Digging into the new cab

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Pixel

Got the new cab tilted on it’s back, and started digging into the underside.

The outer rockers have been replaced already, but whoever did it didn’t actually fix the rust under them, just covered it with new rockers. I knew about this, so I’ll have to cut the new outer rockers off to properly fix the stuff behind them(inner rockers and lower front pillars).

Also found rust in all four cab braces, floors in front outer corners, cowl vents, & cowl panels below vents.

Annoyingly, I found out the cab corners *were* replaced, but done very badly and covered with bondo. Those are coming out too, to be done right

As bad as this all looks, It is still better than my other cab. I have everything to fix it except 1 cab brace & the lower front pillars. I’m going to form the patches for the cowl vents as those are invisible under the fenders.

I’ve decided that the cab is a low priority, I’m going to get all the rust *on* the truck delt with, then swap the cab over. However I wanted to mess with the cab a bit, so I decided to knock something easy out first.

This cab was from a deluxe trim truck (like the other ’64 I had), so I need to weld up the 4 sail panel screw holes, and the 4 larger side trim holes. I may put the side trim on this truck later, but if I do I’m going to used double sided trim tape.

For the small sail trim holes I just removed the paint and filled the holes with the welder & ground them smooth.

For the bigger trim holes I’m making small circular filler pieces and welding those in. A skim coat of filler and these should be perfect.

Bedside Grind

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Pixel

Sunday I decided I wanted to do something that would make the truck look better, and not just make the parts in the garage look better. So I broke out the D/A and angle grinder and stripped the passenger bedside. The truck has been repainted once, and the top coat of fawn came off with no effort, the newer primer and original paint/primer put up more of a fight though. I did manage to get it all stripped in one day.

I did find filler behind the wheel and one spot higher up in front of the wheel, but the filler was in good shape and looking at the backs of the panel it appears to be smoothing small imperfections and not massive dents, so I left it in place rather than grinding it out only to have to re-do it.

The paint did not want to come off the bedside cap for anything so I left it for now. I’ll have to re-grind this whole area when I install the ’50 Pontiac lights, so I’ll worry about it then.

There was two spots of rot in the wheelwell, which I knew about. I also found some pinhole rust in the bottom of the bedside cap. Nothing dire though.

Once it was stripped, I coated it in Masterseries anti-rust paint as we have thunderstorms predicted for this week. I’ll just grind back the Masterseries when I get to he rust repair & bodywork.

Truck temporary assembly & cab acquisition

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Pixel

I put some of my junk parts on the truck so I could use it. I have to admit it looks pretty cool like this. I drove it up the Boston to drop of some shelving that has been sitting in the truck since the fall, and I got more thumbs up and compliments with the truck like this than in any other trip.

I put the hood on shortly thereafter, as having the engine exposed while the truck was parked outside seemed like asking for trouble.

Got my “new” ’66 cab home the next Saturday. I ended up paying only $400 for it, and the guy threw in a beat up aluminum grille for free.

Rounded up 3 of my friends to load it in the truck and unload it into my garage. The unloading was full on 3-stooges madness trying to get it out of the truck inside the garage without smacking it into the roof beams.

Once it was in my garage, I finally was able to dig deeper into the new cab and see whet I now had.

It came with the full dash(lessheater stuff), AM radio, steering column & wheel), and a set of nice blue sun-visors(the center mirror looks nice, but the ball & socket is rusted solid). I’ll be keeping the wiper switch as it appears to have a washer switch built in, other than that everything else is getting sold to help put some money back in the truck fund.

The biggest selling point for me is that the roof is perfect inside & out. No dents or rust(the rust at the front edge of the inside roof in the sun visors pic is surface rust from where the scraped the paint getting the windshield out). All the roof should need is a quick sand & re-prime for some tiny surface rust spots, new sealant in the gutter and to be painted.

The bad now, there is rust in the floors at the outer edge, though not much.

The cab has also had cab corners and rockers done, but they put the new rocker on over any issues under there, and made the inner rocker out of scrap steel and barely welded it to anything. So the outer rocker is coming back off so I can re-do this area.

There is also this mystery patch, so that has to come off to find out what is going on there.

The only rust not in the floor I’ve found so far is in the driver’s drip rail(but non in the passenger side, weirdly). Once I remove the rusty one, I’ll either scavenge the one off my old cab, or cut the rusted section off the drip rail and weld on new metal.

Bumper? I hardly know her…

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Pixel

The front bumper on the truck looked like hell when I bought it, when the truck was all battered it fit in well, but once I planned to re-do it, I knew the bumper was going to need help.

Back during dis-assembly, only one of the eight bumper bolts simply unscrewed. Of the rest three snapped off and four had to be cut off.

So once the bumper was off, I stripped it of several layers of white paint, and ground down all the surface rust. I was pleasantly surprised to discover it doesn’t appear to be bent, and doesn’t have an dents in it.

Before I could start the repainting, I had to address the gouge I’d made with the cutting wheel when I cut the various bolts off.

First I filled them in with metal using the mig welder, then ground them smooth. This sometimes took a few rounds to fully fill them.

The end result was something that, after primer & paint would show no sign it had ever been damaged and would be a stronger part of the bumper than if I’d just used filler.

Once that was done the bumper was coated in MasterSeries & primer like all the other parts.

Thrills & Grilles

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Pixel

Despite being in very good shape for their age, the GMC grille from the swap meet and the grille support panel from Arizona were both still going to need work.

The first order of business was to unbolt everything from them and get to work grinding all the paint off. The grille panel has this odd spot of rust. Which, given its location, was probably the result of battery acid from a battery leaking or exploding, fortunately it was only surface deep and came right off.

A few hours work gave me a shiny and largely rust-free grille panel. There was no rot, but there will be a lot of little dents & dings to fix.

The grille was stripped of its little headlight trim & headlight buckets. These will be rebuilt & painted before going back on the grille.

Then the grille was similarly ground clean. I found one old dent that will need a skim of filler to be smooth, but there were no nasty surprises hiding under the paint.

Both were given two coats of MasterSeries anti-rust paint.

One surprise I did run into was that despite having come with a GMC grille on it, the Grille panel from AZ was actually for a Chevy, which meant two of the mounting hole per side were in the wrong place.

Fortunately this turned out to be an easy fix, the brace on the back had a cutout where the GMC grille hole was supposed to be, so I just had to drill them out and I had the correct holes needed to let the GMC grille bolt up.

I painted the backs of both with Rustoleum, then sprayed the back of the grille panel with truck bed liner. I think it was because I didn’t dust the parts with primer when the MasterSeries was still wet, but when the bedliner went on it crinkled and lifted most of the Rustoleum off the back of the grille panel.

I power-washed it the next day and was left with the result at the right. I’m going to need to sand this down to get any other unattached paint off, then re-prime & paint this again. Not a huge setback, but very annoying.

Inner fenders, done!

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Pixel

I finally got the last of the welding on the inner fenders completed. I cut the rusted lip off the back and made two patches to replace that area. I tried to make it easier on myself by removing the step down at the back edge(on the left in the picture above. This caused an issues as you can see below. But first I needed to patch the other section that you can see cut out above. There is 3 bends here that needs to be carefully made so everything lines up. I got a brain wave and measured the lip at the top of a junk fender I had. Everything appeared to match so I cut out a section. I flipped the piece over and tested it, the bends are an exact match. I carefully trimmed it and the fender edge to fit and tacked it into place. Here it is tacked in place, please ignore the terrible welds from forgetting to turn on the shielding gas on the MIG. Below is the piece with the welding finished & ground down.

As I mentioned above, the lazy way I decided to fix the back edge bit me in the butt. I tested fitted an outer fender and realized I’d forgotten this little flange that fits over this spot.

I pondered just cutting the flange off on the outer fender, but decided I’d rather have it so any fender could fit here. So I cut the corner where it overlapped, flipped it over and welded it in place.

Then the repaired battery box brace was welded back on, and the repairs to the inner fenders were done.

I chucked a wire cup brush in my angle grinder and ground all the loose rust off the inner fenders and gave them a good scrubbing to get any last bits of grease off.

Then they got two coats of Masterseries anti-rust paint. After they dried I gave the m a coat of black paint and a coat of truck bed liner. The finished liners then got installed, which will show up in another post.

A bit of paint finally goes on

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Pixel

I decided I was tired of welding, so I worked on something else for a change. I decided to paint the now exposed parts of the frame & firewall. Normally the firewall should be matched to the body color on these trucks, but since I am not sure what shade of dark green I ‘ll be using I decided to paint the firewall to match the rest of the sheetmetal in the engine compartment so I didn’t have to worry about it matching the outside.

I ground down the surface rust on the bits of the frame I could easily reach now that the sheetmetal was off the nose. And also ground down the rust on the firewall, scuffed & degreased everything in preparation for some paint.

There is still rot to be dealt with on the firewall edges, but I figured if I paint everything but that area I’ll have the option to do some re-assembly before I get to fixing the rot.

I also sanded down & rattle-canned the heater box semi-gloss black. This is just to make it presentable until I get around to tearing it down and rebuilding it with new gaskets, motor, & core.

And here is the frame & firewall freshly painted gloss black. I used tractor paint as it is supposed to have good durability. The frame came out great. However despite looking good in pictures, the firewall has a lot of runs & brush marks. I let it dry for a few days anyway, and decided to cover it in textured truck bedliner to hide the flaws.

Patching the inner fenders continues

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Pixel

With the front end torn down, I could finally weld up the front of the passenger inner fender. As I don’t know what this was supposed to look like as mine is completely gone, so I went with something that looked right. I still need to measure & re-drill the two bolt holes.

Then I drilled out the spot welds for the bracket that supports the battery tray so I could fix some rust caused by crud trapped between it and the inner fender. I think the spot weld cutter is my new favorite tool.

The offending rust holes, you can see welding slag from my attempts to patch it without removing the bracket.

New patches welded in, for some reason I could no get a decent pic of these. I think all the shiny metal confused my camera.

I also cut off the nut on the bracket that had a snapped bolt stuck in it and welded in a replacement.

Next up, the rust on the rear of the panel.

The beginning of the welding work

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Pixel

This year’s project with the ’64 pickup is to get the rust fixed so I can get some paint on it. To that end, the front end was stripped down so I can start start in on the incredibly crusty mess.

The first target is the inner fenders. The front edge has a bracket on the underside from the factory that traps muck thrown up by the tires and always rusts out. The ones on this truck were previously “fixed” with super thin sheet metal pop-riveted on and covered in roofing tar. This worked so well the patches had rusted through as well.

I started in on the driver’s side by cutting out the rot until I reached good metal. I’m doing this with the radiator support still in place so I can use it as a guideline to make sure everything lines up. Once I have both sides done the rad support will come out so I can finish the patches & so I can fix the massive rot on the support.

I set up my metal bender in a convenient location, then it was just the tedious process of cutting, bending & fitting patches. I am using 18ga steel for strength, so my flanging tool doesn’t make the flange deep enough to be flush. I’m not too worried as this area is not visible with the hood down.

One patch in…

Two patches in…

And patches 3-6 in.

Then two more patches to replace the fender mounting flange.

It is far from perfect, and there is a lot of grinding still to do(as well as re-doing some of the uglier welds), but it seems solid. Once the radiator support is out I will need to add one more patch to the front edge of the raised portion, and drill out the various bolt holes.

Getting started on this year’s plans for the truck.

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Pixel

My plan now that the weather is warmed up is to start in on the rust repair on the truck. My hope is to get the bodywork done so I can get paint on it before the end of the season. At a minimum though I want to get the cab & inner structure repaired so even if I don’t finish all the bodywork this season, I’ll know the underlying structure is solid.

Step one was the pull the front end apart. That turned out to be easier said than done, everything is so rusty nearly every bolt was a challenge. I averaged 1 snapped bolt for every 3-4 that came out normally. The front-most fender bolt was particularly difficult as you can see.

In addition to looking ridiculous, this actually was really helpful. I could see what I was doing, and therefore could figure out what tools would fit and let me get the bolt off.

Once the fenders & grille were off and the front grille panel was loosened(it won’t come off completely until the front bumper or radiator support come off), I could see the degree of the problem.

AS you can see there is a lot of work here. However since one of the reasons I bought this truck was to practice welding and fabrication, this is not as terrible as it might be to someone else. My plan is to see how much I can fix/fabricate myself before buying any more parts.

Improbable Garage

Where anything is possible, just not very probable.

Tag Archives: rust