others light tested. I can honestly tell you I never like to hear of any belt installation I've ever done that has been crash tested. I can tell you that in every case that was crash tested, every time, the occupants have come out better then they would have had there been no seat belts at all.

All that said, I have to add the disclaimer. I have no engineering degree. I have no CAD layout of your vehicle. I am showing you how I put seat belts in my truck. I accept no responsibility for any injury or death that may occur if you copy what I have done with my truck. Your vehicle, your responsibility, not mine.

Over the years I have looked at a lot of auto factory seat belt installations, and many in wrecked vehicles. The overwhelming conclusions I have come to are the factories use the best hardware they can, always grade 8 or better bolts, nuts and washers. The next thing they always do is tie the mounting location to as many other structures as the can within 12" of the bolts. If the anchor bolt moves, its moving a whole lot of stuff with it. A lot of modern stuff has the belt mounting points on reinforced areas of the seat frame itself, then the seats are mounted in the vehicle on reinforced flooring and brackets. If the belts are mounted on a sheet metal floor, the bolts pass through the floor and screw into an anchor bracket of at least 1/8" thick (many are 3/16" thick) that is at least a 2" square that has rolled edges that won't tear the metal. Those anchor brackets are also spot welded to the floor with 4 spot welds each.

If you are installing belts into a vehicle that has never had belts, I will suggest you buy new belts rather then use old belts, seat belts have a life expectancy, installing belts that are near the end of their life expectancy just doesn't make much sense. When you but the new belts, also buy the installation kit. It comes with the bolts, washers, and anchor bolt plates, and often pivot plates that come in pretty handy, that are often cheaper then you can make them for.

All of the factory retractable seat belts are designed to be mounted in the vehicle at a specific angle. The seat belt housing has a swinging pendulum inside of the housing that allows the belt to move in and out freely if it is centered, but locks the seat belt movement outward when the pendulum isn't swinging freely at its center. It the retractable belt housing is not positioned in the position it was designed for, the pendulum can not swing freely at its center and it will lock the outward movement of the belt. Generally the belt housing has a level line inscribed on two sides that if level (to the earth, not the car) allow free movement in and out of the belt. With a retractable belt, the retract base mounts on the floor, or into a specifically designed recess that maintains the level it was designed for near the door or the outer side wall of the vehicle. The belt pulls out and have a pivot point that is usually mounted fairly straight above the retract base. That pivot point is generally one bolt screwed into a structure with a lot of reinforcing. That pivot point allows the belt to change angles (to accommodate different seating positions) from there the belt has a slip movement male seat belt latch piece (this is the piece you pull across you to connect to the female end on the center side of the seat. Below the male belt latch the belt extends to either the seat frame, or a bracket on the floor. The belt can usually pivot on that bolt. The female part of the belt is usually pretty simple. The female latch assembly is attached to the belt. it extends to either the seat frame, or to the floor or transmission tunnel, or may be bolted to another bracket or extension piece. If there is a center seat belt, or if both seats are very close together, there may be another belt bolted to the same brackets. Most of the seat belt attaching points are pretty straight forward at the seat base or at the floor. The concept is that as the belt is mounted, you want the belt to pull straight against the brackets and bolts, rather that at a 45 degree or 90 degree angle. The biggest problem is the upper pivot point. That is what I'm going to spend my time on.
The goal is to mount that upper pivot point behind the shoulder of the seat occupant, with the seat at its farthest rearward position, and it should be located at or above the shoulder height of the tallest occupant. That goal can't always be met, but it should be the desired goal.
Pic 1, This is about what the male end of of the shoulder belt should look like when finished. This particular mounting is not correct for the pivot position in relation to the seat, The pivot needs to be much higher and more forward. but it gives you an idea what it should look like. This is the driver side, the passenger side should look just opposite. The next few pic will be of the passenger side of the truck.
Pic 2, This is a picture of the door post. This section is about 2 1/2" in diameter. I want to point out all the curves corners that make up the outer section. Every time you add a bend in sheet metal, you increase its strength. With the number of bends in this pillar, it is vert strong for its size. it would be very difficult for this section to bend top to bottom. This is the kind of piece you want for seat belt mounting, if you can mount the belt hardware without weakening the structure.
Pic 3, This is the inside section of the last picture. I want to point out that this is two pieces of overlapping steel. I also want to point out that the curve by the window has a pair of 90 degree bends about an inch apart. you can see I have several holes I have driller into this surface. The important thing here is to notice that the larger hole is where my upper belt pivot piece will be mounted.
Pic 4, This blurry pic shows 2 things. 1) this piece really is double thickness as you can see in the larger hole. 2 you can see that pair of 90 degree bends, What you can't see is that the outer piece of metal is also part of that corner window frame. If I drop a piece of bar stock into this rolled sheet metal section, that has a dilled hole for the belt's pivot bolt and a nut welded to the back side of that bar stock, and that bar stock is plug welded to the pillar, there is a lot of stuff that has to move for that bolt to move.

Upper belt pivot mount cont.
Pic 1, This is what I had for bar stock. It is a 1 1/4" wide channel with 3/16" walls. The seat belt pivot point bolt is a 7/16" fine thread. It fits perfectly into the channel.
Pic 2, This is the other side of the channel with the nut welded in place. Once in place, this piece extends above and below the double wall construction. It was clamped into place with the flat surface facing towards the inside of the cab. The pivot bolt is tightened against the inner surface of the pillar pulling the area around the bolt tight against the doubled metal, and this channel is plug welded through those holes mentioned earlier. For anything here to move, it has to pull the entire pillar and corner window structure with it.
Pic 3, Shows you a better view of the double thickness of the inner side of the pillar through the belt pivot bolt hole.
Pic 4 Shows a better view of the lower belt mounts (these are on the driver side). After the seat is mounted, these will be positioned on the floor with the nut plate welded to the floor from under the truck.


This was about the point where you take a breather, and sit back and look at the accomplishments so far. its time to review the "to do" list, and decide what order the remaining stuff needs t be done. At this point, anything done out of order will have to be taken apart to get the one thing you missed. This is also where you look for things that need to be corrected (there seems to always be something).

Yep, I found something.

These doors have good hinges, and the door pins are new. The doors open and close well, but after you close the door, the body line on the door doesn't match up with the same body line on the cab. The passenger side is off nearly 1/4"! Remember, this was the side that was badly damaged. I'm wondering what I missed. I can open the door and lift it up to line up, but can't feel anything loose or move. One day my son stopped by, and I had him lift on the door while I watched for movement. What I saw was the hinge was moving on the door frame and the hinge was moving on the door post!
Pic 1, See how far off the two body lines are?
Pic 2, The hinge was moving on the door frame. This weld helped a bunch.
Pic 3, The door skin was separating from the door frame. These tack welds solved the problem.
Pic 4, Not perfect, but much better. And yes, the striker post on the door jam had this much adjustment.

There was some movement on the driver side as well. That door didn't have near the drop as the passenger side.
Pic 1, After the passenger door, this one looked pretty good.
Pic 2, This was the problem on this side.
Pic 3, This was the fix.
Pic 4, All better.

Windshield wipers are fun, unless you don't have any, on a truck you intend to drive year around.
Most of the Dodge trucks of this era came factory equipped with electric powered wipers as an option. I suspect few trucks were built with the vacuum wipers and the electric conversions were pretty easy, even back then. The early year trucks were all 6 volts, but the later trucks (around 55-56) were 12 volts. The step up to 12 volts was pretty simple. These days you can buy new modern 12 volt electric wiper motors the come with switches and all the advantages of modern wipers. The only thing required was to still have the factory dual wiper posts sticking up through the cowl, just forward of the windshield and the linkage that connects the posts to the wiper motor. Those dual wiper posts were centered on each windshield section on each side of the truck. My truck came to me with holes where the wiper posts used to be and none of the linkage, it didn't even have the electric motor bracket.
Research followed, lots and lots of research. No one makes replacement wiper posts. No one wants to sell just used wiper posts, you have to buy the used wiper posts, the used wiper linkage under the dash, and the used wiper arms that only fit the Dodge wiper posts. Those pieces range from between $400 and $600. Of course, I need all of that because there is none of it on my truck, but really? That kind of money for 70+ year old stuff and that doesn't even include the motor or switch, which is another $350 add on? There has to be another option, and its sitting right there on my Donor Dakota. For $750+ I can spend some of my time messing around making something I already have work. I've done this before, a few times!
To understand the situation, you first have to understand the differences between how modern wipers work compared to how the old wipers worked. The old wipers were originally independent of each other, in fact for many years many vehicles only had a driver side wiper. At some point, a passenger side wiper became an option, eventually the passenger side became standard equipment (for the Dodge trucks the passenger wiper was standard starting in 1948). Up until about the mid 60s, most dual wipers would travel across the windshield in a mirror sweep, the wipers would either be going towards each other, or they were going away from each other. (I can see you moving your hands right now, LOL!) Usually this left a triangle area at the center of the windshield that was not cleared. Moving the posts around and positioning the blades to overlap at the center made some improvements, but that was the standard wiper operation, the blades either going towards each other, or the blades going away from each other.
In the mid-late 60s, that design started to change. Someone figured out that if they set up both wipers to move in the same direction at the same time, they could mount them closer to each other and eliminate or drastically reduce the size of that uncleared triangle at the center of the windshield. It also made the wiper motor and linkage easier because things only had to turn in one direction. The next step was to make one wiper travel farther across the windshield then the other. Then they could better cover most of the windshield. They could accomplish that by making one of the arms on the wiper post longer then the other.
The problem with using a modern wiper system on an old split glass windshield was both wipers have to have the same amount of movement across the glass (the sweep of the wiper), because neither wiper can cross over the center. One way to solve that would be to mount one wiper post at the center of the windshield area, and mount the other wiper on the farthest side of the other glass, but most people like the posts to be the same distance from the center of the glass, having one at the center and one at the far end just doesn't look right.
The arm on the wiper posts on a Dakota are different lengths, the passenger side has a sweep of 120 degrees and the driver side has a sweep of 90 degrees. The most sweep I can have on the 49 is 90 degrees. That means I will have to use two driver side wiper posts on the 49. It also means that if I use the Dakota motor & linkage, with corrected length, some how I'm going to have to change the direction of one of the wipers because I want both to be in the same position on the glass when they are parked. To accomplish that, I'm going to have to put an idler arm between the two wiper posts to change the direction of one wiper sweep. What can possibly go wrong?.
The 1st part of the adventure is to adapt the Dakota wiper posts to mount into the cowl, and the existing holes. First off, the Dakota wiper post mounts with 3 screws, and the 49 posts mounted with 2 screws, and unfortunately, none of those screw holes line up with each other. to add to that, the 49 mounting holes have threads in them, which means the housing for the 49 posts was outside of the truck, but the Dakota housings are threaded, so that means the mounting screws passed through what ever the Dakota wiper post were mounted to and screwed into the posts, the posts sat inside of the mounting metal. The 2nd challenge is the Dakota posts are pretty long, and have a larger diameter then the post holes on the 49. One would assume that the 49 posts must have been sealed under the posts, the Dakota posts were mounted under the vent cowl and were in an area that drained water away. Somehow the Dakota wiper posts are going to have to be sealed on the 49, or I'm going to have wet feet every time it rains. The wiper posts were installed before the windshield was installed. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the wiper post bracket. The 1st thing I did was open up the hole so the Dakota post could fit through the cowl with as tight of a fit as I could. I also drilled the threads out of the two mounting holes on each side. Then I determined about how far out of the cowl I thought the post should stick, and marked the post. With the posts on the bench, I knew how much space I had to make a mounting bracket that would mount to the Dakota mounting holes and could use the existing holes in the cowl to mount the bracket to. If I remember correctly, that dual mounting bracket was about 1/4" in height. I made a cardboard pattern of the enlarged post hole and the enlarged mounting holes so it would fit flush under the cowl. Then I made a cardboard pattern of the Dakota post mounting pattern with the center hole. The Dakota pattern was larger then the 49 pattern. Since it was all under the dash, I could off set the Dakota pattern enough that I could insert the mounting screws and mount the pattern to the Dakota post. With the two cardboard patterns made. it was just a matter of transferring the two patterns to steel, then welding on the appropriate mounting nuts, and spacing the two pieces to the proper height to position the post at the correct height. The process was to mount the post to the bracket, then add a gasket and hold the post in place and insert the screws from outside into the bracket. it worked really well, too bad you guys can't see it...
That was the easy part! It took 2 times of mounting the motor just to get it where it could function, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. There is just one other little thing... The 49 has a cowl vent. I really would like to have that function as well. The linkage to open and close it will occupy the same space as the wiper linkage, if I can free the cowl vent linkage up enough to work... No sense making this easy!
Pic 1, You've seen this one before, but its the best view I have of the holes where the wiper posts should be. Also notice the location of the cowl vent in relation to the wiper posts.
Pic 2, You've seen this one before too. This pic shows what the cowl vent looks like from inside of the cab (its the big rusty looking piece in the center just under the windshield "V") If you look at the vent door itself you can see the two mounting hinges on either side of the door. The vent pivots open from that point. In this pic the vent is closed, when its open, it would barely be visible from this angle.
Pic 3, There is a lot in this pic to see. At the top center is the passenger side wiper post as viewed from inside of the truck. To its right is the end of the wiper motor with one of its 3 mounting bolts. The black bar attached to the wiper post is the Dakota wiper linkage for the right side. The more rusty looking rod below it is the original Dakota wiper motor linkage. In the original truck, both of these linkage rods would have connected to the wiper post on the driver side, but now both of these connect to the idler arm pivot you will see later. The bolt with all the washers is the right side cowl vent door hinge. The rusty part In this pic) is actually the bottom of the cowl itself. The white curved bar attached at the bolt is the mounting bracket that is attached to the vent door (it is the white painted piece under the cowl). the little module on the shelf is for the overhead consul temp and directional monitor (that still won't give me an outside temp).
Pic 4, You've seen this one before too. This is the only pic I have that shows just the wiper post on the outside. The passenger side post is the easiest to see (which happens to be the same post you got to see the back side of earlier.