The 40 440

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Cool Hand

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Location
Middleton Wisconsin
For my guys in the big block A body forum. This is the build of the 40 440. This truck showed up at our shop as a favor for a friend. He bought a new box for his truck off of craigslist, and got talked into taking this with him when left. Needless to say he needed to store it somewhere. Man I'm a nice guy. My wife told him not to leave it here to long or it would be hers. Sure enough he fell for a Mayberry police car I acquired, we did some trading,and it begins. Here she is just as it looked when she showed up
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Then the tear down began!
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Found few cool original parts.
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She didn't fight much,and before we new it the day ended with this.
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The cab,front clip,windshield frame,doors, trim,and lots of little switches knobs etc. Was all we had left that was salvageable for our build. Nature had tried her best to reclaim everything else.
 
Next we got what parts we had cleaned up,and started designs,and ordering parts
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The parts list started with a call to QA1. We ordered an E Body front v8 crossmember with all the goodies, and their builders four link coil over kit for the rear. We gave our local steel shop a call,and ordered up some 2x4 3/16th wall rails,and started transferring measurements to it from the original frame. Now that we knew where the cab mounts,and bed mounts went aswell as the wheel base the layout for the QA1 parts could start
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Don't worry it will make sense soon.
 
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We love our guys at summit racing and this torsion bar crossmember was a very small part of the list we ordered from them. AMD if your wondering. They also had the upper control arm,shock mount piece that would be part of an e body inner fender. Both parts needed some fab for our design.
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Front suspension mocked up. Now for hours of welding, gussets, grinding etc.
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More coming but this is all the picks I can do at a time.
 
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Crossmember all fabbed up ready for welding. Next we are gonna make some cab mounts.
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A little 1x3 tubing,and a few more gussets. Oh yeah ,and more measuring. Then Tada mounts are done. Now let's get the cab
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Don't worry we are gonna make room for suspension travel, and wait till you see how we stiffen up and stabilize the front suspension.
 
You got some really nice lookin original metal there. Great fab work, too. I wish I was half that good.
 
Great job! Talk about taking the road less traveled with using that "crappy old torsion bar stuff"! Mopar suspension doesn't ever get the credit it deserves. Absolutely love it!
 
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Crossmember all fabbed up ready for welding. Next we are gonna make some cab mounts.View attachment 1715733494View attachment 1715733495 View attachment 1715733496
A little 1x3 tubing,and a few more gussets. Oh yeah ,and more measuring. Then Tada mounts are done. Now let's get the cabView attachment 1715733497 View attachment 1715733498 View attachment 1715733499 View attachment 1715733500 View attachment 1715733501
Don't worry we are gonna make room for suspension travel, and wait till you see how we stiffen up and stabilize the front suspension.

Looks like this is the best build thread I `ve seen on here !!
 
I am really like this build, I have a 46 1/2 ton awaiting its turn.
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Yes excellent work and thanks for starting a thread. I’m in.
:popcorn:
 
Ok where was I? Finishing the frame I believe. On to the rearend then. I got the 8 3/4 rear out of a chrysler new Yorker in the junk yard. It was cleaned up painted bright green,and a Eaton trutrac and 355 gears. (Figured the 355s would help with the highway since there wouldn't be overdrive.)
As I said we used a QA1 coilover setup for the rear. However I like the ride tech four link kit better so we used that. The ride tech comes with all the bars brackets joints, and a really nicely made bracket to attach to the frame,and rear-end housing. Super easy to use not much fab. I already had my wheelbase measurements so I tacked the rearend to the table at the height I wanted and centered it. We assembled both sides of the four link kit. Set them in place double checked some measurements and tacked them in.
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Now we get to the jog in the frame. Pretty self explanatory so I will just show the pics.
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As you can see in the last few pics we got the springs in place aswell as a few crossbars. The QA1 kit comes with the crossbar,aswell as the tabs. There is also a panhard bar with the ride tech kit that isn't in yet. It had to be bent cut and modified so it would attach were we needed it.
At this point we had to get it off the frame table. A little sketchy, but ratchet straps did the job. Don't try this at home. Pics coming next
 
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Now that its on jackstands,and mostly welded up its time to get into the motor and trans that started all this. We will get back to the fab work but I must show you this before we mount it
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We have a great video of this but I can't figure out how to attach it right now so here are some pics.
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This took a minute but she is ready to come out now.
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Those straps are attached to to a truck. Don't try this at home either lol.
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Next morning pic. Hard to tell that I almost died there the night before. Not really but holy s#!^ that was stupid.
Next post I will show some pics of the engine build once it came back from the machine shop.
 
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So now that that is out of the way we stripped the motor down down. I sent the block a new forged eagle crank, pistons, bearings,and a complete engine rebuild kit from summit racing to the machine shop for it to be bored balanced etc.
So this is where I made a bad decision that I will hopefully be remedied soon. While on summit I purchased a top end kit instead of doing my research and ordering individual parts that fit my end game for the performance and use I was after.
Nothing wrong with the trickflow top end kit. Just doesn't work with what I envisioned. Or with the manifolds,and convertor I used.
So enough of that she will be ripping up pavement soon enough. Here are some pics of the build,and end product. Then we will get back to fab work.
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Off to machine shop.
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Back from machine shop.
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Short block complete time to paint.
 
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So if I remember we where on jack stands. The frame was welded up. Rearend installed.cab mounted,and front suspension ,and k member was mocked up.
So let's do the initial drive train install.
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Trans crossmember I fabbed up
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So in this last picture you can see the 1 5/8 inch tubing we used to stiffen up the suspension. It is attached to the firewall with a 4" plate and, bolts. It is then bolted to the shock tower,and runs down to the frame. It is also part of a hoop that will hold the radiator,and gives us a place to mount the grill shell,and front end.
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Started with a slightly modified original core support.
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Bent up a hoop. welded tabs to it to bolt the grill shell to.
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Bolted 1/4inch plate through firewall to attach suspension reinforcement to.
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