Extended cab 45 SWB from a 40 (1 Viewer)

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Finally had a day off and no kids around to work on the 45 again. My plan for the rear cab was to take a piece of polycarbonate and bend it so it wrapped around the cage corners and matched the body corners. I had to redo my rear door frames and make a plate to bolt the top to which then got welded to the new door frames to make the brace for the polycarbonate. I need to support it in the cent still but the sides are strong. When the mounting is finalized I'll pull it all of for primer and Raptor Liner. The polycarbonate is clear so I'll cut out the shape of the rear window I want and mask it and spray everything else to match the body.



I also changed my headlights from the eBay specials to some Morimot Sealed7s. I have them on my 80 and they work great!

 
Just a sick build...I am very jealous of your skills and your rig.pm me if you want to sell it. You are the ultimate cocksman!!! Cheers
 
Dude, that is a dizzying amount of work. Kudo's bro... as a father of young kids myself I am most impressed that are you finding the time to crank out this amount of work!

Super cool work man. One of a kind. I have been tempted over the years to add two more doors in my 40.
 
Dude, that is a dizzying amount of work. Kudo's bro... as a father of young kids myself I am most impressed that are you finding the time to crank out this amount of work!

Super cool work man. One of a kind. I have been tempted over the years to add two more doors in my 40.

Thanks!It's getting harder and harder to fit in the time. I would never have made it this far if not for my Wife taking the kids out!

Adding the extra 2 doors made the truck so muchore useful. It was such a pain to get to the back seat before. Now it's super useful and the VW seats with latch points let me swap car seats in seconds. It's a whole new truck and I find my self looking for reasons to drive it.
 
So I finished the rear of the cab and the B-pillars so the top is bolted very securely to the tub on all sides. I reused the front of some hard top sides I had from the soft top days and 1" angle to form the rear door outer frames. The rear frame is 3/16" steel cut to the shape of the rear top and then welded to the rear 1" angle iron that forms the rear of the rear outer frame. It's all modular...but the hard top isn't coming on or off quickly. I still plan to get the soft top modified and use it as just a bikini top, but it's nice and quiet with the full hard top.

 
Got door uppers done, at least it's mostly water "resistant" now for winter. The frame is 1/2" square tube and 2" angle that is bolted to the tops of the doors and covered with 3/16" polycarbonate. I'm not sold on the shape/size of the rear windows. I had thought about matching them to the front height, but then the kids can't really see much, so this shape is a compromise. In the future I would like to cut a full size door out of aluminum and use those for the winter with some sort of a slider window.


 
So I have always wanted a more modular bed. I figured with all this forced home time I'd start on making Frank a flatbed. So I pulled off the shortie bed and started with some 2x4" .188 wall tubing.
I changed out the fuel tank to a 33-gallon tank from a full size Bronco and replaced the in tank pump with a higher pressure and volume pump.
I worked on framing out the flatbed and kept the idea of having the center of the bed be one large slide out.
In the end the full length (72") slide wasn't going to be practical and I settled on a 44x33" slide that I will turn into a drawer so the top diamond plate is hinged.
The kids helped me cut the diamond plate today.
Added a spare tire mount and now its ready to go....aside from the slide drawer that I haven't built yet.


 
Tons of win with that design. The drawer will be really great. Mudrak has one on his 45 bed irrc.
 
Tons of win with that design. The drawer will be really great. Mudrak has one on his 45 bed irrc.

I think he does too, he has that truck pretty optimized. I need more cab though for more people so unless I want a giant/narrow truck I am limited on bed. I think this one at 72"x 65" will work pretty nice though. I have a matching rear hoop to weld up and that will bolt on/off when needed.
 
I really like this build. You know what you want and you just go for it, you don’t waste any time.

I know how tough it is to find time for big projects with kids. Keep it up, looks really great.
 
Man, this is an inspirational build thread. I have read through it many times, and it gets me fired up each time. Hats off bro!
 
Some updates. I made some bed sides out of Redwood but I still haven't finished the slide out drawer. So there's still a giant hole in the bed. I changed the wheels to some Method trail series wheels and pushed the back spacing out to 4.5" from the previous 5.75". I also upgraded to Patagonia MT tires, man are these things quieter and look great in 38"!





I am still fighting the NP203, it won't shift into low. I got a deal on a Blackbox but it requires a 6L90, so I found a used one and it's torn apart in my garage to replace all the friction discs and upgrade the pistons. Aside from a 3ft long pair of snap ring pliers it was very easy to disassemble.



 
This build is awesome. I'm slowly collecting parts to turn my 40 into a 45 dumpbed bagged on tons. I might have missed it, but what's your wheelbase now?

I absolutely loved the extended cab stage as that's where I'm headed. But you've turned this into a proper aussie build in the states which is too cool!!
 
Been a while since I updated this build. We moved twice and even though I tried to sell him, Frank is still with us. When things in Virginia finally settled down I finished swapping the axles over to 2008 Ford F250 axles. Sterling 10.5 rear and Dana 60 front with Fox coilovers and WFO parallel link arms. The ride with the coilovers was great but I was never happy with the temporary rear window. So, Frank is under the knife again....

About to be shipped to Ohio:
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Getting some sun
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Then I had a massive job change and went back to school for a year. Finally got around to the axle swap, man these are insanely heavy!

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Yes that weld drives me crazy too, I fixed it.
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Got the big tires mounted and now it looks normal....at least to me. We used it for the summer but there were several things that just bugged me....actually many things.
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I wanted it a bit shorter and more useable, the flat bed is too high to actually use. So I tried on some new metal for inspiration.
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I have a lot planned. I'll be reducing the wheelbase and going to a 4-link rear with coil springs not coilovers. I am cutting out and raising the front coilover towers so I can get more useable travel out of the coilovers and moving my poorly planned air bump mounts. The LS 5.3 is coming out and a Gen 5 6.2 L86 with a 10L80 will be going in, and it will be converted to a factory rear tub and hard top sides. I have two fiberglass tops that I'll be hacking apart to make one really long one. Some minor electrical changes and cleaning up all the changes I did over the years.

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I threw one of my 38's and the top side on to get some inspiration!
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Got the old spring perches off and the truss tac'd on the axle to start figuring out where the springs are going to live.
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Unfortunately I have a lot of rust repair to do on the tub I bought, the driver side was pretty bad with a bunch of holes in the wheel well and both lower corners were lots of patches. The rear sill was non-existent so that needs replaced as well.

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The mid bed floor was a bad patch so I cut that out. I had intended to replace it but as I look at the line up I might just modify the panel to keep a level height from the rear bed to the 2x2" cross bar I still have in the body. I plan to cut and flip my rear seat mounts that are currently in the 2x2 so I can lower the rear seat height a couple inches.

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