Chevrolet C8 1940 Cab 11 restoration, The Netherlands

[Alex van de Wetering]

I had another look at the clutch pedal and pedal shaft, that was discussed on the previous page. The bushing set that I bought from the filling station consisted of two bushings, so I still had one left. I decided to try and fit the second bushing, buy a new reamer and see if carefully reaming the bushing would solve the issue. Sadly it didn't, the pedal was still moving around too much and after measuring the shaft with a caliper I found the shaft to be oval and also the surface to be slighly curved (yes, in the wrong direction).

So, I brought the shaft and pedal to the guy that also manufactured the new tie rod. He machined the end of the shaft round again and made a new bushing to fit the pedal. I had the parts back in a few days, so I was able to re-fit the parts last saterday and I am really happy now with the pedal movement!!!! I don't know why it took me a year to finally go ahead and get the pedals sorted....

The first picture shows the "old" bushing and the shaft and pedal after I picked them up from the machine shop. the other pictures show the pedals installed. Also shown is the (classic) Mini clevis pin (shortened to size, and with new hole drilled)....and the lot installed with the return spring.

Also shown is a sneak peek of the floors. More in the next update.

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

It was time to work on the cab floor. The two front sections were in good condition, but the large rear section was bent and had at least two non original holes....one hole was crudely cut with a torch by a previous owner (in order to create room for an extra lever to the gearbox) and the other was created by rust. As some of you know my C8 spent several years in the Elliot borthers scrapyard in Newtonville; over the years all sorts of dirt and junk gathered under the seats, creating the perfect environment to thin out the floor.....and of course the wooden spaces under the floor didn't help either!

So, it was time to do something with the floor. I didn't want to make a new floor from modern thread plate, as I wanted to keep the original style thread pattern, so the only options were to look for a replacement original floor or to fix the existing floor. Stefan and I searched every corner of LWDparts, but we couldn't find a servicable C8 floor, but some Ford floor sections from the scrap pile proved to be the solution. More on that later.

First step was to straighten the floor a bit and to replace the two lips at the front edge.