Gas trap door for wooden bed

G’day all! Yesterday I had gotten around to installing the trap door that will allow filling the gas tank. The process was a little testy for me~ I’m not the greatest wood worker, but when working on these old trucks n cars, one has to have the “Jack of all Trades” ideology!

The trap door I purchased from Speedway motors. They are a supplier of parts and accessories for Hot rods, and classic cars. There were other options of course, but I chose this option as I didn’t want gas to get on the urethane clear and possible mess it up. The lady that I purchased the truck from~ Cathy~ I give her the credit for the fabulous job of painting the urethane on the beautiful wood. I can imagine it’s a tedious job to do a great job as she did! 😉  Henceforth, I’d rather if I overflowed the gas, the gas would overflow onto the actual painted metal gas tank and onto the ground.

I stared at this for a while, for about a year or two! 😉 What the hell am I going to do about this!?! The gas tank I purchased from Brotherstrucks.com. It was on sale for 250 bucks and so that seamed like a good deal. If I had it to do over again~ I’d probably have looked at other options for a gas tank.

This is NOT the finished product~ ! I just have the wood and metal strips in place to make darned  sure where the trap door is going to go. It will have to be a little off-center because the tank filler neck doesn’t line up exactly between the metal strips~ that’s OK, at least it didn’t require cutting into a metal strip.

After measuring, and measuring, oh, did I mention more measuring!? O marks the spot! Ha ha, I made a funny! You know, X marks the spot? get it! 😉

Now I had to get scientific~ I sat down at the kitchen table with measuring tape and a caliper and the right size socket to make the corners of the template.

My mama didn’t raise no fool~ 😉 I practiced on a piece of wood before attempting to make the opening on the Oak Wood! I had to buy a router of course! Never have enough tools, right?;)

Below, I followed my template to make the counter recess? for the trap door. Others make even go a step further to recess it, but I’m happy with what I did.

I’m still waiting for the part that goes on the gas neck to open/close to fill with gas. There’s just enough room to get to the filler cap via the trap door.  You would think for 85 bucks with shipping and handling that the trap door would have some with a template! No worries, that’s what our brain is for~ to think! That’s what’s great about projects~ they make us think~ and thinking is good!;)

The filler neck on the gas tank sits a few inches below the trap door. It’s an illusion that the filler neck looks level to the trap door, there’s plenty of room for the actual filler neck.

Well, got the filler neck yesterday~ when I said Plenty of room, I should have written, there should be “just enough room”! IT was close! This gas filler was for a boat.

Originally, it was about 2.5″‘s longer. I had to cut it to make it work. The 1 1/2″ Gas hose I bought from Speedway and did the job!

Again, one step closer to the end! I think I’ll be sad when I’m done with my 59 Chevy truck project~ the project is what is fun! Driving the truck is fun, but the actual work is the real fun!  I hope you got something from this little blog. The wood bed blog will be next~ so maybe by the weekend I’ll be done with the wood bed install! Woohoo! dne’