Build threads are a pain in the butt! Soooo, I'm going to do a build thread... This one is going to be a bit different. You get to see the start of the project and the running, driving current rendition of it.

I bought the 49 sheet metal (all the metal except the tail gate) on its original bent up frame. It came with a rolling 93 Dakota 4x4 frame that already had the wheelbase shortened to match the 49 wheel base, and a clear MO State issued title. It was quite a bargain but was a 300 mile one way trip from my house to where it was. I couldn't get both the truck and the frame on one trip, I had to do the 600+ mile round trip twice. It cost more to get everything home then I paid for the truck, around $1300 total.

I bought the truck, then drug it home and parked it alongside my driveway for nearly 2 years. Other priorities were in front of it, including retiring and closing up my welding shop. This truck got built after the shop was closed and I was retired. Once I started, it got nearly total attention, and was licensed 11 months after I actually started cutting up the donor truck. But that is getting ahead of the story.

While the 49 was waiting its turn, I ran into an acquaintance at another guy's shop. During the BS session, he asked me if I knew anyone that might be looking for a low mileage 318. Yea, me! The guy runs a small local auto dealership (think buy here, pay here lot). He told me he bought a 96 Dakota 4x4 with a 318 that only had 44,000 miles on it, at an auction. The truck needed rear brake lines, but the body looked pretty good and it ran great. He bought it thinking he could replace the brake lines and turn the truck for a quick buck. He drove the great running and driving truck the 100+ miles home from the auction, thinking he got a great deal. All was well until he went to put it up on his rack to change the brake lines, and chunks of the frame started falling on the floor. A close inspection reveled the frame was total toast. When I told him what my project was, his eyes lit up. He offered me anything I wanted off the 96 for $400. He would bring it to my place, I could remove anything I wanted, then I could take the remains to the local salvage yard, and he would drop off the title. How can you pass up a deal like that? The 96 arrived at my place the next day. It got parked next to the 49.

OK, so pictures or it didn't happen.
The first 3 pictures are the 49 the day after I brought it home, and before the Dakota 4x4 frame was here. The last picture is about the only pic I have of the 96 complete. Gene

A four picture limit is going to be a pain.

The first two pictures are the "new" Dakota 4x4 frame that came with the 49. The white/gray paint was some sort of rust protection the previous owner put on the frame. The frame has obviously been sitting outside for some time, and that paint job was pretty lax. He sort of covered the top of the frame. Nothing had been cleaned, he painted right over top of the dirt daubers and he didn't bother painting anything on the underside of the frame, nor inside of the frame.

Disassembly required. I started taking the 96 apart on the Monday after the July 4th weekend in 2020. The 3rd pic shows the 96 Dakota 4x4 frame with the sheet metal removed. The blue tarp is covering the 318 and the auto trans. This pic was probably taken around the end of July. You can see the 96 cab sitting on my driveway behind the 96's frame. To the right side you can see the 49 cab on its frame with the Dakota box sitting on the frame behind the cab. The 49's box is laying upside down in the grass to the right, and ahead of it is my winter beater (at the time) 95 Dakota extended cab, you can see that Dakota's bed is full of stuff from the 96.

The little orange truck on the left side of the pic is the reason the 49 is here. That is my 39 Dodge pickup, it was suppose to be my shop truck, but it was too small for this fat old man to drive comfortably. That pic was probably taken a couple days before the 39 got sold. The 39 funded this build. If you look closely, you can also see my 48 Plymouth coupe in front of the 96 cab sitting on the driveway.
The 4th pic is another look at the pile of parts that are present when you have 2 trucks taken apart. The 49's front fenders and hood are at the extreme right side of the picture, Just behind the front sheet metal is my son's Ramcharger. The Ramcharger is on a Hemi Durango frame with a 5.7, its currently running and driving. Gene

Last installment for tonight.
When you build something like this, positioning of the cab on the frame is critical. The goal of this project was to keep and use as much of the original Dakota chassis and drive train mounting as possible. Since the frame I'm using has already been shortened and my measurements tell me it was very close to what I wanted, the next step was to install the drivetrain and modify the cab to fit as need be. New factory replacement motor and transmission mounts were ordered and the motor was bolted into place on those original style brackets.

Before the drive train was moved from the 96 frame to the "new" frame, that frame did get cleaned up and painted. It wasn't a pretty job, but much better then what the white paint job was. There was still welding that would need to be done with the frame. My concern was to get covered what would be hard to get at once the drivetrain and cab were mounted. Pic 1,2 & 3 show the 318 bolted in place on the Dakota frame. Notice how close to the radiator support mounting holes the front frame rails are cut to? It really is that close.

Pic 4 is just fun. Everyone wants to know how I move cabs and truck beds around here, this is how! The old engine hoist with a 4" x 6" wood beam perched on top of the hoist with a 3/4" bolt welded to the hoist that passes through a hole in the 4" x 6" wood beam. This was the 1st test fit of the cab. Notice that the cab is a good 12" above the frame, and also notice the hoist is lifted pretty high. For the cab to clear the transmission, the hoist had to go to max lift, and the cab is pretty tilted. Things are pretty dicey with the cab lifted that high. That much weight lifted that high makes the hoist pretty light on the wheels at the hoist end. Moving the hoist with the cab that high is pretty nerve racking. If things go astray, all you can do is get out of the way and watch everything crash, then, after everything stops moving, you look to see what got messed up.

I had to pull the cab off the frame (by myself) several times before I got enough metal trimmed out of the way it would sit on the frame. This process took about 3 days, every night the cab sat on cement blocks on the driveway, and the frame was rolled into the garage. Gene

Great story and fun build I will be waiting for the next chapter.

poorboy/Gene is the expert on old truck to dak frame swap !
it pays to listen, as he has done a few, and knows what works and what doesn't !

Thanks guys.

How much did you really cut out of the floor and firewall? I'm so glad you asked.
Pic 1, This is what the floor looked like. Under the big U shaped piece that was the radiator support that was thrown into the truck cab, and the square tube laying on top of the floor from side to side, and the running board brackets laying near the drivers door, the floor was pretty flat. The bottom of the firewall kicked up at a 45 degree angle, and there is a 1" raised section of the floor at the seat riser that reaches to the back of the cab.
Pic 2, I cut this much out first. You can't see the 6" back and 12" wide area that was also cut out of the floor behind the seat riser.
Pic 3, The reason for the floor cut out. At this point, the cab is still a good 4" above the frame!
Pic 4, To sit down lower, the front 6" of the Dakota fuel tank protruded into the cab. I had to cut a notch out of the back of the cab the width of the frame to drop the cab another inch, then cut this section out of the back of the cab to clear the gas tank. Each time I had to cut more out of the floor, I had to lift the cab, and pull it away from the frame.

Probably about this point you are wondering why I want the cab so low. Well its not really too low. Should I just mount the cab at the current height, that would make the top of the roof over 7' high, and the top of the fenders around 5' high. I'm getting old, the thought of climbing up into the truck is not so appealing anymore. I'm looking to have the truck about Dakota 4x4 height, maybe slightly lower.
I can't post any more pictures, so on to the next segment. Gene

What does that floor look like from inside? The following 4 pictures are with the cab sitting on blocks one inch above the frame, the intended finished height.
Pics 1 & 2 are the trans through the floor. The shifter on the trans is for the 4x4 transfer case. I should probably note that the flat part of the floor was patched at one time. Someone hacked in a 1/8" piece of steel from one side of the truck to the other. That plate is fit between the bottom of the firewall angle and goes back to the front edge of the seat riser. The hole for the trans to stick through took the center right out of that piece. I had to reinforce that entire area before I could put the new trans tunnel in the cab.

Pics 3 & 4 show the back wall and the section of the floor that needed to be cut out to clear the gas tank. The yellow strap is the strap attached to the Dakota tank that was used to hold the tank in place on the assembly line until the tank straps were bolted on. You can also see I also had to cut off the bottom of the cab support bracket. Originally the bottom of that support strap was spot welded to the joint of the rear cab panel and the floor pan. Originally it sat back against the back of the cab. You can also see the 1/8" x 2" wide steel flat stock I used to reinforce the back of the cab (in this picture the piece is just sitting in place). There is a 1" deep step down in the cab floor that originally ended at the front cut on the floor pan, you can see both ends of that step line still present. The oblong hole in the floor pan, just towards the front of the Dakota tank cutout was where the original gas fill tube passed through the cab floor. The original fuel tank on this truck was located inside of the frame rail, just forward (1/2 under the cab, 1/2 under the truck bed) of where the Dakota tank presently sits. There is a fill tube hole in the body, just behind the driver's door as well (you can see that fill hole in the cab side in the pic from the left side of the truck). The gas fill tube was filled just behind the door, and the tube passed through a rubber grommet, went through the cab behind the seat, and then passed through a rubber grommet and entered the tank on the front top of the tank.

Out of picture space. Next segment please.

With the floors cut, and the cab sat down on the frame, it was time to match everything up. I want to note that the original firewall cleared everything on the motor at this time. Unfortunately, that original firewall had been modified before my time with it. Someone hacked in a steering column and added a firewall mounted booster and master cylinder. There were many large holes where I didn't want them, and flat steel where I needed holes. I was going to have to offset the steering column and the master cylinder/booster location. At this point, the desire to use as much original Dakota equipment took over. Measurements told me that if I used the firewall out of my donor truck, I would be able to use the factory steering column mounting, the original gas pedal assembly, the original HVAC box, and most of the original wire harness opening through the firewall, and then there were not many holes I didn't need.
When I cut the firewall out of the donor Dakota, I cut it extra big. While I was cutting, I also cut the donor's trans tunnel.
Pic 1, This is the best pic I have of the original firewall. The plan was to remove all the firewall between the ribs on each side, and under the rib across the top, and at the bottom of the angle.
Pic 2, Out with the old.
Pic 3, A little closer look at the destruction. A plasma cutter and a few hours later.
Pic 4, In with the new. The top and sides ae welded together. Notice the long shadows? That was a very long day!
Next installment.

Brackets are welded to the frame for the cab mounts, and with the new cab mounts and bolts, the cab is bolted to the frame. Once the cab is bolted in place, the floor and the bottom of the firewall can be welded together, and all the floor bracing and the back of the cab bracing can be added.
Pic 1, The cab is bolted to the frame.
Pic 2, The bottom of the firewall gets welded to the floor pan.
Pic 3, The support for the back of the cab at the gas tank cut out in position.
Pic 4, Cardboard is your friend! When you need to make something out of steel, but your not quite sure how to do it, its a lot cheaper to cut up cardboard (think beverage container box) its about the same thickness as the steel, and ridged enough to bend and sort of hold form. You can tape it together to make shapes, or to add more material. then if you really screw it up, you toss it and try again. its cheaper then steel to cut up and throw away.

One more for tonight.

Once that cardboard pattern looks like you want it to look, you transfer it to the steel, cut it and bend it, then weld as needed.
Pic 1, The cardboard pattern in place.
Pic 2, The cab reinforcing piece welded in place.
Pic 3, The formed sheet metal cover made from the cardboard pattern.
Pic 4, The cover welded in place.

That was short, one more.

The trans tunnel reinforcement. The steel flat stock used here is 1/8" x 2". When they patched the floor with the 1/8" sheet steel, they just put the patch over the top of the existing floor, and that patch went from the angle at the bottom of the firewall to the front edge of the raised floor under the seat riser. They put a few short welds along the edges of the seat riser and the 1/8" sheet steel. My problem was I cut the center out of the 1/8" sheet steel, and I cut the center out of the 1" rise in the floor pan and the seat riser support. At that point I wasn't sure the actual seat riser support was going to be able to stay in the truck at all, and cutting the big hole at the center left everything a bit more flexible then I liked. I felt a need to add some reinforcing to the center of the floor. The new trans tunnel was going to be about 4" higher then the original flat floor. I decided that I could stand up aa 1/8" x 2" flat bar upright and run it all around the edges of the cut hole. That would give me very solid floors plus eliminate 2" of height for the trans tunnel. I figured the most important support would need to be in the area cut out near the seat riser in the center. The 1st piece I made was the shape around the cut floor inside of the seat riser area.
Pic 1, The floor reinforcing inside of the seat riser area.
Pic 2, Once the floor inside of the seat riser was reinforced, I added this 1/8" x 2" piece across the top to give myself an area weld the new tunnel to.
Pic 3, The "new" tunnel is the trans tunnel from the 96 Dakota donor. The Dakota tunnel was much deeper then this one needs to be, so I flattened it out and repositioned it for a better fit. I did have to add a little sheet metal between the tunnel and the the firewall, even though they were welded together in the Dakota,
Pic 4, This shows the pieces added at the firewall. The tunnel on the Dakota was shifted about 2" more towards the passenger side then it is in this truck. It was more important for the shifter to be located in a good position in this truck then it was for the sheet metal to line up.
Also, the top cover for hole in the floor inside of the seat riser was addressed after the seating was decided.

The radiator and radiator support are the next challenge. Gene

I just knew this was going to happen!
The pictures on this computer have been added to several times from a couple different cameras. The last batch of pictures I added were from an old camera disc that I needed to hook up an old printer to my computer to transfer them here. The process of adding pictures from so many sources means the pictures are not in order. Then to make things worse, the pictures cover parts of my last 3 builds. Only being able to post 4 pictures at a time doesn't help either.
Pic1, This picture should have been in the 2nd installment. Shortly after I brought the 4x4 frame home, I just had to see what the truck was going to look like. This picture is that 1st mock up. The 49 sheet metal is sitting on top of the Dakota 4x4 chassis. There is no drive train under the hood and the front sheet metal only has a couple bolts holding it together and onto the cab. The cab was ratchet strapped to the frame, and the bed sides are held there with two pieces of threaded rod and a couple tacked in place pieces of tubing. The truck sat in my side yard looking like this for most of a year.
Pic 2, This is after the cab floor had been modified, and after the 318 was bolted to the frame, and maybe even before the cab was bolted onto the chassis. I'm probably attaching the front clip to make sure it was still all going to fit, and look right.
Pic 3, Notice the blocking under the front fender? Notice on the driver side there is a little horizontal plate attached to the firewall, just above the tire. There is a piece welded to the inside of the fender that sits on that little ledge, and two bolts thread into the captured nuts on that piece on the fender. That is what holds the fender to the firewall. The passenger side fender probably has one of those two bolts tight, and I'm using the gap between the fender and the door to determine how high the front of the fender needs to be. Once I have the door gap right, I can stand back and see if the cab is sitting correctly on the frame. I tend to check stuff like this every time something is added to removed from the frame. You still miss stuff, but its easier to catch stuff in the build process and correct a wrong then it is to fix something later after a lot of other stuff has been done.
I feel better. I'm done for tonight. Gene

Does the city give you crap for all rigs on your lawn?

This little piece of paradise I live at just happens to be at the end of the street, right next to business properties. The guy that owned this place also owned one of those business properties, and at one time, be built a warehouse on the lower corner of this property for that business. As a result, this location is zoned as a business property. I purchased it for that reason. This is the only property on the entire street that is zoned business, and I ran my welding shop from here for 20 years. Anything parked on that side lot was a "customer's vehicle". End of discussion.

Every time our city gets a new zoning person (about every 5 years), they come by to see me, and I have to tell them about the business zoning for this property. Some are cool about it, but do check it out, some are jerks and threaten me, but come back and apologize after they check.

I may have a problem when we get the next new zoning person though, I've retired, closed the shop, and have cleaned the place up. That side yard actually has nothing sitting on it right now, the 1st time in 22 years for that! When I ran the shop here, it was established before all the current business laws were enacted so it was grandfathered in. The property zoning still stands, but a new business that starts here will have a lot more crap to deal with then I ever had.

The draw back to the business zoning is if the house should get more then 60% damaged, I probably couldn't put living quarters here again (the replacement insurance covering the house is enough to build a new slightly smaller home elsewhere, this house is an 1800+ sq ft ranch style). The property is large enough (.6 acre) and zoned (B3) so that I could put any business short of a manufacturing facility here. It is one block off the intersection of 2 State highways, has street access on 2 sides, and is accessible by semi. Gene

Just took some pics of my place.
Pic 1, House, looking towards the north west.
Pic 2, From the corner of the two street access, looking north east.
Pic 3, From the back porch, looking north. The building on the left is the side of my garage, the ground drops off about 8' right past where the pic was taken from, the higher part of the garage is what you see from the street, the lower garage has a 6' high door that enters from the north side of the building. Behind the back fence, the ground drops another 8', there are railroad tracks there, past the tracks is a river, then country. The two little sheds along the back fence are mine, and the pine tree on the right side is also on my property. The yellowish shed is the neighbor's to my east, his shed is on the edge of his property line. That back fence is about 80' from the back of the house.
Pic 4, This is what that side yard that had all the stuff sitting on it looks like this morning. Gene

More pics.
Pic 1, Back at the intersection of the two streets, this one looking more directly north. The building on the left side is the business property that the original owner of my place owned that caused him to build the warehouse, which is the white building on the right side of the street. That warehouse is not on my property. This street dead ends about 20' past the north end of both of those buildings, the ground level drops about 8' and the railroad tracks run on that lower ground.
Pic 2, This is looking east from the side of the warehouse building. You can see the ground drop off from the front of my garage to the back of my garage. You can see the north facing garage door for the lower level of my garage. The yellowish building visible between the warehouse and my garage is my neighbor's house on the east side. From the telephone pole to the west side of my garage is around 95'.
Pic 3, This is another view of the back yard. The building on the left is the back end of the warehouse, the building on the right is the north west corner of my garage. The beautiful screwed up gate is the compliment of the electric company, last winter they needed access to service the phone post you see behind the warehouse, since the gate was snowed shut, they just bent it out of the way.
Pic 4, This is another view of the back yard, this time looking north west from the east side of my house. The steps on the extreme left go up into my enclosed back porch, and just right of that is the east side of my garage with the walk in door on the lower level of the garage and the main floor window. The building with the phone pole at its center is the warehouse (it is not mine). That warehouse is 100' x 40' by the way, this is the 40' width. The property you see beyond the back fence is a cement operation. Between the fence and the cement company is 2 sets of railroad (used to be 4 sets) and a river. The cement company is not within the city limits. State highway 26 north is to the left side of the cement company and appears to end about the center of the warehouse's roof on the north side. The chain link fence running north on the right side of the picture is mine, but it is about 20' west of my property line. There are 3 large pine trees running north to south on the east side of that chain link fence. The people we bought the place from had big dogs, and rather then include the trees into the back yard, they ran the dog fence on the west side of the trees. The guy that used to live on the east of us used to take care of the yard on that side of the fence. The new guy that has only been there a couple of years let the weeds grow up under the trees last summer. If I have to take care of that area, the trees will probably go away, and the fence might move to the property line. If I do that, he won't have much access to his back yard, his house is about 5' from my property line.

I didn't go down into the back yard to get pictures of the back of the house, but its not much to look at. Gene

[s][/s] All this sharing of info is much appreciated! I'm currently trying to gather help to set the trusses on the addition to my garage. Soon as the addition is done, I'm back on the 55!

Thanks Gene!

Kevin

The front sheet metal... Where do I start?
I guess the place to start is how the front sheet metal was originally bolted together, and then how it was attached to the frame and the cab. Then, maybe the modifications, and the radiator issues might be more clear.
Pic 1, Lets just start off with THE RAMCHARGER IS NOT MINE AND IS NOT AVAILABLE! What lays in front of the Ramcharger is the original front sheet metal off the 49, the original hood and center support is laying on top of the frame clip. The front panel bolts to each fender across the top and down along the sides. At either side of the center are the vertical and lower sheet metal filler panels that the radiator bolted to. Those filler panels bolt to the front panel and also bolt to the radiator support that was bolted to the frame (the radiator support that bolts to the frame piece is not pictured there). On each side there is a brace that attaches to the radiator support and extend out to the bolts that attach the fender to the front panel. Lots of bolting going on, are you confused yet?
Pic 2, This is what the last mentioned piece looks like. There is a left and a right side version. The part I'm holding up is the passenger side bracket (right side). The 3 holes on the right side bolt to the fender and the front panel. The two bolt holes on the lower left attach to the radiator support bracket that bolts to the frame. The wing I'm holding has been cut off, it would have extended to the top edge of the radiator support piece.
Pic 3, This is what the inside of the fender where it bolts to the front panel looks like. This is the driver side fender. Those bottom 3 bolt holes would be where the 3 bolt holes on # 2 brackets bolted to. All 7 holes had 5/16" bolts in them, the bolts screwed into nut inserts in the front panel.
Pic 4, The U shaped piece laying on the floor is the radiator support that bolted to the frame and to the front panel through the filler panels. The U part would be the bottom and was bolted to the frame. The channel pieces that would have been standing straight up has sets of bolts on each side of the flanges. The 3 holes on the front bolted to the sheet metal, and the 3 holes at the rear side was what the radiator bolted to. The curve on those upright channels faced the front. If that piece was sitting vertical in its current position, that would have been how it was mounted in the truck. That was a heavy duty piece of steel that was bolted solid to the frame. Gene

That was how the front sheet metal was bolted together. Now we should cover how the sheet metal was attached to the cab.
Pic 1, The little horizontal "L" shaped plate bolted to the side of the firewall at the center of this pic is the primary mounting bracket for the fender. Those plates have a little movement up and down or forward and backward. The adjusting bolts are inside of the cab and the bolt threads into these brackets. There is a bracket on the fender that sits on top of this bracket. Two bolts come up from the bottom, pass through the two bolt holes and thread into the brackets on the fender. The only other mounting point for the fenders is the hole in the cab mount bracket that is welded to the frame. You can see that hole just forward of the lower part of the door, just below the inverted V shaped indentation on the side of the firewall with the black paint blob. That great rust repair was from whom ever the guy was (not me) that welded the plate on the cab floor. Its not pretty, but its not going anywhere.
Pic 2, This is the inside of the fender, back by the door. The top of the fender is at the top of the pic. This is the driver side fender. The block looking thing at the top of the fender is the part that sits on the horizontal "L" bracket on the side of the firewall. The two holes visible at the bottom of that bracket are the holes you screw the bolts into. That bracket is riveted to the fender, and the fenders often rust through at the contact point of the bracket to the fender. The long bracket bolted to the door end of the fender is the other fender support. This piece bolts onto the fender flange that is between the fender and the door. This bracket can be bolted to either side of the truck, to two holes on the side of the bracket would bolt to the other fender and are not used on this fender. There are two holes on the bottom flange of this bracket. The hole farthest from the outer fender face is the hole that the bolt would pass through for the cab mount bracket. The other bottom hole would be used if this bracket was mounted to the other fender and is not used on this fender. That indentation in the side of the firewall is there so the bracket clears the firewall. Just to the right of the upper fender mount you can see a pair of holes in the fender flange. There are 6 holes, evenly spaced across that flange that extends all the way to the front panel. The two holes at the back of the flange are used to bolt the hood latches to, as are the front two holes. All 6 holes are used to bolt the inner fender to the outer fender. I've not ever seen a pair of those inner fenders bolted in place that were not damaged or missing completely. The smaller holes in the flange from the larger holes going rearward towards the door end of the fender are to hold a rubber lip seal. That seal bridges about a 3/8" to a 1/2" gap between the cab and the fender. I've not seen any of those intact either. You can buy replacement pieces, but they don't fit very well.

Just so you get the correct picture, the primary fender mounting bracket is attached to the side of the firewall on a rubber mounted cab, but the bottom bracket is bolted to a frame mounted bracket. One can move, the other can't. Up in the front, the fender is bolted to the front panel, and it is bolted to the radiator support, which is bolted solidly to the frame. Both ends of these fenders, and around the riveted fender to body mounting point tend to crack and tear. Any one else wonder why? For the record, all the fender mounting bolts are a pain in the butt to thread in.

Pic 3, Moving on. Its should be pretty obvious I can not use the original radiator support. The crossmember it would have bolted to on the original frame is not present on the Dakota frame. The Dakota radiator support was rubber mounted, and used the large hole at the end of each frame rail. There is a rubber bushing in each of those two holes in this pic, those holes are just forward of the piece of tubing laying across the the ends of the frame rails. The radiator has to be positioned directly above where the tubing is sitting. The ends of those frame rails were cut off to in order to set the fenders and front panel on the truck for the mock up, Yep. its that close!

Well, you have to start someplace. I had two options. I could use the original radiator and radiator support from the donor Dakota. the radiator was pretty wide, and pretty tall, and it had plastic tanks with an aluminum core, the radiator looked OK, but those type of radiators don't have a good track record for long life. Option 2: When I built my 39 Dodge, I found a radiator that fit a 54 Chevy worked well for it. It was tall, narrow on the width, and about 2" thick. A new completely aluminum radiator sounded much better then the aluminum core with plastic tanks, so I ordered a new radiator. I decided to make a new radiator support from angle iron to mount my radiator and hang the front sheet metal from, and use the rubber mounting from the Dakota.
Pic 1, Making the radiator support bracket.
Pic 2 & 3, The bracket bolted in place.
Pic 4, The radiator support bolted in place with the sheet metal bolted together and positioned in the proper position. Things were looking good!

Things were going pretty well until it was time to try on the hood. It went down hill from there.

So the hood mounting on these trucks is another interesting operation. The center of the hood is the entire hood support. There is a single rear bracket that is spot welded to the hood center. That bracket extends out below, and towards the sides where it bolts to the top of the firewall. The front of the hood has a similar bracket, but it bolts to a separate piece that bolts to the front panel. The piece that bolts to the front panel that came on my truck was not the correct part, I think someone got that part from a Chevy truck that is close, but fits incorrectly. The next issue with the hood center is it has a curved front end that drops several inches lower then the rear of that center piece. The hood center is fully formed sheet metal. The two hood sides hang off the canter piece. They are also fully formed sheet metal, but the size of each side makes each side pretty heavy. Too heavy for the center to support. The center piece tends to crack across the top surface. There are no hinges for the side panels, Dodge used the rolled sheet metal of the hood sides to form the hinge, but that rolled edge does not continue around the curved center piece which compounds the fatigue for the center piece. I have added a 1/2" round bar stock onto each side of the hood center that extends from the rear mounting bracket to the front mounting bracket. Then I usually have to weld the cracked sheet metal, and often straighten the bent hood center. Just to make things more fun, the center piece does not curve all the way down to the front panel. there is a gap of about 2" between the top of the front panel and the bottom of the hood center and both hood sides. Dodge added a chrome filler piece on the 48-50 models The 51 to 53 the hood center and the front panel met without the filler piece. Of course, I didn't have that filler piece either. Those pieces are available, but are pricy.
Pic 1, Front sheet metal bolted at the rear of the fenders, and blocked up into position. Radiator clamped into position.
Pic 2, As low as it can mount and have the top hose clear the fan. The hood can't come down any more, its almost in contact with the radiator cap at this point.
Pic 3, There is 3/4" between the radiator and the fan, the radiator can't move forward any more, I already had to trim the corner of the fender.
pic 4, Screwed! I can cut the angle iron off, but the right side (left side of the pic) of the radiator won't let the hood come closed. See that black line on the sheet metal under the hood center? That is the highest the hood center can be, its an inch too high.

I ended up cutting the top 8" off of the Dakota radiator support, then I could use the it and the original Dakota radiator. I had to create a new method to hold the top of the radiator in position, because originally it was bolted to the part I had to cut off the top of the radiator support. The Dakota radiator had to be in an exact location or it wouldn't clear the hood corners either. Then the radiator fill was under the hood center and the hood had to be removed to add coolant. I did have a recovery bottle, but the upper radiator hose was above the top of the radiator. I did add an in hose filler, but it didn't work very well. The whole deal was boarder line functional.
But the truck had a radiator that held coolant, and the hood closed, keep moving forward. Gene

As the progress is moving forward, the big things were captured on film, but pretty much daily, little things were also going on. As we progress through this build, some of the pictures are not accurate for the events going on, but may better illustrate things that I feel need to be explained.

The progress of the build had a specific plan, and the time frames were pretty tight. This build was very unusual in that there the biggest loss of progress was waiting for parts. During those days that meant the parts would be here the week after they were ordered. Very little time was lost waiting for parts, because there was so much that had to be done, the work would just shift to a different part of the project. The things that normally get in the way of a build progress were just non-existent. The biggest usual problem, the money, was taken care of when the 39 pickup sold. The next biggest problem, the time to work, was taken care of, I had just retired. The next biggest problem was equipment and work space, again, I'd just retired, my welding shop and everything in it was available. There were a few distractions because of commitments, or helping a few friends, but those were pretty limited to a week or two of lost time, and some of that was because sometimes I just needed a break from this truck to refresh.

The nature of my shop is that there was more work space and better lighting if whatever I was working on was near the garage door. If need be, I could put stuff outside to have more work space. That would mean if i wanted to work on the front of the truck, the front end needed to be towards the garage door, but if I needed to work on the rear of the truck, the rear end needed to be towards the garage door. Once you get about 10' out of my garage, the driveway goes up hill slightly. If the truck doesn't move under its own power, you either push it up the hill, or you hook a chain on it and pull it up the hill. The driveway is 88' long, and 19' wide. The highest point in the drive is at the mid point of its length, then it goes down hill to the street (or down hill towards the garage), about a 4' total drop in either direction. That high point in the driveway is about even with the front of my house, which sits about 4' from the the east edge of the driveway. On the west side of the driveway is 75' of fairly level yard, but there is a transition between the cement drive and the grass. You do not easily push a vehicle over that transition. A 19' wide wide driveway is not quite wide enough to turn a vehicle around without jockeying it around a few times. What all this translates to is, getting the truck to move under its own power was a pretty high priority.

I used the 96 EFI system, so there are a bunch of wires that runs forward of the firewall for all the lighting and engine electronics, a computer to support, and an under hood fuse box. The Dakota also mounted the battery under the hood, something there is little room for where you could get access to. There was also new brake lines to run, brake hoses to replace, and brakes to rebuild. I needed new fuel lines, exhaust, and I had to shorten the drive shaft. Then inside of the cab there is a steering column to mount, an instrument cluster to mount, the heat/ac to refresh the heater core and the evaporator (If I might want AC in the future). There is a very large bundle of wiring that goes across the dash, a fuse box to mount and that other computer to mount. I needed to connect the steering, the trans shift linkage, and figure out how to get a functioning brake pedal in the cab. Then I needed a seat, and a way to open the truck door from inside. All that before the truck would be able move under its own power. Much of the wiring was able hang from zip ties until I could have something more permanent to mount it to, if I have something to zip tie to. Much of this stuff was temporally attached so the truck could move on its own and was addressed at a later date as a larger, more sweeping updated modification took place.
Then, there was no glass at all in the truck (glass and just the rubber around it is $1000, but fortunately all of it was available new!) Nothing inside of the doors functioned except one outside door handle (the other outside handle sort of worked). With all the exposed computers and wiring, this meant that the truck couldn't really sit outside very long, threatening weather would have been a disaster.

If anyone is interested, I took pictures of how I shortened the drive shaft. I've done a bunch of this in my shop over the years, and have never had a problem, but I know there would be those that would whine it wasn't done correctly. That is OK, most of them already don't approve of this project. I'll drive mine, they can seek perfection for their ride. Gene

Great build thread, thank you very much for taking the time to post.

Thank you.

I've stated 100s of times that a person has to know what they want their vehicle to do or be so they can build it to meet their expectations. This truck has 2 specific goals.

#1, Its going to be my primary winter driver (we have ice, snow, and they heavily salt the roads here). It will need to survive under those conditions. There is a reason it is a functioning 4x4 truck.

#2, I want a cool old truck to drive. If I can get 15 years out of it, it will probably outlast my driving time. I really don't care what shape it will be in when I get done with it.

Those goals place some pretty hard challenges on this build process. The things some people feel are important are not with me, and some very important things that others wouldn't bother with really need to be done with this truck. The last installment I had a functioning radiator and radiator support, but the front sheet metal was propped up on cement blocks and wood. Can't really drive it like that, so the next step was to attach the sheet metal to the radiator support. Unfortunately, I don't have any really good pictures of that radiator support, so you get to see a few mixed up pictures that should give you the picture of what that looked like.
Pic 1, You have seen this one already. A few other things I want to point out. The headlights in this era of trucks (and cars) are mounted to the front sheet metal by the use of headlight buckets that were screwed to the fender, head light assembly, or in this case, the front panel. Usually, the back side of those buckets resided in the wheel well and were not protected from road debris or things like the salt used on current roads during the winter. Usually those buckets received a lot of damage over the years, and finding good replacements is difficult. Its is kind of hard to see, but the passenger side of the front panel on my truck was damaged at some point in time (probably the same time the roof got damaged). That damage has distorted the opening in the front panel, and probably destroyed the headlight bucket on that side of the truck. I only had one headlight bucket. For a Dodge truck, used replacement headlight bucket runs $100 each, when you can find them. In my case, even if I found one, the opening is so distorted, it wouldn't fit anyway. Then I wasn't real happy about the idea of no protection for the bucket or the front panel, given this truck would see a lot of winter driving.
One more thing I want to point out from this picture is inside of the grille opening, beside the aluminum radiator on the left side (of the pic). You can see a sheet metal panel standing vertically behind the front panel. If you look, you can see a vertical row of 3 bolt holes on each side of the grille opening, the side on the left of the picture has a bolt in the top and the bottom hole. That original panel you see through the grille opening was bolted to the front panel and that was bolted to the radiator support to hold the front panel on the truck (there is a piece like this on each side of the radiator).

About the time I was pondering how I was going to do this, my son conned me into going to the nearest LKQ pull a part to help him find stuff for his project. I was looking for seats for the 49. What I found was a modern CJ Jeep. Interestingly enough, I discovered the headlights in that Jeep were mounted on plastic buckets that were bolted to a flat panel behind the bucket. Those plastic buckets had the adjusting screws attached, and the headlights were the same size as the headlights in my truck. $7.50 bought both headlight buckets, and all the mounting hardware. I didn't see any reason I couldn't do the same setup in my truck. It would protect and mount the headlight, make it adjustable, and protect the front panel sheet metal in one step with modern stuff I can still buy.

Pic 2, I reversed the order, sorry. #2 shows the flat sheet metal behind the headlight opening in the front panel. That piece of sheet metal is a separate piece then the new sheet metal shown inside of the grille opening. The piece inside the grille opening is a replacement for the original piece that was there. All 3 vertical bolts hold that piece to the front panel. There is a similar piece on the other side of the grille opening. At the bottom of the grille opening you can see the original bottom filler panel bolted in place. Those bolts are all 1/4" bolts in original holes in the front panel. Originally those were probably screw head bolts, and would have been covered by either chrome or painted grille bars. On the vertical piece you can see it is plug welded to a black painted part, that part is the original lower section of the Dakota radiator support. Both sides and the bottom pieces bolted to the front panel and are all welded to the radiator support.
Pic 3, This probably should have been posted 1st, but anyway. This is the best picture of the radiator support and the headlight inner cover. Of course, this pic is the inside of the drivers side of the front panel, with the fender off. The vertical piece with the formed holes just to the right of center is the Dakota radiator support. The radiator mounting bushing that is used to bolt this through the hole in the frame is on the front side of that structure, and the bottom section wraps around to the other side. The headlight cover is formed sheet metal that is about 2" inside of the outer surface of the front panel, that is the depth of the plastic headlight holding bracket. That keeps the headlight in pretty much the original depth as the original Dodge truck was. That headlight panel is also welded to the radiator support. At the very top of the picture you can see bolts screwed into same holes that the fender uses to bolts to the front panel. The fender mounting bolts sandwich this sheet metal between the fender and the front panel.
Pic 4, This pic was taken much later, but it shows what the bottom of the radiator support looks like from the top. The two holes towards the right of the pic are where rubber plugs sat in those holes and the plastic studs from the radiator fit into the rubber. The top of the radiator was held down to keep the studs engaged into the holes.

Just a couple pictures of the upper radiator mounting. These pictures are much later in the build, but make things pretty clear I think.
Pic 1, Remember way back when I told you how the front of the hood bolted to a piece that bolted to the top of the front panel and the part I had was wrong? Here is a pic of the part I made to accomplish the task, without the hood in place. This piece appears to be just sheet metal, but there are several pieces of 1/8" x 1" bar stock under it for reinforcing. The 4 bolts at the front connect it to the front panel. Those 4 bolts are all there is to keep everything together. Originally, this piece would have been stamped sheet metal, but it would not have been used to support the radiator like it does now. The original radiator was bolted to the radiator support that was bolted to the frame. The two formed channels are the brackets the front hood support bolt to. There is an 1/8" x 1" bar stock with a piece of rubber glued to the bottom that sits on top of the plastic radiator tank on each side that holds the radiator in place.
Pic 2 Shows the same area with the hood bolted in place. I should point out the original gap between the hood center and both sides have had a piece of metal welded over to fill the gap. This quick fill job will be addressed later.
Pic 3, This pic shows the back side of the radiator hold down on the driver side.
Pic 4, This is what the original gap between the hood pieces and the front panel looked like, as you can see, I had just started filling the gap in this pic. I did buy an original chrome piece to fill that gap. The chrome piece I bought didn't fit well at all, the distance between the hood center and the corner of the hood on both sides was off nearly a 1/2" and the way it had to be mounted would have been a major undertaking to make work. Had the part fit will, I probably would have made the bracket to bolt it on, but since the part fit so poorly, I made the decision to fill the opening by welding on sheet metal. Gene

With the front sheet metal attached to the frame, its time to move on. The brake pedal and steering column need to be supported. Since I'm using the Dakota firewall, the holes are already present for the Dakota stuff to bolt in place at the firewall, however the brake pedal and steering column in a Dakota are also supported by the dash frame. You understand that the Dakota dash frame does not exist in this truck. Realizations had to be met, and modifications had to be made.
The 1st realization that had to be met was the original 49 dash had to go. It was in the wrong location, and was frankly, in the way. That decision was easy, I didn't have any original instrumentation, and it would not have matched up to the current drivetrain and electrical systems even if I had them. I would need to leave enough of the original dash to screw a new one to around the windshield. Everything else was open. I added reinforcing to the upper part of the cowl that would connect to the Dakota steering and brake bracket, and then build a piece that would become the lower dash brace. Once the 49's dash was out of the way, that was much easier then I expected. Things like a new dash and instrument cluster could be worked out as necessities were accounted for.
With the column and pedal support figured out, the realization occurred to me that I should insulate the firewall before I bolted the steering and brake pedal in place. I purchased a product called NOICO off Amazon. it is a butyl material with an adhesive side and a foil backing. Its an .080 thick insulation and sound deadener that is fairly easy to work with. You cut it to the shape you need with a utility knife, peal the backing off and stick it into place, then roll out the foil backing flat. I've used it before, its very effective. I like the NOICO stuff because the foil backing comes in either silver or black, and isn't covered with advertising. If I can't cover it up right away it still looks great. I pay the couple more bucks and get the black foil. This may sound counter productive, but several years ago I discovered that painting stuff under the dash white makes working under there much easier. I applied the black foil backed NOICO to my firewall, then painted it white, but the entire firewall took less then 1/4 of the box.
Pic 1, The inside of the firewall, covered with the NOICO and painted white (notice the white paint job doesn't have to be great to be effective).
Pic 2, The steering column and brake pedal back in place (not completely bolted up, probably a photo opp. Also notice the NOICO covers the floor back to the seat riser (that part is still black)
Pic 3, The firewall with the heat/ac box bolted in. It got really cluttered after that. The inside computer was hung on the passenger side kick panel. The under dash fuse panel was hung on the left side of the steering column, and the under dash wiring was draped through. With lots of stuff hanging from zip ties, and a seat through in, the truck could drive to the street, turn around, and drive back into the garage.
Pic 4, This is a later pic, but gives you an idea how busy it got under the dash. More was added after this pic was taken! Gene

The door handle fix. When I got the truck, the outside door handle on the driver side worked pretty good, both opening it and latching it closed again, but in 49 Dodge didn't have an outside door lock available for the driver's door, even as an option. There was no handle on the inside, but with a crescent wrench clamped onto the lever, it would sort of move, would unlatch the door, but then you had to force the lever the other way for it to latch again. On the passenger side, you could turn the outside handle, but had to really jerk the door to open it or slam it hard to close. Sometimes it would latch, sometimes it wouldn't. I spent many hours straightening out the bent door frame and the roof section above that door. The door would swing better and not bind up anymore, but the latch was still temperamental about latching or unlatching. To make things worse, the door latches were both the old wedges that latched against other wedges. Those style latches tended to let the doors get jarred open on rough roads. I had these Dakota modern latches and and posts just sitting there, and I've done this before. The key locks on the Dakota door handles even matched the ignition key. Out with the old, in with the new, except it isn't exactly that easy.
Pic 1, Two important things about this pic, 1 this is the widest part of the door. Its important because the Dakota door is wider then the 49's door, for the Dakota latch to work, it needs to be located in the widest point on the door. 2, this picture shows the original latch system. The top wedge (just above the center of the pic at the inner edge of the door) is the latch itself. When the handle is turned, this wedge retracts inside of the door. To latch again, it needs to come completely back out. As the right side of the edge piece wears off, the worst it will latch. The bottom wedge (facing sideways near the small round hole in the door) is the alignment wedge. It is what is suppose to keep the door from bouncing up or down so the latching wedge keeps engaged with its matching part on the door post. The small hole in the door frame is for access to remove the set screw for the door lock (this is the passenger door, and the only door lockable).
Pic 2, This pictures shows both the door latch matching parts. The double wedge piece is the part the latch wedge locks against. The 1st step (on the left) would be the "emergency latch, which would not close the door tight, the second step is the primary latch which would hold the door tightly closed. The small indentation at the bottom of the pic is the slot for the alignment wedge to slide into. These two pictures are my passenger side door, the hole in the sheet metal between the two latch pieces on the door post is where someone ripped the metal trying to pull the door frame back in place.
Pic 3, The rest of these pictures are from the driver side of the truck. I already had the latch stuff cut out of this door before I thought about taking pictures. The door latch is held in position with 3 screws. None of then came out even with an impact screw remover. This is how much of the door had to be cut out to get the old latch assembly out. The channel you see running up and down through the inside of the door is the window track. The old latch occupied space on both sides of the window track, and the Dakota latch will have to do the same. The glass would be on the other side of the channel from this viewpoint, which is looking at the edge of the door.
Pic 4, This is the same cut out viewed from the inside of the door, again, the window track is the channel inside of the door (the glass would be on the right side of the window track). The large hole with the small hole close by would be where the outside door latch came through the outside door skin, the small hole was for the handle mounting screw.

Door latch
Pic 1, This is a Dakota door latch as it would sit inside of the door. You can't see, but on the edge that would be facing my hand are 3 mounting screws that hold this part to the door. To replace this part on a Dakota, you need to remove the window and the window track, then the connecting rods then the three screws, and turn it with just the right combination of turns to get it out of the door.
Pic 2, This is how you have to get it in this door.
Pic 3, This is the Dakota latch in the 49 door. The window track limits its position. Notice how much wider it is then the door width is? A piece of sheet metal needs to be formed, and that extra width has to be accommodated for. Modifications on the door post for clearance may be needed.
Pic 4, Lots of rods going lots of places, each serving a purpose. They need to be connected properly for the latch to function correctly. Fortunately they are color coded. I wrote myself a note.

Door latch cont.
Pic 1, The inside sheet metal patch. The area inside of the black marker will be cut out. Viewed from the door edge.
Pic 2, Same piece, different angle, again, the area inside of the black marker will be cut out. Viewed from inside of the door.
Pic 3, The cut out has been done, the mounting holes for the latch have been drilled and the latch has been screwed into place. I'm hoping the screws will hold the latch in place well enough. If it does, If I ever have to change the latch, I can do so without removing the glass. This is viewed from the door edge.
Pic 4, As viewed from inside of the door. That lever with the light green clip is for the inside door lock. A rod will connect to it to unlock the door from inside of the truck.

Door latch cont.
Pic 1, Door post time. With the latch not attached to the door, its time to locate the latch post on the door jam. The process is, you close the door mostly closed, and mark the door jam at the center of the opening where the post would enter the latch opening. You want to do this carefully because it has to be pretty close. You want to be sure you are looking at the center of the opening pretty level to the opening. On this door jam, the post was going to be pretty close to where the original door alignment wedge was located. I didn't want to have issues, so I removed the entire area around the alignment wedge. If you look at the outer edge of the door jam, you can see my black mark that locates the center of the post location just above the cut out area.
Pic 2, There are two critical things that need to be done before this point. You need to know the height of the post location, and you also need to know how far the post needs to be from the outer surface of the sheet metal. Because of the extra thickness of the door due to the latch position, you want to be sure the door closes even with the door jam sheet metal without making contact with the door frame. That would be a simple matter of pushing the door closed and being sure the outer door sheet metal is even or slightly below the level of the outside sheet metal on the door jam. it is easier to make that needed clearance right now then it ever will be again. The door post has threads on the end that goes inside of the door jam. generally there is a large washer base at the end of the post as well. that large washer is so a larger diameter hole can be drilled in the sheet metal so there is some adjustment of the post. If you have access to the back side of the door jam, like this truck has, you can simply stick the post through the hole, and add a large washer on the inside, and tighten up a nut against the washers. If there is not access to the back side you will need to make a bracket with a captured nut. I thought I had pictures of that, but I do not. i will look for some or make an example and add the pictures of them to this thread. this picture is pretty much the end result.
Pic 3. The outside of the door. This piece is the sheet metal that surrounds the opening for the outside door handle from a Dakota pickup.
Pic 4, This is what the back side of that piece looks like. I use an actual piece because it locates the handle on the outside with the indentation around the handle and the inside edges help locate the handle on the door skin. Because this part located the handle, its most important that the handle is located the proper distance from the door edge. You want to keep it pretty close to the original spacing on your door as it was on the Dakota. That keeps things in line better. There is some adjustment on the length of the rod that releases the latch, but if its out of that adjustment range, you need to start bending the rods, and that becomes a major pain pretty quickly. Sometimes the location on the door for the handle is dictated by the door itself, then there is little option then to adjust the rod lengths.

-Outside door handle cont.
Pic 1, Once the location is determined, mark the hole out on the door and cut it out. I like to use a cut off wheel.
Pic 2, I usually make the 1st cut a little small.
Pic 3, Then its fine tuned. Its easier for me to sneak up on he hole size.
Pic 4, With the hole cut to size, I make sure the latch rods are close, if OK, then I weld it up. Then its a matter of connecting the rods.

So I got the handle in the truck and it worked great, until I installed the door glass. When the door glass is up, the outside lock lever makes contact with the glass before it can lift enough to lock the door. If the window is down, it works great. I pulled the lock out for now. I've purchased a remote lock that I will probably install in the spring. About that best laid plans thing... At least the doors open and close great. Gene

Perfect situation. Sounds like you are good to go. Keep thrashing on that truck and have fun

i have been saying all along Gene is the Dak Expert, and this post proves it !

Thank you Sir, for taking the time to post this !

the adaptation of the dak's door latches and handles to your pilot house truck can be used as a guide to do the same on lots of early vehicles.
in fact, i am in the process of doing the same thing to the doors of my 33 humpback.
it uses basically the same latch system as Gene's truck, and the doors are similar in thickness.
the "post in the door jam" system was used for many years in quite a variety of Chrysler products, so finding a good latching system for early doors is easy to come by.
use Gene's pictures as a guide, as this method will work great in many years of 1930's-up, hot rods.

the door latch portion of this build thread is worth it's weight in gold, as it can be used in more than pilot house trucks !
Thanks Again Gene !

Thanks guys.

The door latch post has been bugging me since I posted it. A lot of the stuff that used to be around here is now gone, but I think I've found enough stuff to give you the idea how that set up would work. i've got 8 pictures, and your are going to have to go along with some things being different then they are.
Pic 1, This is what is called a captured nut. The solid square block has a hole that is threaded for the correct bolt size. That nut sits with in the sheet metal cage. The 4 ears that were cut off would have had a cross strap at the top of the cage, and another cross strap at the bottom of the cage, and would have held the nut in place so it couldn't turn, but could shift around.
Pic 2, This is what the underside of the nut and the cage look like. Notice how large the square hole is? The bolt or post would pass through that square hole and thread into the block. Until the bolt was tightened, it could "float" around in the square hole, which would be the adjustment this caged nut would have. The amount of adjustment is limited by the size of the hole (it doesn't have to be square), and how much movement the nut has available in the cage.
Pic 3, Pretend this sanding disc is a piece of 18 gauge or 20 gauge sheet metal. The nut cage is usually attached to the back side of this sheet metal, with the holes centered on each other. This metal could be your door post, or a piece of metal you are adding.
Pic 4, Pretend that this is the post bolt, and it has the same threads as the captured nut. Also pretend that there are more threads (of the correct size) on the end of the bolt. The real bolt would also have the step up from the thread size, like this bolt has. The large outer diameter washer has the hole in it that won't go past the step up on the bolt. That step up that stops the washer movement from going up on the bolt is what tightens everything together. You would loosen the bolt, move the post to the position as needed for your adjustment, then tighten the bolt so the washer holds everything tight. Often there are 2-3 washers stacked up under the bolt step. Those extra washers are used to set how deep the post intrudes into the door. The head of the bolt enters into the cut slot on the door latch, and the latch jaws lock onto the bolt shaft. The head is inside of the latch so the jaws can't slide off the end of the bolt. Because of the way its set up, the bolt has to be long enough for the head to clear the jaws, but it also has to be short enough it doesn't make contact with the door itself. That stack of washers determines how far into the door the bolt head goes, more washers, the head goes deeper, less washers and the head gets closer to the jaws.
Sometimes when you are building from scratch, or repairing a torn out post, the depth of the bolt into the door becomes critical. You can stack as many washers as you need, as long as there are enough threads left on the bolt to screw into the captured nut, or you can reduce the number down until there is only one washer left, but there has to be at least one washer.
One more note of importance, the outside diameter of the washer has to cover the hole in the sheet metal. Gene

door post cont
Pic 1, So this fuzzy pic is your door post (technically its the striker bolt), if it was the real thing, the threads on the back side of the washer extend about 3/4" to 1" past, and that would be after there were 2-3 washers there. Those individual washers are probably not as thick as this one is.
Pic 2, This is sort of what the captured nut would look like when attached to the sheet metal on the back side of your door jam. When you are ready to put this in place, the hole in the door jam has to be big enough to fit the captured nut and its cage in so the sheet metal sits flat against the jam.
Pic 3, This would be what you see when you are ready to install the post bracket. When its correct, the threaded nut should be able to float around in pretty much the entire inside hole. The larger washer on the post pulls the nut up against the metal to lock everything tight. When its time to weld, you would be welding only around the outside of the sheet metal (the sanding disc). As one would expect, you want that sheet metal to be tight against the metal you are welding to. Another note here is the outside configuration of the sheet metal can be any shape that fits your door jam, you just want to be sure the door can be closed all the way, so the large washer has to be able to clear anything that might limit its movement, once its welded into place.
One more thought, I use this set up to repair a lot of ripped out striker bolts (because the door hinge bushings have been wore out, and the people keep slamming the door until the post rips out of the jam). I have found that if you screw the post into the nut snug, you can use the post to position the sheet metal in place, and you can hang your welder ground on the post. With the post screwed in, you don't have to be concerned about a weld bb messing up the nut threads, just loosen the bolt before the weld cools.
Just for the record, if you are repairing a striker post that has been ripped out because of worn hinge bushings, be sure the bushings are repaired, or the new sheet metal will tear out within 2 weeks again. If you can lift the handle end of an open door more then 1/8",and feel it slop up and down, the hinges need to be repaired.
Pic 4, A side view of what the striker post and the captured nut and cage look like from the side. Gene

Back on the truck.
The time had come for the glass installation, there are 2 corner windows, a back center window, and a 2 piece front glass the goes in this truck in addition to 2 vent windows and 2 roll up windows in the doors. All the glass came from Bob's Classic Auto Glass, primarily because he had just had a run made of brand new corner windows. The corner windows are not easy to find, they only fit the 48-53 truck cabs, and then they were an option. Good used corner windows were going for $200+ a pair, when you could find them. Bob was selling brand new corner windows for $200 for a pair, and you could get them in clear (which most of the factory glass was), or you could get a green tine, or a smoke tint for no extra cost. Add to that, the tinted glass had the tinting between the two safety glass pieces. All the other glass could also be tinted to match (again, the tint was between the two layers of glass, not applied over either the inside or the outside) all the glass except the two corner windows (which sold separately) cost $365. Shipping for all the glass was $25! The glass other then the corner windows is all flat glass, I priced it out from he local guy I've been buying my flat glass from for over 20 years, and his price was almost $500, without the corner glass. I (bought the rubber for the glass from Bob's as well, thinking if there was a problem, it could be easily solved). The rubber added another $500 to the price. Bob had a tech line if you needed any assistance.

If you have ever seem me operate, you know fully well that installing glass is not something I can, nor should be doing. My friend at the body shop recommended a glass guy that would install the glass for me, and guarantee it wouldn't leak. His estimate was $450. The glass was here, the date was set for the installation. It would be done in my garage, because it was starting to get cold outside, and I have heat. When the day arrived, he and his helper started on the two corner windows. Those windows and rubbers were fighting them all he way. After about 6 hours, the corner windows were still not in. They installed the center back glass, and the glass guy called Bob's tech line, but it was after their hours by then. We rescheduled another day to try again. Between times he was going to make the call to Bob's, and also talk to a couple older glass guys he knew.
The next week we tried again. The call to Bob's was fruitless, no one there had ever installed the Dodge corner windows. He gained some knowledge from his older friends, but not much. We arrived at the conclusion that I was willing to make a few cuts to the roof structure to help with the glass installation, which we did, and we got the glass in. I have no idea how it could have been installed without those minor cuts. After the corner windows, the rest of the glass was a breeze. I intended to install the door glass myself, I've done those before. The 2nd day was also a 6 hour day. When I asked about the bill, he stood by the $450 estimate! I gave him a little extra, those two guys busted their butts on that glass.

One downfall of waiting the extra week for the glass installation was it pretty much put a stand still one everything until it was done. During that off time, I could walk around the truck and make plans on how things needed to be done from that point. You sit and look at the truck, and dream of the finished project, but you also look at how things are fitting. That was about the time I discovered that the front wheels were not centered in the wheel opening, like I had planned for. The wheels were about an inch and a half too far forward in the wheel arch. First you look for the cause, but in the scope of this build, 1.5" doesn't take long to add up. A little here, a little there, a bit more at this point, well crap. The longer you look at it the more it bugs you. After you figured out how it happened and understand it probably couldn't have been avoided, you start looking at how you can fix it. The bottom line was the front clip would have to move forward 1.5", which means the cab would have to move forward 1.5", which means the firewall would need to be moved back into the cab 1.5" That would either leave another 1.5" wider gap between the box and the cab, or the box would have to move forward, which would require trimming another 1.5" off the ends of the frame, or cutting the frame apart and making the wheel base 1.5" shorter, which would require shortening the driveshaft and the gas and brake lines. Or I could move the wheel arches on the front fenders forward 1.5". Once the body work was done, no one except me (and now all of you) would know I did that. I chose the last option.

The next step on the truck was going to be make a set of inner fenders for the front. If the wheel arches were going to be moved, now would be the time, the fenders would both have to come off anyway. The inner fenders would have to wait until at least the front and rear glass was installed. I had a little less then a week to figure out a plan. Gene

New Glass!
Before the glass got installed, I had a few issues with the windshield opening on the passenger side of the truck. At some point, early in its life the truck was at least laid on the passenger side, and caused damage to the roof above the passenger door. I discovered that early on, and spent a lot of time shortly after the truck arrived here addressing that problem. The roof had been pushed down a couple of inches, and someone cut the front pillar and attempted to "repair" it. The repair amounted to jacking it back to close to where is originally was, then poorly welding it back together. After that, they piled on the bondo, to the point most of that 1/2 of the roof had filler over 1" thick. The front fender, roof post, cowl and door was also jacked around and filled with huge amounts of filler. I dug the filler all out, cut loose the pillar again, and put and the front door post back into the proper location, as best as I could determine at that point. I welded it back together, and made a replacement patch for the roof above the door.
Once the cab was bolted to the frame, I could measure and square the cab. The entire roof was swayed towards the driver side nearly an inch, and the windshield opening was not square. The opening on the driver side of the cab was 1" higher then the same location on the passenger side. Who besides me would suspect that the glass isn't going to fit well with the opening that far off?
I was able to push the cab square with a porta power, and add some bracing at the door frames to keep it square, but the height was still way off. I had to cut the pillar apart again, add a piece to the post, and get the height correct, and the cab was still square. This truck has a two piece split flat glass windshield. Originally there is a two piece center brace, one part on the outside of the center rubber, and one part on the inside of the rubber, with 4 sheet metal screws going from the inside piece, through the rubber, and screwing into the outer piece. My truck didn't have those center braces, but I was able to find a really good one online.
Pic 1, You have seen this one before as well, but this time I want to attract your attention to the roof and the area around the door. Everything under the yellow paint was ground down to bare metal, the yellow paint was something I had here that I sprayed on to protect the bare metal from the weather while the truck sat outside for a year or so. You can see the weld line above the roof where I welded in the patch onto the roof. That patch starts at the front corner of the door, and extends back past the visible curve in the roof, its about 6" wide at its widest point. Notice that patch has an outward curve? The piece I cut out had a concave curve in it, and was filled with over 1" of body filler to form the outward curve. On the pillar, about even with the bottom of the sun visor, you can see the section I first extended and welded. Also at the top center of the roof, just towards the passenger side the place that looks like a spot is a dent in the roof about 1" in diameter, it is pulled nearly 1" deep, but never pierced through the roof skin. I believe that was how far over the truck was rolled and whatever caused that deep dent probably stopped the truck from going over all the way. You can also see that the top left (as you are looking at the pic) of the windshield opening has a fabricated pinch weld area around the entire corner. The rain gutter has also been repaired.
Pic 2, Because of all the metal work and bare metal, I picked up a couple spray bombs of acrylic enamel semi gloss black and some acrylic enamel primer in a spray bomb, and primed all the areas around where the glass was going to be installed. My thinking was the glass is going in for good. The acrylic enamel would protect it for as long as I would need it it to, and the semi gloss black was close enough to the color of the rubber, when it was time for a real paint job, we could tape up to the rubber and not be too concerned about a perfect tape line, the black would blend in.
Pic 3, The windshield install from the driver side.
Pic 4, The rear corner window and center rear windows installed. Notice that the original door handle is still on the door? The front and rear glass must have been installed before the Dakota door handles. So much stuff, its hard to keep track of what happened first.

This next part troubles me a bit. I know some people are going to have a heart attack, but understand, this is my truck, the deed has already been done, and your opinion on if it was done "right" in your mind, doesn't make any difference to me. This is not a show truck, and frankly I don't care if someone thinks they can see the lap weld in the final paint or not, it is certainly not going to be painted black, and most likely not any dark color.
I moved the wheel arch on the fender rather then take the entire truck apart to correct a 1.5" difference between where the arch is, and where it should have been centered, and I lap welded all the joints! You can butt weld your stuff if its that important to you. The last one of theses I lap welded and flanged the front fenders lasted 12 years through plowing snow before some lady crashed into it and killed the truck and they hadn't fallen off yet (and showed no sign of failing). In 12 years, I'm going to be 78 if I'm still around. I'll deal with it then if it matters then. You do your ride, I'll do mine.

All that said, lets on with it. I looked at all the pictures I had, but there were none of the tire fit with the uncut wheel arch, so your going to have to take my word it was off enough it bugged me enough to cut up a decent pair of fenders and modify both of them.
Pic 1, This is the arch I cut off. It needs to move 1.5" forward so its centered above the tire. Since I'm moving it forward, I'm also raising it up on the fender about 1.5" so the top of the tire is just about even the bottom of the centered arch. When I move this forward, it obviously is going to leave a gap at the back end that I will have to weld a piece in. Because I'm also raising the arch up, the filler patch will be a bit longer and wider. Pic 2, This is the freshly cut off arch clamped into its new position. At this point I used a marker to outline the cut edge of the arch onto the fender, and mark sets of reference marks, one pair at the top center, at least one pair on the front edge, and at least one pair at the back, where the metal is still together. I discovered years ago that when you are dealing with something long, unusual in shape, and a bit flexible, its more accurate to line up a pair of reference marks about an inch apart on a base line, extending the full length (or in this case as close to full length) as possible. In this case, I have marked pairs of reference lines about 3" on each side of each of the clamps as well as the pair at the center line.
Pic 3, The green marker shows the edge of the arch cut, and the pairs of reference marks on the fender.
Pic 4, This shows you how the Dakota wheel on the 4x4 chassis sets in relation to the fenders with the wheel arch cut off. The arch itself extends the tire cover about 2".

In real life, one fender arch was started and finished before the other side got cut. But in these pictures, I'll be swapping back and forth. The passenger side was first done (the last 4 pics), and as you could see, much of that fender was bare steel, and the marks do not show up well in the pictures. The driver fender was in gray primer, and the markers show up a lot better. These 4 pic are the driver side so you can see the marks better. I'll be swapping side to side because some pictures are easier to see what is going on, but understand the entire process was the same for both sides. Got lots of pictures to post.
Pic 1, This is the driver side fender with the arch cut off.
Pic 2, This is the center arch mark.
Pic 3, This is the front arch mark.
Pic 4 this is the rear of the arch mark.

So the is the business end of the tool that gets me into so much trouble. It is a pneumatic flanging tool.
Pic 1) This is the opening end. You insert a piece of 18 or 20 gauge sheet metal and pull the lever and both jaws come closed. The bottom side makes a flange with a step of about the thickness of 18 gauge sheet metal, about 1" wide, and the step is about 3/8" wide. The top side is a hole punch. It will punch a 3/16" hole in 18 gauge sheet metal. My flanging tool is 30 years old, sometimes you need to pull the lever a couple times at the same spot to punch the hole in 18, but it will still punch 20 with one pull.
Pic 2 The flange end at work.
Pic 3, The punch end at work.
Pic 4, A piece of 18 gauge with the flange bent, and a hole punched in the flange. If you are plug welding in floor pans, the hole is a great diameter to plug weld through. That hole is centered in the jaw width, and at max depth, the hole punches about 3/16" from the jaw.

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.

Wiper cont
Pic 1, In the last group of pics was a pic of the right side wiper post. That picture would have been with the wipers in the parked position. This pic is the same post, but is at the end of the travel in full stroke position. Notice the amount of movement of the arm at the linkage end.
Pic 2. This is the infamous idler arm, well at least the bottom 3/4 of it. The top, that you can't see (unless you take it apart) has the same distance from he center bolt to the linkage bolt as the bottom (that you can see). That center bolt is a 1/2" bolt, and the idler has a sealed bearing with a 1/2" id hole. The arms for the linkage are both welded to the bearing retainer, 180 degrees apart. The rusty link you see is from the motor, The bolt holding it passes through the a hole in the arm and the linkage from the right side wiper post connects to the back of that bolt. The linkage for the driver side wiper post is attached to the arm at the top of the idler. With the linkage in this position, the wiper is at the end of the full stroke. The part you see behind the idler is the cowl vent door. The lever you see under the motor linkage is what opens and closes the cowl door. There is a better view of it in the next pic. The vertical bar towards the right of the idler is the bracing between the cowl and the dash lower support, the stud with the red paint around it is the farthest left glove box mounting bolt.
Pic 3, This is the same exact view as the last pic, the difference is the linkage is now in the wiper park position. On the top left of the idler you can see just the lower end of the arm for the driver side wiper linkage. You can also now see the arm that is bolted to the cowl vent door that is used to open and close the door. The door is currently closed, to open it, the bottom of that lever moves toward the firewall (away from you). The linkage coming at you is connected to the actuator that opens and closed the door.
Pic 4, This is a little better view of the forward linkage that opens & closes the cowl door. It also gives you a better view of the lower end of the door lever. Notice the adjustment bolt to adjust the tension on the closed door? This is necessary to assure the door is closed to keep the seal water tight. There is a water drain channel around the vent door seal, but it has limited capacity.

Cowl vent cont.
Things are not always the way you would like. In its original configuration, the actuator that opens the cowl vent door sits directly under the door on a bracket that mounts between the firewall and the bottom of the dash. It has a cam with 3 steps in it, fully closed, 1/2 open, and fully open. It has a lever that is spring loaded that rides against that cam, and when it opens the actuator pushes the door straight up, and pulls straight down to close. There is a lever welded to the actuator that hangs under the dash the multiplies the pressure the actuator has.
There are just a few problems. Since the bottom of the original dash is no longer present, the supporting bracket no longer is present. The actuator that sits under the open vent is rusted solid. The spring for the lever that locks into the cam is a rusted blob and the lever is bent and no longer contacts the cam. The lever that was welded to the actuator to multiply the leverage is broken off the actuator, and finally, the position under the vent door is occupied by the wiper linkage.
Who's idea was it to make this function?
To my surprise, a week long soak in a vinegar bath actually freed up the actuator. With a little more cleaning and a lot of lube, it actually moved like it was suppose to. I made a new lever that locks into the cam, and came up with a spring that would work. Welding a lever on the actuator was going to be easy, once I figured out exactly how I was going to make this work. The actuator would have to be mounted in my dash in a way it was going to work at 90 degrees from its original intent. Instead of pushing up to open the door, it was going to have to push back, except if I mounted it that way, the lever to open and close it would end up on top of the dash, rather then under the dash. It took a lot of trial and error to get it to sort of function like I had envisioned, but then I had to figure out how I was going to actually make mounts to hold it in the position it needed to be in. That took another few days of trial and error. The final resting place has it sitting at about a 90 degree angle from its original position, and it is also turned upside down. The lever I added basically moves the actuator backwards from what it was designed to move. That lever is pretty long, fortunately, everything moves pretty freely. The worst thing that happened is the 1/2 open notch on the cam isn't quite 1/2 open, its more like a 1/4 open, and the spring setup isn't really strong enough to keep it open at that point. It functions in fully open and fully closed though. I'm calling that a win.
Pic 1, Here is the actuator in its current home. This is in the door closed position. In its original position on the 49, the flat area on the upper right side would have been the bottom. The lever going forward would have been pointing towards the rear (and would have been pointing up) and the welded on lever would have been in just about the position of the lever that would have pointed towards the rear.
Pic 2, The actuator is in the full open position here.
Pic 3, The linkage rod is in the full open position here.
Pic 4, Sometimes the process to make this stuff work isn't very pretty, but sometimes the finished product isn't very pretty either.

Then I had to modify the dash cover. Gene

Its about time to start finishing some stuff up, starting with the interior. Lots of pictures.
Pic 1, Kind of an over view of the wiper assembly.
Pic 2, NOICO laid down on the floor. The holes cut in the insulation are mounting holes for the seats and the seat belts.
Pic 3, Close up view, see how nice the NOICO rolls in tight?
Pic 4, I wanted a darker gray, but color choices were pretty slim then. They are not much better now. This color is no longer available either.

More interior.
Pic 1, Front end of the door frame.
Pic 2, Rear edge of the door frame.
Pic 3, Dash cover pieces.
Pic 4, More dash & the glove box.

More interior.
Pic 1, Laying carpet. This stuff is the "auto carpet" from Menards. Its cheap, but holds up pretty well except areas like under your right heal. I put cheap floor mats on top of this carpet.
Pic 2, Laying carpet on the other side. I used the same carpet on the back wall under the windows, and on the inside of both doors. I bought Gorilla glue to hold the carpet to the doors and the back panel based on the recommendation of the person in charge of glue department at Menards instead of buying the more expensive 3M stuff. I won't be doing that again.
Pic 3, The painted dash covers installed.
Pic 4, Seats and seat belts bolted in.

More interior.
Pic 1, The installed dash from the passenger side. The lever on the passenger seat is to release the seat back to fold down, the back will fold down flat on the seat bottom. There is some storage space behind the seats.
Pic 2, The seats & belts from the passenger side. Notice that the head rests that were on the seats are gone. After the carpet was put on the doors, arm rests were added to the doors, and both outer arm rests on the seats were gone. There was also a center consul with an arm rest/small storage box and 2 drink holders added between the seats. After that was added, the center arm rests on the seats went away as well. I'm going to modify the door panels this spring. I don't have any pictures of the doors or the center consul, I'll update this after I get some pics.

At this point the weather was starting to break for the spring. The last major project remaining is the bed construction. Up to this point, the steel floor and front panel from the bed off the donor Dakota has been bolted to the frame, and that bed had held a lot of stuff. The battery and the fuel filler were both going to be placed inside of the bed sides, on the driver side front corner. There are 33 pictures of the bed construction. Gene

A quick update showing the center consul, the truck with just the Dakota bed floor bolted on, and a pic of the truck as it sits today.
Pic 1, Center consul with the lid closed.
Pic 2, Center consul with the lid open. There is enough space between the consul and the back of the cab to put an 8 pack tall cooler.
Pic 3, The truck with the Dakota steel bed floor bolted onto the frame (best pic I have of that).
Pic 4, The truck as it sits on the driveway, a few minutes ago. there is roughly 3,500 miles on the truck since June, last summer.
I'm trying to get the bed assembly pictures in order, they are scattered all over my picture file. Since I posted one pic, there are only 32 more to go, unless I find more... Gene

I might as well start on the bed build.
As usual, I couldn't make this easy. The bed floor is bolted to the frame, and I kept the front panel of the Dakota bed attached to the floor. That front panel is too wide, and it it too high, but I figured that would be better then too narrow and too short. The bed floor (except where the wheel arches were) is also too wide, trimming the width would also be required. I would also have to cut a notch out of the bed floor for the fill tube to come through the floor. The next thing is, I want the fuel filler tube to come up inside of the bed rather then outside of the bed. The original Dakota fill tube came up between an inner bed wall and an outer bed wall and filled through a gas door on the outside wall. This step side bed only has one bed wall, and it is inside of where the original inside wall of the Dakota bed was. The fill tube outside diameter is 1.75", to get that inside of the step side bed, I have to loose about 4" of its width, and still keep the upward curve. The top of that tube is about 6" above the bed floor, and there really isn't much tube that can be cut out of that height. The top of the tank is only 3" below the top of the floor and the fill tube enters into the tank at the top of the tank. I can modify the tube enough to get it inside of the step side bed, but making it shorter is a completely different story. I can build a box around the fill tube, and add the gas door to cover the cap. That will give the gas fill system protection from anything that may be put inside of the bed, but that presents another set of problems. The protection box will need to be removable, and the bed side will also have to be removable if there is ever a need to do anything with the fill tube.

If I make one bed side removable, I should probably make the other bed side removable as well, don't you think? I do. If the bed sides are going to be removable, they have to bolt to the bed floor and bolt to the front panel, and also bolt to the back panel. Most step side beds are welded together at the rear crossmember to keep them from flopping around, I'm going to have to add bracing at the rear some how to keep the rear of the bed sides from flopping around as it goes down the road, and those too will have to bolt in place.

So as I'm sitting and trying to figure out how to make the bed sides bolt on, it occurs to me the top of the bed rails are going to have to be pretty close to the same angle as the lines on the cab, or the truck will look "broken". That angle probably isn't going to match up with the angle the bed floor is bolted to the frame at. Maybe I can shim the bed floor to the correct angle, maybe not, but how am I going to get that bed rail angle right, and how am I going to determine how high the bed rails should be compared to the cab height? More thinking!

The 1st thing to do was determine exactly how wide I wanted the bed floor to be. I chose 49" because that was about the 49's original bed floor width. There were already enough variables, eliminating one of them couldn't hurt. The floor was trimmed to the 49" width (based off a center line), The area where the original Dakota wheel wells were will have to have 2" of gap filled in on each side. Then I added 1" to each side of the front panel (to bend and bolt to the side panels) then trimmed the front panel (based off the center line), and bent the 1" edges towards the rear. The original 49 bed sides bolted to the front panel, there were already bolt holes in the side panels I would reuse. With the width determined, I could clamp a piece of tubing on the rear edges of the bed, and clamp the front edges to the front panel, and determine the real height and angle I wanted by the old fashioned method, I stepped back and looked at it. At this point two more realizations took place. 1, Tire clearance was going to have to be cut out of the bed sides. 2, The original angles that Dodge used to set the bed sides onto its original floor had to be removed. After both of those were done, I was able to clamp the bed sides back in place. The clamping on the tube at the rear worked well, but the clamping to the sheet metal front panel and the sheet metal side panels left a lot to be desired. I came up with a plan. I could put a set of jack stands on the bed floor, then clamp a piece of 2" square tubing I had laying around to the top of the bed rails, then shim between the tubing and the jack stands until I got the front height I wanted. When I was happy with the angle and height of the rails, I could drill through the bent edges of the front panel through a couple of the holes in each of the bed sides and bolt the sides to the front panel.
Pic 1, Kind of hard to see, but you get the idea of the jack stands & tubing.
Pic 2, This is about how the tubing was clamped at the rear, the tubing pictured is 1.5" square, and the clamp was placed behind the stake pocket about there the chain hung (the chain was pulled out of the way). This was very stable.
Pic 3, This one shows the end result of this part of the thought process. I had a hard time trying to determine the height the bed rails should be, but then I saw the bottom of the cab and the bottom of the bed side and the light bulb went off in my head, why not line up the straight edge bottoms? Duh! You can also see the tire clearance cut out of the bed side, and you can see the clamp holding the rail to the tubing setting the front height. You can also see that the top of the rail pretty much has the same angle as the body line on the door, but is a couple inches lower. The height of the bed sides to the bed floor is different front to rear, the rear bed sides are nearly 2" higher off the floor then the front. Had I based the the rail angle off the bed floor it would have made the truck look like the rear of the frame was bent down just behind the cab, and it would have been a mess trying to lift the front sheet metal and cab, and the rear of the bed far enough off the frame to look right.
Pic 4, This pic was taken a bit later, but it really shows the jack stands/tubing/clamps to set the front height. You can see the fuel fill tube sticking up through the bed floor on the left side. This same set up was used at the rear to set the height of the rails there as well.

I was pretty happy with the bed rail angle, and it looked great until I looked straight at the side. I wasn't real happy with the gap between the bed and the cab. At this point the bed sides can still shift forward (or rear ward for that matter) on the bed floor, but the floor would be a lot more difficult to move on the frame. If I wanted to close that gap, that would be the time to do so. With the bed sides clamped to the tubing, I could slide the bed forward to get an idea how much I was going to move the bed sides.

I still had the front of the bed sitting here. The truck came without a tailgate, so my plan was to use the front of the Dakota bed for the front panel, then use the 49's front bed panel for a tailgate. Earlier in the project I stumbled across a newer Dodge step side tailgate for $75, but it was pretty beat up. The newer tailgates were wider then the 49 was, so I could cut the messed up ends off. The height was also higher then I was going to need, which would allow me to cut off the messed up top and bottom rails on the late model tailgate. $75 was a bargain for one of these tailgates, even in this condition. Since I bought the tailgate, this opened up the option to modify the original front panel.

The original 49 bed has the side rails angled out and up at a 45 degree angle for the top 6" or so. Then the front panel, and the tailgate would match up with the bed sides at the lower edge of the angle, making the bed sides higher and wider then the bed is (you can see that angle in the last pic of the last installment under the tubing). I intend to put a bed cover on this truck and I want the cover to go over top of the rails, so I wanted to fill that gap. The Dakota frame kicks up enough that you loose a lot of bed depth on the 49 bed sides (the bed floor is about 7" - 8" higher on the bed sides then it would have been on the 49 frame). What that means for me is I can shift the front panel forward, raise it up level with the top of the rails, and still have about 3" of metal left to attach to the floor. One big advantage of moving the front of the bed forward, it would allow me to put the battery in front of the fuel fill door.
Pic 1, The "new" $75 tailgate. You can't see how messed up it really is.
Pic 2, The original 49 bed front panel bent to its new shape.
Pic 3, The gap between the center of the bed and the cab. It hard to read, but it is 1.5", or about 1/2 of what it was before the bed side shift forward.
Pic 4, The future home of the battery.

To attach the bed sides to the bed floor, I used some pieces of 1/8" x 1" x 1" angle. I used 4 pieces of that angle, one at each front corner, and one at each rear corner. The area between the angles on each side would need to have a gap between the floor and the bed sides filled. Once the position of the bed sides was determined, one leg of the angle was marked and drilled with with (4) 1/4" holes, one hole about 2" from the each end, and the other two holes splitting the distance between the outside holes, those holes were centered on the leg's width. With the holes drilled, the angle was set in place with the holed surface laying on the bed floor, then the other leg of the angles were clamped, leg facing up, to the bed sides at the correct height to position the bed sides at the proper height. All 4 of the bed side angles were stitch welded to the bed sides. After the forward and rearward position of the bed sides on the bed floor was determined, the bed floor was marked through the holes, and the bed sides were pulled out of the way and the holes were drilled to 3/8" diameter through the bed floor. I trimmed near each hole in the bed floor so I could install the 1/4" U-nuts, the 3/8" holes gave me some movement of the U-nuts to make final adjustments to the bed side location before thy were tightened up. I did have to notch the angle near the fuel fill tube to assure clearance, I didn't want to take a chance of the tube rubbing against the angle and cause a possible spark, or a rub through.
Pic 1, This pic shows all 4 angles bolted to the floor and welded into place.
Pic 2, This is the right side bed angles bolted and welded into place. You can also see the gap in the floor between the two pieces of angle, this "cut out" was where the original Dakota wheel well was attached to the bed floor. The Dakota bed was fully welded, I cut the wheel well out of the floor with my plasma cutter, but it could have been cut out with a sawzall with a fine tooth blade. The bed floor in that area is just sheet metal, but reinforcing bracing under the bed is not far away, an under bed inspection before cutting would be a good idea.
Pic 3, This is the right front corner, you can better see the where the wheel well was removed.
Pic 4, This is an overhead shot of the left front corner angle. You can see fuel tube sticking out of the floor and you can see the notch in the angle around the fill tube. The rectangular hole on the left side of the pic is the hole where the battery cables will come up through the floor. That hole is towards the center of the bed, about 1" from that side of the battery. I'm using a pair of "0" size battery cables, the hole is big enough for clearance of both cables, and I made a bracket for the cables to clamp to the floor to prevent damage to them.

Bed build cont,
Pic 1, There is a lot going on in this pic. The nice clean curved cut out above the tire was the cut I made for tire clearance. In the 1st mock up, the bedside part that was cut off rested against the inside sidewall of the tire. I don't know that the truck will ever see a big heavy load, but I didn't want to take a chance, so I cut out enough of the bed side so I didn't ever have to be concerned about the tire sidewall rubbing against the bed side. Notice that there is a discoloration on both sides of the bed, about even with the top of the tire, That discoloration makes a straight line, from the front of the bed to the rear of the bed. That discoloration was caused by me cutting the original welds that held the angle that held the side onto the original 49 bed floor. The original wood bed floor sat under that line. Also notice there is a line of burn spots (most easily seen on the left side of the pic just below the bed body line) that also forms a straight line from the front to the back of the bed side, those spots are caused from welding the "new" angle iron pieces to the bed side that rest on top of the steel Dakota bed floor. The holes that form the 1/2 circle around the tire on the bed side are where the rear fenders bolt to the bed side.
Pic 2, This is the building of the box around the battery. This box was screwed to the front of the bed, the bed floor, and to a bracket welded to the inside of the bed side, so it could be completely removable. There was a lid made that sits on top of that box at a slight angle for water to run off. The water runs off towards the center of the bed, and slightly towards the rear of the bed. The water then can exit out of the bed under the edge of the bed front panel. You can also see the fuel fill tube coming up from under the bed floor. The plastic piece on top of the fill tube is what holds the tube to the gas door, which is laying open on the floor, just forward of the 4x4 laying on the bed at the bottom of the pic. In its current state, that plastic piece is turned 90 degrees with the high side towards the bed side and the gas door is on top of it at the angle matching the plastic. The gas door opens with the door against the battery box. There is a separate box built around the fill tube that is also removable, it is screwed to the bed on the rear side and the center side, and is screwed to brackets attached to the back side of the battery box and the inside of the bed side. There is a metal piece that fits between the plastic piece and the flange on the fill tube, that flange is screwed to the sides of the battery box and the back wall of the fill tube wall, and is screwed to the the flange on the fill tube. The gas door piece is screwed to the bed side at the top, the plastic piece in the center, and the fill tube box on the side facing the bed center.
Pic 3, You have seen this pic before. What I want to point out here is the difference between the rear edge of the bed side and the rear edge of the bed floor. This difference was caused by the bed sides being moved forward to close up the gap between the front of the bed and the rear of the cab. That ribbed bed floor is spot welded to a 5" square sheet metal box that forms the rear box crossmember. That crossmember is bolted to the frame. I ended up cutting the ribbed floor away from the crossmember box so I could cut the box and reform it so the rear surface was even with the rear edge of the bed sides. Once the box ox was shortened and the bolt mounting surface reattached, the box was welded back together, the of the bed floor was trimmed to length, and the ribbed floor was rewelded to the crossmember box. Now I could bolt the tailgate to the crossmember box and have it flush with the bed sides.
Pic 4, The $75 tailgate, slightly modified. The bent and bowed bottom round tube was cut off and replaced with a new 1.5" square tube. That square tube it welded to the tailgate skin, and 3 large hinges are welded to that tube and are bolted to the rear crossmember. Both sides have been cut off and new edge pieces were added to both sides. Notice the top tube is clamped to the tail gate, in its finished position, the top of it will be even with the top of the bed side rails. The gate is clamped closed as I prepare to adjust the height of that top tube. You can see pretty clearly the angled top of the bed rails I spoke of earlier in this picture, that gap between the tailgate and the bed side rails will be addressed in a future update.

Tailgate & back bumper.
Pic 1, This is the right side of the tailgate up close and sort of personal. What I want to attract your attention to is the right side hinge area. Notice there are 3 bolts there, two offset in the hinge, and one below the hinge. Also notice below the black painted rear crossmember that all 3 of the bolts pass through you can see a small strip of reddish metal. That little chunk of metal is very important. The bed sides are sitting on pieces of 1/8" thick 1" x 1" angle iron that is bolted to the sheet metal bed floor. That angle iron is all the support the rear bed sides have. At the front of the bed, in addition to the angle iron, the bed sides are also bolted to the full height front panel on both sides, and that front panel is welded to the floor. It should be pretty obvious that if I want a tailgate that I can lower, I'm going to need additional support for the bed sides. On nearly all of the pickup beds out there, the back corner of the bed sides are welded to the rear bed crossmember, and many have an extra brace below the rear crossmember that extends to nearly the bottom of the bed sides. That attachment is what keeps the bed sides from flopping around, for the most part. There is also nearly always some sort of a catch bracket on the upper part of the tail gate that captures the bed side when the gate is closed as well. as a case in point, when the tailgate is open, the only thing besides how the bed sides are attached to the floor, the only other thing that keeps the bed side solid it that attachment at the rear crossmember and the brace below it. If you open your tailgate and can shift the top of the bed side in and out, you need to look at the condition of that rear crossmember and the brace under it and get it fixed! That problem happens faster on pickups that have no tailgate, or a truck where the tailgate is often open because the extra catch for the bedside on the tailgate isn't present.
So back to my truck, my bed sides are bolted to the rear crossmember. The little sliver of the red is part of a brace that is welded to the bedside from the bed floor to below the rear crossmember and it is braced under the floor to the bed side. That brace is tucked into the channel of the rear crossmember and the bolts are actually holding the crossmember and the brace together, the hinge location was planned to take advantage of the top two bolts. The other bed side has the same brace.
Pic 2, Lets build a back bumper! Of course it started with a cardboard pattern, then I transferred the cardboard pattern to a sheet of 11 gauge metal, then cut the 11 gauge with my plasma cutter. 3 pieces were cut, a strip 4 1/5" wide by 64' long that would be the curved bumper face, a 64" long piece with a single curve, the thinnest part, the ends are 4" wide and the center is 8" wide that is the top surface, and a 2nd curved piece with a matching curve, this one 2" wide at the ends and 6" wide in the center that would be the bottom piece. Who here would believe me if I tell you that adding a consistent curve to 11 gauge (1'8" thick) that is 4.5" wide for 64" long is a bit of a challenge without a roller? You kind of get it close by forcing the piece between, under or over some heavy stuff. Then you clamp the top piece of metal to a heavy bench (or in my case, some heavy steel saw horses), then you mark a center line on both pieces, and start at the center and clamp the curved front piece against the cut curve of the top piece with anything you can find that will hold it in place and square. You put a tack weld on each side of your clamped "movable fixture" and move towards each edge a few tack welds at a time as you move the "fixtures" and the top plate to maintain support. Sometimes you need to add a couple more fixtures so you can force the facing plate tight against the curve. at the end of that day, I was wore out. Once the top and the face was tacked together, you repeated the same deal with the bottom piece to the face plate. It was easier because the face plate was already tacked to the top plate at the curve. The hardest part on the bottom piece was keeping the the edges square and the distance between the top and the bottom plate the same.
Pic 3, This is pretty much what I was looking for. From this point, the top and bottom edges was welded solid on both the inside and the outside, and the edges were slightly rounded. Any defects in the weld were fixed. then the ends were capped, and bracing was added in the center so brackets could be made to bolt the bumper to the frame. I bought a new class 3 hitch (3,000 -5,000lbs capacity, it is a Dakota 4x4 chassis, not a full sized truck frame) for the truck, incase I ever needed to tow anything. The hitch was bolted to the frame, then I made bumper brackets from 1/8" 1.5 x 1.5 angle (2 per side).
Pic 4, The hitch and the bumper bolted to the truck, notice the tailgate is still clamped closed. There is 6" between the bottom of the tailgate and the top of the bumper. The tail lights and the license plate will be put on a panel in that space.

This is about where I tell you I just have never found a tail light set up on step side beds that I like. The fenders are too far forward to hang the lights on them on this truck, and the factory style brackets and lights that hang off the lower stake pockets always looked to me like some designer designed the back end of the truck then thought "OH Crap! I forgot to put tail lights on the truck, just hang these there." The problem is, I'm not doing any better myself...

Bed build cont.
Pic 1, Lets fill that gap between the top of the tailgate and the top of the bed rails, and enclose the ends of the rails at the same time.
Pic 2, The left side. While I built this, I also capped the top of the stake pocket and added a 3/8" hole with a nut welded on that I can screw a 3/8" eye hook into to tie stuff in the bed. Also, the the back ground you can see the painted tail light panel, more pictures of that later.
Pic 3, The outside view. The extended piece at the top with the hole in it is what I'm using right now to hold the tailgate closed. There is a matching hole in the tailgate flange and I have a 3/8" spring hook the passes through both holes to keep the gate closed. I haven't made the decision on the final method to hold the gate closed at this point.
Pic 4, The right side piece.

Bed build cont.
Pic 1, The tailgate closed with the top corners added. You can also see that the gap on the front corners has also been filled. When I find a bed cover, it should fit nicely. The tailgate is being held closed with 3/8" bolts at this point.
Pic 2, This is the back side of the tail light panel with the hold cut out for the taillight.
Pic 3, This is what the front side looks like. The top in the pic it the top of the piece. those little flange pieces across the top are the mounting tabs, those are screwed tight to the rear crossmember box under the closed tailgate. The little bent lip on the bottom tucks under the back edge of the rear bumper. The pieces tack welded on the sides are screwed to the bed sides.
Pic 4, When you fail at choosing a tail light, as least make it functional. These beauties' are very bright, LED, stop, turn and back up lights. They were fairly cheap. if they don't grow on me, it won't be a huge loss to loose them, but until I find a better option, they are staying for now.

Bed conclusion
Pic 1, Lets pull it out on the driveway and have a good look from a ways away. The back end without the tail lights. The piece of cardboard is license plate size and will be the plate location on the back.
Pic 2, The side view. The rear fender really is centered, but the fender was really distorted at some time in its past. Once I got the running boards make and bolted to the fender, the fender sat straight.
Pic 3, 3/4 front view. Notice the "list of stuff to do" taped to the door glass? There was a never ending list on this truck. it identifies the progression in the order it needs to be done. There is still a list, its just not taped to the truck anymore, its hanging on the clip board in the shop.
Pic 4, The other side.

Fresh brushed on red oxide primer, the old good stuff, with no body filler work done, with the lights installed.
Pic 1, Driver side 3/4 front.
Pic 2, Passenger side 3/4 front.
Pic 3, Driver side (the list is still taped to the door glass).
Pic 4, Had to wait for clouds to get a good pic of the back end. Inside of the bed 9on the left side) you can see the lid for the battery box towards the front and just part of the top of the fuel filler box.

New plates, new tires on matching wheels, running boards, legal to drive. June 2, 2021
Pic 1, Passenger side, 3/4 front. The only thing missing was the stainless rings around the headlights.
Pic 2, Driver side, 3/4 front.
Pic 3, Driver side 3/4 rear.
Pic 4, Passenger side 3/4 rear.

I drove the Donor Dakota onto the driveway on July 10, 2020 and started dissembling it.
That is pretty much all there is for now.
If you have any questions about anything, just ask.
Thanks for watching,
Gene

A great build thread. That is a lot of work to write, document and post a project like this and I appreciate the effort. The truck came out great, It is unlikely that I will ever see it "in person" but I sure would like to. Congrats on a Job Well Done.
Cheers

excellent write up Gene !
this effort you put into this build proves once and for all, you are the EXPERT in dakota swaps !
i really appreciate the effort you took in precisely describing each picture. anyone that reads this thread HAS to learn something. i know i did ! several ideas popped into my head for bracing the body on my "eternal project".
Thank You Sir !

I need to update this, just incase anyone was interested.

June 6th, 2022. I started doing body work on the 49. This is important because I really dislike doing body work. I know how to do it, I'm capable of doing it, but I can only stand to do it for about 2 months, then I'm really fed up and I'm ready to paint the vehicle, regardless of if the vehicle is ready to being painted or not. Add to that, I'm really not the painter kind of guy, I can run the paint, and miss other places on the same vehicle, on any paint job. What I often end up with is a pretty good paint job on body work that should have continued for another month, and I basically don't care until a year or two later. In the past, I've used cheap paint, and its usually in pretty rough looking shape in 4-5 years. Then I conjure enough energy to take another 2 month stab at it. After 2-3 rounds, the same vehicle starts looking pretty good, if I keep it long enough.

So, I began the body work fully knowing the time frame involved.
Last year I brushed on some very old, oil based anti rust red oxide primer. This was some left over from a can from 2012, back when the paint was still pretty good stuff. The goal was to protect the body from the winter salt. That old red oxide did the job great! Being brushed on, it was a royal pain to sand off, 100 grit on a DA sort of made most of it smooth. Being realistic, the main goal on this round was to cover the many weld seams at the patches (the welds were all completely welded closed there were no holes), and remove and fill in most of the bigger craters. Places where filler work was to be done, I went down to the bare metal. I'm old school, I put filler onto bare metal (that is not open to debate at this point).
Both doors had the bottom 4" replaced (inner door frame and outer skins), and both doors had the Dakota door handles welding into them. The passenger door had a crease where the door was forced into the fender, and also had a crease across nearly the entire width just about mid door height. Both front fenders had the wheel arch moved and the passenger side fender was really bent up and was badly repaired in a previous life. The passenger side of the nose piece was also badly damaged and badly repaired when the fender was screwed up. Even the passenger side roof had to be repaired after someone's fix from years ago. the box sides had 3 tie down hooks (each side) bolted to the box sides that had badly distorted the box sides at those 3 places on each side. Both rear fenders experienced the life most old pickup rear fenders experienced, both were beat up, but had no rust.

Pic or it didn't happen, right?
Pic 1) You will notice most of the welding on the truck was was done very early in its presence at my place. Nearly all the early welding was covered by yellow paint (preserved the new metal & welds). This 1st pic is the best pic that shows the patch at the bottom of the drivers door.
Pic 2) This shows the bottom of the passenger door, and the crease at the front from the fender contact.
Pic 3) The roof patch. This side of the roof had the windshield opening 1" shorter then the same location on the other side of the truck! After it was damaged, someone welded it back together, but had it too short. I spent a good couple weeks getting the windshield opening and the door pose even close to correct. Notice the curve on this patch? when I got the truck, the steel was bent in, rather then out, there was over 1" thick filler sculpting that roof line. That was the 1st thing I did right after I figured out why the windshield opening didn't look quite right just after I bought the truck. If I couldn't fix this, the truck would have started of with looking for a cab.
Pic 4) This front 3/4 view pretty much shows the worst damage the truck had, and the reason for this round of body work. Perfection was not the goal, improvement was. Gene

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the body work process. The fill, sand, fill, sand, process doesn't relate well in pic form, especially the way I do it. I fill too much, wait too long so it gets really hard to sand, then sand too much, then repeat.

To shorten a long story up, my body work has levels.
Level 1) I start out doing body work with the intension of making it as straight as possible. That lasts about a month.
Level 2) Straight may not be so important after all, smooth is better. Yea, lets make it smooth. That lasts about 2 weeks.
Level 3) Smooth my be over rated, sort of smooth is OK. It deteriorates pretty much daily after that.
Level 4) the point where one color sounds good.
Level 5) I don't care, paint the stupid thing.
Level 6) Paint it or I'll buy a new brush and paint it myself.

Pic 1-4) So somewhere near the end of July, I reached level 4. These pictures were the day it was headed for my buddy's shop for paint. I'm too cheap to pay him for something I can do, even if I really don't want to do. The concept was to cover it with high build primer (one color), then I would DA it with 400 and then it would get painted. A week at the most! I could handle that. But...

At his shop, he determined it really needed to be sanded with 220 on the Da (I went to 180). Reluctantly, I did the truck in 220.
After the 220, we discussed primmer. His feeling was that because there was still so much bare metal, and because I wasn't sure what or when the inside of the bed was getting done, it would be better to spray epoxy primmer on the truck. Then we would block the truck with 380. and spray it with the high build. We turned out to be me. The block sanding showed me that IF I do another paint job, I need to invest in better sanding blocks, the one's I have are too flexible. Week one comes to an end, he was going to prime with the high build on Monday, and I could hit it with 400 Tuesday.

The primmer didn't get done Monday, he had an emergency repair on his son's car that had to leave for CO Tuesday morning. It ranked higher then my body work, and I was OK with that. He also determined that we needed to spot fill a few pinholes in my body work, and he wanted to redo some of the quick seam sealer work I did when the roof repairs were done (they looked pretty sloppy now). I informed him I was at level 5, and maybe even level 6. his comment was "Good! Now go home, and come back on Thursday. He was going to redo the seam sealer, fill the pin holes and a couple other things. Gene

This is what I came into the shop seeing Thursday morning. Pics 1-4.

Thursday was 400 on the DA followed by a scuff of all the areas the DA couldn't get into, and a spot sand on one rear fender edge that wasn't quite right. We really only had a few small spots where I broke through to bare steel, and we spot primed these. Thursday was a short day. He was going to clean up the shop to prepare for paint.

This morning I removed the paper and tape so we could blow the body dust off, then re-tape, wet wipe the dust off before the tach cloth to the entire truck.
After lunch, the paint got applied.
Pics 1-4 After the 1st coat! He applied two coats,
2011-2016 Jeep Cosmo blue single stage Acrylic Urethane.
The truck will sit in his shop until Monday when I will remove the paper & tape, and reattach the hood, lights, and plates. Then it gets driven home to get the freshly painted low gloss black rear bumper, and running boards, and the chrome front bumper installed.
I'm pretty excited!

I will post up pictures after I get it put back together early next week. Those close by will be able to pick it apart at the Mopars on the Mississippi in Dubuque IA Sunday Aug 28, 2022.

Perfection was not the goal (but it looks pretty good right now). This is my winter driver and work truck. it will be driven on salt covered roads through the winters.
Going to be the best dam 49 Dodge truck on the road through the winter of 2022/2023. Gene

Gene, thank you for posting. Nice to hear from you. I always enjoy your posts and commentary (often I have the same feelings as you do). Especially about body work!
You also help to motivate me to keep at my project, that seems to have grown in complexity and length the older I get.

I have a question that is not of much interest to most people so I am going to send you a private message.

Thanks, Ray.

your truck turned out great Gene !
can't wait to see it back together.
are you going to do anything to the under side to protect against road salt/brine mix, such as an oil coat ?
my body work skills consist of a big hammer, a bigger hammer, a really BFH, and an assortment of pry bars and lots of cuss words...............

My buddy called my Sat morning and told me the paint was dry, and I could take the truck home that day if I wanted to. He helped me put the hood on, and I put the rear plate & lights on, and drove it home. I think he just wanted it out of his shop. Anyway, is sitting at home, in my garage, but I don't plan on putting the running boards & bumpers on it until Monday. I didn't take a pic of it outside.

It looks a whole lot better out in the sun! I too can't wait to see it complete! The running boards and rear bumper have been stripped to bare metal and redone. I do want to raise up the front bumper about 3" to 4". its too low to protect anything (not that it would protect much anyway, but might save the nose piece from a parking lot bump).

When I built the truck, I stripped clean the entire underside of the front fenders to bare metal, then gave them 2 coats of rust converter, two coats of primmer, and two coats of brush on black paint. Then I made inner wheel wells that cover the entire tire area that bolt up inside of the fenders. Those inner fenders were painted on both sides before last winter. Much of the inner fenders was new metal, so little other then painting, not much could have been done in the time I had, before the weather turned, pretty early last fall.

Here they mix a little sand with the salt/slime mix, so the tires did a minor sand blast to the inner fenders that was inline with the tire sand throwing path. There is an area about 6" wide on the inner fenders that has a surface rust/remaining paint area. Before this winter, I intend to pull both inner fenders, insect them, and readdress the surface protection. I may cover them with bed liner, or spray on rubberized undercoating, or simply plan on repainting them yearly, depending on what the look like (and what the underside of the fenders look like) once the inners are off. The truck sits on my cement driveway, underside oiling doesn't have much appeal at this point, but that might change once I see what I have after a single winter of use. I think the biggest thing is going to be protecting the inner fender finish from the sand blasting effect from the tires throw the sand. I also painted the inside of the rear fenders, they look about the same as the front inner fenders, about a 6" wide area inside the 9" wide rear fenders.

About that hammer thing... I had the advantage of being a 3rd year auto shop student in a school that you had to be a sophomore before you could get into auto shop. I also had the opportunity to be one of only 8 guys that had that option at that time. Those of us that were 3rd year students got to choose a different topic related to the automotive industry for each 1/4 of our 12th grade class. As such, my one buddy (also in his 3rd year) and I did an auto body 1/4. We were taught the proper way to braze (& gas weld), hammer and dolly dents, spread and sand filler, and prepare a vehicle for paint (we couldn't actually paint there, would never had cleared the front office, not really sure how we got to actually do body work to tell the truth). BTW, we both Aced that 1/4. I also did a 1/4 on tires (radial tires were just coming out), a 1/4 on automotive steering and suspension, and a 1/4 on automotive brakes. I was working in a garage that did all that stuff at the time. In addition to the actual in class work, we had to do a 10 page write up, complete with pictures and documentation. It was a fun year! Gene

there was no auto shop in my high school. we had wood shop and basic electrical shop, and both classes were taught by teachers that were looking more toward retirement than teaching.
i got a job at a body shop in 1968, and that lasted until 1972 when the owner closed the shop and moved out of the state to take a job with an insurance company chasing fraudulent claims.
it was during this time period i bought my charger as a total, and learned how to tackle a large project. the guys that worked at that shop were a great bunch, and i am proud to say i am great friends with the shop foreman and his wife to this day.
back then, as i had little body work experience other than bolting on fenders and other removable parts, at first i was assigned the task of floor sweeper/general cleanup guy and "gofer".
i gradually got to help sand vehicles for paint jobs and did a lot of masking. i was also assigned the job of tow truck driver. i enjoyed that a lot !
somewhere around 1969 or early 1970, the owner bought a small Texaco gas station a few blocks away, and moved the frame machine from the main shop to the gas station. i was then assigned the job of managing the gas station from 3pm until 10 or 11pm closing time, depending upon how busy we were on any particular day.
the frame machine was run by an old German guy, and this was where i started to learn the basic skills i have today. as the shop specialty was buying and repairing totals, almost all required some pulling plus some "heat and beat" technology.
i really enjoyed the techniques used on the frame machine to get things back into position, so a mangled mess looked like a car [or truck] again. i was very disappointed [and somewhat sad] when the shop closed.
after that, i dumbed around with short stints working at the local truck stop and a house trailer manufacturer, finally landing a job with Rockwell International in the next town over.
thus beginning my machinist career the day after Christmas, in 1973. from this day forward, i learned to design parts as well as make them from various kinds of materials. this helped greatly in fabricating hot rod parts, and after shift, i could use the shops equipment to do so. after almost 45 years [almost all of it the graveyard shift - thus becoming a vampire ], i graduated into retirement.

I got at it this morning and put on the running boards and the rear bumper. I want to raise up the front bumper about 4" because its simply too low to be of any use. One time last year, while I was dri9ving the truck, I had parked in a lot rows of cars two deep. When I cam out of the store, there was a Chevy pickup backed into the space in front of me, really close to the front end of my truck. When I looked, the ball on his trailer hitch was only about 2" from the nose piece on my truck, my front bumper was under his hitch. That was the point I decided I needed to raise up the bumper.

My entire truck sits about 10" - 12" lower than this truck would have originally sat. The nose piece (its one panel that attaches to the front edge of the front fenders and covers the entire nose of the truck ahead of, and below the hood. That nose piece has cut outs from the bottom of the piece up 6" and 4" wide on each side for the bumper brackets to protrude through. The original Dakota 4x4 frame was cut off just in front of the radiator support mounting holes, and that cut off frame is about an inch behind the nose piece. The Dakota's frame horns would have been just under the headlights, would have been centered between the turn lights and the grille openings, and in my opinion would have been much too high for this truck. As such, I added simple angle iron brackets to the Dakota front crossmember out through the original nose bumper mount cutouts and made brackets to support the chrome bumper. simple and easy, but pretty low. The bottom of the bumper has made contact with a few road dips here in town. I've made the decision to simply modify the existing bumper brackets and raise up the bumper after the brackets come through the original cutouts. I spent most of the afternoon scratching my head trying to figure out exactly I was going to do that. I think I have a plan, I'll know tomorrow... At this point everything is dune except the front bumper, and detailed cleanup, inside and out.
So pictures or it didn't happen, right?
Pic 1-4.
Pic 4 Shows the front nose piece. To put things into perspective, the aluminum radiator is sitting on the Dakota radiator support, which is between the Dakota front frame rails. The Dakota frame kicks outward at that point! As it is, the Dakota frame ends just in front of the sheet metal. When I first put the truck together, the bumper bolted to the frame extensions located in the cutouts, the top of the bumper was about an inch above the frame extensions. The new bumper location will be directly in front of the larger openings in the grille, below the radiator. I believe most of the frame extensions will be covered by the bottom of the bumper, but if not, I might beef up the extensions and add pull hooks on the frame extensions under the bumper. When I'm all said and done, the front bumper will still be a bit low, I believe the top edge will be in the 15" of the ground range.

More pics. Couldn't get very good pics of the driver side.
Pic 1-4 long way from where it used to be.

More pics, because, well, I took them! LOL! Gene

that looks really good, and once again, you have proven your mastery of the dakota chassis swap.
i can see your concern about the nose piece.
are those somewhat difficult to come across ? if so, i wonder if it might be a good idea to have a spare, just in case ?

The nose pieces are still available used, and many are in very good condition. They are fairly pricy, which a person should expect for the size and importance of the part. Unfortunately, the prices also puts it at a level where having one sitting around waiting for an event that might never happen may not make much sense.

The entire passenger side of the nose piece on my truck was badly damaged, but with a hammer & dolly, a few patches, and some filler, it will work OK on my truck. Should something bad happen to it, I will cross that bridge if it ever comes. Between now and then, I'm going to at least add some protection. If the nose piece gets damaged bad enough to warrant a replacement, a major rebuild of this truck would also probably be required. A lot of important stuff isn't too far behind that nose piece.

I got the front bumper brackets modified today, and painted them. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get it back on the truck and get a few pictures. Then I'm going to be in clean up mode, and check over mode. The truck has basically been sitting since the end of May and will be going on a 130 mile drive Sunday to the Mopars on the Mississippi show. It looks like that trip may have some rain involved, so I want to be sure everything will be ready.

Looks Awesome...

Thanks, it really turned out better then I expected.

True to form, its already got its first chips, we have some paint left, but my buddy says we can't touch it up until the rest fully cures, after about a month.
There is still more to come, I still plan on undercoating under the fenders, and probably some mud flaps behind the front tires just to help protect the body from the winter salt.
I'm also planning on a bed cover, but that might not happen until spring at this point. We just did a light color dusting on the inside of the bed after the epoxy primer, haven't decided if I'm painting inside the bed, or tinting a spray in bed liner, since it will eventually be covered.
I need to get a headliner, I have something over head right now, but its not wide enough. The headliner kit is $450, that most likely will be on next years list. We did make it to the Mopars on the Mississippi and they awarded me 3rd place out of 8 really nice modified trucks. That was a pleasant surprise as well.

Picture with the front bumper repositioned.

Looks really good .. I've been trying to find some locally to put a basic paint job on my race car, caus e the one on it is awful .. just good enough to shine all i want , no one , even friends that own body shops will help me

Thanks bigdad.
My buddy is in the process of closing down his body shop, I'm sure going to miss him after he closes. He says he will still do some painting at his house after he closes his shop, but I suspect I know how that is going to work out.
This one might really be my last one.

i think that is one reason the rat rod movement is so popular. not necessarily with spectators, but the owners.
as paint and material prices continue to climb, and buddies get out of the body and paint business, the rat style will continue to increase. if a guy wants anything shiny, it will be "Earl Schibe" or learn to do it your self.

Between that and the concept of the amount of effort required to keeping the shiny paint clean and shiny, and those dreaded, sure to come, first chips and scratches. Other people get really picky when something has pretty paint, and feel a need to pick it apart. With the rat rod look, most people look at it as an old vehicle (as long as its not radical) and admire it as a survivor (weather it is or not).

Seems the rat rod is either "cool", or its not, but a shinny car is a "show car" and gets compared to perfection.

I drive my stuff. Perfection was never the goal.

Tons of great info and pics Gene. I just noticed now that your pickup has the older Dakota door handles welded into the doors. Did you do that so you could use the Dakota door latches and handles in your build? My 56 has decent door hardware and the doors are really solid, but I'd really like to have the same remote door locks capability on my 56 C as I have on my current Dakota.

Looking at your pics and write up, all I can say is WOW! Lots of fabrication and engineering that anyone who has not done one bit this cannot fathom the depth of thought and design that goes into what in operation seems such a simple thing.

Thanks Andy, I was hoping you would take the time to really look through this thread.

Many people are fed the line that a Dakota swap under an old truck is easy, it is not. Any time you take a modern chassis and put it under old sheet metal, a lot of work is involved. What I can tell you is that at least the 88-96 Dakota frame is much more easy to put under an old body then many other frame options. The straight, level frame rails between the front and rear suspension solve a lot of problems most curved parameter frames have. The S10 and the Chevy Colorado frames are a pain to fit under most lode vehicles, nothing is straight.

Concerning the door handles on my 49. Up until 52 (or 53) a driver side key in the door lock did not exist. The only exterior key lock was on the passenger side door. It was considered a safety feature to not stand on the street to unlock and enter a vehicle back then. Another issue is the way the original door latches kept the doors closed. The door latches were a wedge shaped bar on the post that engaged a retractable spring loaded wedge shaped part that protruded through the door. Those two wedges sliding against each other and the flat edges against each other is the only thing that kept the door closed. Then there was a male & female wedge shaped pair, one part on the door post and the other on the door are what kept the door aligned in the up and down plane. Any wear on any of the wedges, if there was any wear on one or both door hinges a big bump to pop the door open. That happened a lot as the trucks (and cars) aged. The modern post and closing style claw are so much better at securing the door.
Another determining factor on my truck was that all the door parts on the inside and the outside on my doors was junk.
I did end up installing electric door locks because there wasn't enough door thickness for the Dakota door key lock to function without hitting the glass. The original latch mechanism would not have worked with the electric door locks even if mine would have been good.

There was some discussion about an outside fresh air source for the HVAC system on Dabee's post, and I have pictures of how I did mine. I thought my pictures should be on my truck build rather then on his. Probably going to take a couple posts to cover the pictures, so I'll start on this post.

Pic 1 is the opening I cut in the cowl For reference, the hood sits on top of the black rubber strip when its closed. When the hood is closed, the top end is about 3/4" below the underside of the hood. This area has the potential to be wet from water running under the hood seal. You can see a built up top, and both sides of the cowl opening. the ledge below the hole is a factory rain gutter. The bottom of the hole is an inch above the top of the rain gutter.
Pic 2 This is looking down inside the hole. The duct work around the hole you see is very light gauge (22 gauge I believe) and it is formed from two pieces, the top section and the bottom section. The two pieces are pretty much wedged into place and attach with a screw on each side, are bolted to the fresh air inlet duct on the Dakota HVAC box with its original mounting hardware. The original Dakota had a plastic piece that sat where this sits. The hole at the bottom is the actual Dakota HVAC box. The two blue screws only hold the cover on through the summer months.
Pic 3 shows another view of the opening. The actual HVAC box is about 3" lower then the bottom of the hole, and the closest part of the HVAC box opening is about 6" more inward then the firewall.
Pic 4 is the removed door, as it would sit over the hole. I'll bet you can't guess where those two blue screws in the last 2 pic went. Those two screws are all that hol the door in place. I added it because in the summer a lot of warm air comes through the hole from the engine compartment. Fpr the record, as the motor warms up in the winter, a lot of warm air comes through that hole as well. It is a bit cool before the motor starts warming up (about 5 minutes after start up @ 25 degrees).

More on my fresh air intake for the HVAC Dakota box on my 49 Dodge.
Hole cover: The piece of metal started out as a 9" x 6" piece of 20 gauge. It was hand formed to the curve of the cowl. After the curve was done, both edges wire trimmed to match the sides of the hole. The top was bent to fit against the top edge. While being held in place, two holes were drilled in the bottom overlapping edge and self taping screws were screwed into those holes. Both sides were primed. The under side had a small piece of the silver covered bubble wrap glued to it. When the truck got painted, the cover was already screwed to the opening and was painted with the top of the cowl. When in place, with the hood open it pretty well blends in.
Pic 1 As would be viewed from the passenger side of the truck. As you can see, great care was taken to assure the utmost beauty (not). This rolled edge fits over top of the round rod that was welded on the cowl as a water barrier. It and the screws locate the cover.
Pic 2 This is what the bottom side of the cover looks like, from the same edge.
Pic 3, Top view of the driver side of the cover. This side buts up against the opening's edge.
Pic 4 is the bottom as viewed from the drivers side.

Winter fresh air, with a summer cover, crude, simple, and effective. Gene

And 3 pics just for Andy, and one just because.
Pic 1) The Dakota OEM defroster duct holes cut out in the top of my dash.
Pic 2 This was all I had for a dash in my original 49 dash. The large hole on the right side was the glove box (I had no door) The second hole would have been a radio speaker hole. The early Dodge trucks were built for either right or left hand drive. If this truck would have been a right hand drive, the 4 plex of gauges would have been mounted in this hole .and the radio speaker would have been on the other side. The hole in the center was hacked it to hold a radio, it may have been an original radio hole, or may not have been there at all originally. The holes in the lower panel were for the ignition switch at the outer edge (right hand drive the ignition switch would have been in the right side hole, the left hand drive ignition switch was in the left hole. The cigar lighter would have filled whichever ignition switch hole was not used for the ignition. The two center holes were either the headlight switch or the choke pull cable, the choke being closest to the driver. Heater controls would have been in a separate panel that filled the lower dash cut out. I have no idea what might have ben in the hole on the far left of the dash. The two studs under the dash between the gauge hole and the unknown use hole on the left side of the dash is where the steering column mounted.
Pic 3 is the seat riser on my flat floor pan. That is a 3" wide piece of channel iron. a bit of over kill, but I had it here at the time. The seat track adjusters are from www.speedway.com. They com as a set per bucket, so I used 2 sets for both bucket seats. The seats in this truck came out of a 2000 something Dodge minivan, they are the 2nd row seats and were the sto-n-go seats. They may be the original brackets for the seats. I'm considering raising these seats another inch and a half or two inches.
Pic 4 Since I was out taking pictures.... Gene

years ago, i bought six outside handles at carlisle for $5.00
they are very similar to what you used, but they are for the same side. this means the lock cylinder will be forward on one door, while being rearward on the other.
i never looked up the part number, but it is 04719421, and there is a date number of 3110-1/95 on the boxes.
these handles are square edged rectangular units, and are very thin, so they will work great for outside handles on my humpback project. i already have inside "backers" made for the doors to stiffen the inside of the door skin, and these will butt under the outside character line of the body, becoming almost invisible with the body's patina.
i know some would want this thing painted, but #1, i won't live long enough to do so,and #2, i'm not a body man by any stretch of the imagination.