Monday, October 13, 2008

rear power windows august 2005
























































The front power window conversions were easy since dodge did power windows on the pickup/ramchargers from 81-93, but the rear was an experiment. Originally I did not have motors, but just the window mechanisms so that's all I had to work with. The previous owners lack of mainance on the truck caused the window channels in the rear to rust away to nothing so I had to fabricate some from scratch along with the window channels. Once I got a motor for the power windows it was one of the earlier model motors that almost the diameter of a beer can. That was too thick and the channel would hit the motor on the way down and keep the window from coming down. I then upgraded to later, 88+ model, power window motors. That was better, but the widow channel would still hit the motor and bind. So I then cut 1/4" out of the mechanism to move the motor closer to the door. That helped, but not enough. So the last resort was to cut out the recess in the door panels and replace it with flat panels to bring the motor outward about 3/8" more. Once I did that I was able to get the windows to go up and down without binding.

Sept 2005
















Once I got all the old rust out I was able to fabricate new patch panels to replace the rust. I had to cut some of the besides out as well to get back to clean steel so I had to fabricate a panel to replace the cut out sections.

Bed work June 2005











The bed was pretty rotten so I had to start completely over by cutting out all the cacerous rust and replacing it with clean patch panels.