My own personal tow truck build

[dabar39]

Be prepared as this will be a very long post with lots of pictures, Please allow me to completely finish before making comments, Thank you.

Over the last couple of months I have had several members from this and other forums ask me about my tow truck. So even though it still is not complete I guess it's time to share the build with you guys.

I thought about buying a conventional wrecker or a roll back for towing vehicles, but that meant I would also have to have another truck for towing fifth wheel and gooseneck type of trailers. I already have too many vehicles so I thought building my own would cut out the need for at least one of them. That and the fact that several of my buddies said that idea was a pipe dream and couldn't be done efficiently or for a reasonable cost.

I took the bet and the challenge of building this truck with a $2500 budget, the bet was nothing more than bragging rights and being able to say I told you so.Well, so far I have won the bet hands down.

The first thing to do was start gathering parts and pieces over a period of several months before I actually started the build.

I'll start the pictures with a few of the truck the way it currently sits so you can decide whether or not you want to follow the whole build.

[dabar39]

O.K., The project turned into several projects in one to pull it off. The first project was to acquire all the parts and pieces necessary to pull this off.

I found a slide in repo tow sling on ebay that was just down the road in the next town, I found the listing with only a few minutes left of the auction and bought it pretty much sight unseen and the winning bid of $330.00.

I had a friend of mine that found a 16,000 lb. fifth wheel hitch set up for a whole $50.00

A member of another forum sent me a hidden hitch gooseneck hitch with all mounting rails and hardware for the price of shipping, about a hundred bucks from New Jersey to Florida.

Now I just had to find the truck to put it all on. What I found was a 1990 Ford F-350 chassis cab sitting at a clients hanger at the airport. He was glad to sell me the truck just to get it off the airport property.

A little history on the truck.............
The truck went from Ford to a company in Missouri to have a fuel tank put on it, it was then purchased by Corporate Air to fuel customers planes here in Vero. They took the fuel tank off this truck and placed it on a newer truck. This truck had never been titled and came with the original certificate of origin. The truck also had only 14,885 original miles on it when I got it. This truck spent it's entire life on the airport property, it has a few dings and bruises but what was I gonna expect for $200.00. The truck has a 300 6 cylinder with a 5 speed tranny, not real fast but it'll pull a house down.

Pictures of the parts and pieces

[dabar39]

After I got the tow sling home and giving it a good once over, I didn't have much faith in it actually working without putting some time and money into it.

First thing was to half a$sed hook it up to a battery and see if anything would happen. Well, I can say that I wasn't really disappointed when nothing happened, it didn't look real promising to begin with.

I took the motor off and set it on the bench, as soon as I started to take the cover off of the motor rusty water started dripping out. Time for a new motor I thought, but proceeded to clean it anyways just for the heck of it. Put it back together and hooked it up and was very pleased when the pump motor came to life.

[dabar39]

Now that the tow sling is operational the next thing to do is figure out how to put all of these pieces together and make it all function. The biggest problem was to try and figure out how to fold up the tow sling and use the gooseneck or fifth wheel hitch with out having to dis assemble everything to go from one function to the other.

Here is every thing laying on the back of the truck while trying to make it functional.

[dabar39]

After over analyzing the concept for way to long, I came up with a rather simple idea to try.

The whole problem was what to do with the fifth wheel hitch to get it out of the way when folding up the tow sling. After ditching the mounting rails for the fifth wheel hitch and welding on some 3/4" i.d. tubing in its place and making some pins for it, the fifth wheel hitch now rolls over on its side to allow the sling to fold down out of the way when using the fifth wheel assembly. The fifth wheel hitch sets on top of the sling and all is well once again.


I can't seem to find those pictures but will take some in the day light and edit them in later.

[dabar39]

While I was in the process of starting this build, my niece and I were out yard saling one day and found a set of emergency lights for sale. After talking to the guy selling the lights I found out that he had 8 more lights in his shed. I bought them all for $25.00 each.They are all Federal Signal Black Hawk light bars worth about $565.00 new.

After getting the lights home I went through them all and kept the best one for the truck. There is one of them set on the roof of the truck for the time being.

I used one of the worst ones as a parts donor and came up with 7 good light bars to sell. All of them were placed on ebay and the lowest price was $135.00 and the highest went for $260.00, not bad for a $25 investment.

This little score on the lights really helped to insure that this project would come in way under budget.

[dabar39]

Time to start laying out the truck bed.

Keeping in mind the projected budget of $2500, I decided to use as much recycled or left over materials that I could. (That and I'm a cheap bastard)

I had just cut up an old boat trailer for scrap when I noticed that the bend in the tongue section would match the contour of the back of the cab pretty good. Instant headache rack and light bar mount.

After making the mounts to bolt the tow sling assembly to the truck frame I decided that the rest of the bed was going to be more for looks than anything else and could be made pretty light duty. Nothing with any kind of weight would fit on it and with the tow sling secure to the frame I built the rest of the bed frame with some 3" channel and some 2"x1/4"angle for the frame work and some 1 1/2"x 14 ga. square tube to hold the sheet metal skins on it.

[dabar39]

With the frame work pretty much done it was time to start laying the skins on it. A buddy stopped by and dropped off an old ammunition case that I put on the passenger side for storage and cut the sheet metal to fit around it. An old refrigerator handle installed later makes it easy to open and close the box. Here is the start of the actual body.

[sidthss]

Looking good, cant wait to see it all 100% done.

[dabar39]

Here is some more of the body being built.

Notice that the pieces that are at the front of the bed were bent by scoring the back with a cut off wheel, clamped down then bent to fit the contour of the bed.

The back of the 1/4 panels have been sloped to fit the rear body panel and holes for the lights have been plasma cut into it and the rest of the clearance lights temporarily installed.

Then some square tube to frame out the headache rack, a little expanded for the back window and some some more left over pieces to fill in the remaining area.The rear spot lights were another yard sale find, they set me back another $5. They are not in their final resting place, just set there to see how i wanted to mount them.

[dabar39]

With the body pretty much done it was time to completely disassemble the entire thing and prep it for some paint. After spraying a couple coats of primer, I chose a 1970 Chevy truck blue for the bed, I wanted it to be a little on the bright side and for some reason I don't like metallic colors on commercial vehicles, I'm kinda funny that way.

[Sandy]

I keep seeing that gooseneck ball in front of the fifth wheel hook up. Hard to picture how that ends up with the A frame and sling stored. It stays fixed and doesn't roll over with the 5th wheel mounting, right?

Oops, looks loke your not done yet.

[dabar39]

Paints dry so its time for the roll on bed liner, I used the dupli-color brand of bed liner from the local auto parts store. It was about $60 for the kit and so far seems like money well spent.

After letting the bed liner sit for a day to dry it was time to start putting it all back together again.

The spot lights shown earlier have been placed under the lightbar in the corners of the headache rack and the expanded metal was cut around them to allow the light shine through a little better, all the rest of the lights mounted, a little reflective tape on the rear and as soon as it started to get dark I had to be like a little kid and try out all of the pretty lights.

[dabar39]

A trip to the junk yard found a set of dolly wheels still on the back of a wrecked tow truck, $75 bucks, some more 1 1/2" square tube and a few hours later they are mounted on the back of my truck.

[dabar39]

Here are some pictures of it the way it sits at the moment. I have been really swamped with work right now so the final product will have to wait a while til time allows for me to finish it.

[dabar39]

Here are a couple of ideas for the final paint work, but I'm still not sure about it. Both basically the same, just one comes up higher on the door than the other.

If somebody wants to add their suggestions for the paint work, I'd like to hear them.

Thanks for looking at this entire thread as I know it is quite lengthy, I hope you enjoyed it. Dave

[mrmikey]

Nice work, very impressive.
As for paint, I'd go further forward with the blue, right up to the headlight but leave a white border around the wheelwell......Mike

[viper522]

nice build dabar, thanks for sharing

[Xtreme Fabrication]

Next time I come down to see my relatives in Vero Beach I will have to stop by a see your right.

[Greyhorse]

I like the paint that goes higher up. Either go past the F 350 badge with the paint or get rid of the badge all together. Very nice work on getting everything positioned where it works, I'm impressed. Heck of a deal on the truck too, wish I could find one like that around here.

[Skwerly]

Wow, that 1970 Chevy color isn't far off from Miller blue!

Impressive build - great job man!

[dabar39]

Originally Posted by Sandy

I keep seeing that gooseneck ball in front of the fifth wheel hook up. Hard to picture how that ends up with the A frame and sling stored. It stays fixed and doesn't roll over with the 5th wheel mounting, right?

Oops, looks loke your not done yet.

Yes, the gooseneck ball is fixed into the bed frame and does not move with the fifth wheel set up.

The whole process to convert the truck from one function to the other takes less than 2 minutes. First the boom is lowered as far down as it will go. The lanyard cable is then removed from the top of the boom, the sling assembly is then removed by pulling a pin on the lower wishbone assembly. The wishbone assembly is then removed by pulling 2 pins where it mounts to the truck bed. Next step is to pull the 2 pins on the left side of the fifth wheel setup, with the pins removed the fifth wheel is then stood on its side. The hydraulic boom is then lowered to the stands on the bed floor. If the gooseneck ball is being used you have to pull the pin on the hydraulic cylinder to retract it out of the way and the gooseneck ball is stood up and locked in place. With these steps done, you set the fifth wheel set up back down to its mount on the bed floor and replace the mounting pins.

If someone can tell me how to download a video to this thread it will all make sense.

[dabar39]

Originally Posted by mrmikey

Nice work, very impressive.
As for paint, I'd go further forward with the blue, right up to the headlight but leave a white border around the wheelwell......Mike

I thought about doing it that way but it would be too much like the factory two tone, I want something that stands out a little more.

Originally Posted by viper522

nice build dabar, thanks for sharing

Thank you

Originally Posted by Xtreme Fabrication

Next time I come down to see my relatives in Vero Beach I will have to stop by a see your right.

Let me know when you are visiting, my door is always open

Originally Posted by Greyhorse

I like the paint that goes higher up. Either go past the F 350 badge with the paint or get rid of the badge all together. Very nice work on getting everything positioned where it works, I'm impressed. Heck of a deal on the truck too, wish I could find one like that around here.

I am kinda thinking about loosing the F-350 badge and bringing the blue a little more forward. Thank you for the comments

Originally Posted by Skwerly

Wow, that 1970 Chevy color isn't far off from Miller blue!

Impressive build - great job man!

I didn't realize how close to Miller blue it was until I opened up the gallon of paint, The color chip in the paint book looked much different. Thank you for the compliment.

[SpyGuy]

Dump the badges, and flame that sucker - not too often you see a working tow truck with flames on the front .... Tape off the white in the front, paint the rest of the cab blue, then peel off the taped-off area and add the yellow stripe to outline the flames. Or, alternately, do blue flames around the front, and leave the cab white. (Ah, I'm an "old's kool" hot-rodder kinda guy, so of course I'd be thinking flames or scallops or something ....:P )

Great work on the truck so far. Very innovative way of doing the hitch mounts and A-frame. Interesting .... so the fifth wheel actually rides over the top of the A-frame ..... Could you please show a few close-ups of the way everything folds up and down?

Suggestion: winch on the front in case you need to pull a car out of a ditch? Push bar?

How do you have the ammo can mounted? Bottom hinged, so it tilts outwards?

Another suggestion: if you come up with another ammo can, recess it into the bed so that you have just the top level with the bed of the truck. Lift the lid, more storage for chains, jumper cables, gas cnas, etc. Could probably be done on either rear corner of the truck.

What's the total damage spent on the truck so far?

[dabar39]

The following pictures will show the entire procedure to change from one function of the truck to the others.

Looking at the pictures it would appear that it takes awhile to accomplish the transformation but one guy can do it in about 2 minutes. I have the whole thing on video but can't figure out how to put the video in the post, so for now pictures will have to do.




pictures continued in next post