Project Shop Truck is a 1957 Ford F100 that we are building into a hot rod shop truck.

During inspection we realized that the cab had a lot of rot.  Not anything that is uncommon to these old trucks and they are all parts that are available.  However, the rear window frame was rotten and in our search for a new window frame we found a cab that was more solid than ours.  Cab swap!

Now this "new" cab has surface rust, but is very solid with minimal rot.  So we think it is a stronger candidate.  We won't know for sure until if comes back from media blasting, but initial inspection makes it seem the right choice.

So, we picked it up in a trailer and will be stripping the old cab for all its parts before it goes off to the scrap yard (unless someone ends up buying it).

So to move it around for now, get it to the media blaster, and work on it when we are ready - we needed to build a cab dolly.

Our plans were pretty straight forward.  It is built entirely of 2x10" board (two) and one 4x4 pressure treated post.  

The cab is about 5 feet high and we want to roll it on its back.  So the length is 5 feet.  For width we measured the gap at the back of the cab as just over 40".  So the width is 40".

Then we attached 5" casters - with two swivel locking casters on one side and fixed casters on the other.

The frame width on the '57 Ford is 34", so we cut two piece of 4x4 at 40" and placed them at 34" outside width and attached them with two screws to keep them in place.

We only used a couple screws on the 4x4s because when we roll the cab on its back we will just put carpet on top of the 2x10s and won't need the frame bracing.

Next we had to pull the cab out of the trailer.  I was working along on this one, so I used an engine hoist and some lifting straps from the floor mounts for the body to the frame.

That's it!  On a dolly and easily moved around now or transported on a flat deck to the media blaster.

Hope you enjoyed!