October 17, 2003
A couple of things have happened since I last wrote. Although not very exciting, I guess I better get everyone caught up to date.
I got the remaining pieces of sheet metal back from Ray. He did a great job and upon initial inspection of this last group, there were no surprise rust spots that were blown out. So, the only thing that happened during the sandblasting process was that the lower door hinge mount, on the passenger side of the cab, was blown out due to rust. From my reading of other projects, I am more than pleased. In case you are curious, the total cost was $985. This included blasting and primer for the cab, hood, hood latch support, grille, radiator support, front fenders, doors, door panels, bed sides, bed cross members, rear fenders, front gate, tail gate, all fender supports, steps, hand brake, glove box door, kick panels, air vent covers, and the cast iron headers (no primer).
Since I last wrote, I have finished painting the interior cab floor and the interior side of the doors. There were some minor holes on the doors and door panels, which I fixed with Bondo. I know what you are thinking, but I only bought a pint sized can, and there is more than half left. Plus, the majority that I mixed up, went in the trash since I only worked on small sections at a time.
I don't know if you remember, but I bought some high-heat exhaust paint when I bought the engine paint. I wire brushed the headers to remove the flash rusting that had appeared since sandblasting and applied a coat of this silver paint. Awesome! It goes on very easy.
At this point, I need to work on the door hinges so I can remount them. I also need to purchase the hinge bolts and springs. I haven't found the bolts separately, so I am going to by them as part of a bolt kit, but I don't feel like spending the money to do that now. So, on order right now is an engine gasket set and engine bolt set from American Classic Truck Parts.
November 2, 2003
Over the past weekend, I mounted the bedsides and tailgate. I installed a sheet of 3/4" plywood as a bed floor to use until I get the body-work/paint done. Just to see what would happen, I painted the plywood with "porch" paint that I saw at Home Depot. If this holds up good, it might be an option on the actual bed floor. Note that I didn't feel like waiting to mix up a color I liked, so I just went with gunmetal grey they had on the shelf.
This was probably the hardest task to complete since removing all the old bolts. The bed sides must have been tweaked out of shape over the years and/or while off the frame. It was virtually impossible to get it to line up. I had pre-drilled holes in the plywood and that worked out pretty good. A full sheet of plywood is just shy of being a perfect fit, and then you never know if it is perfectly square.
Anyways, after struggling for several hours, I was only lacking a couple of bolts from the front-end gate and the rail closest to it. I came up with the solution of using tie-down straps to cinch it together. This solution worked really well. I tightened the bed up with 3 straps and slowly cranked each strap in turn until everything lined up. I got the remaining bolts in and decided to leave the straps on overnight.
You will see from the pictures that I loaded the bed up with sheet-metal before remembering to take a picture. Hopefully you will get the idea of how it looks. 10/25/2004 - added some pictures of the plywood bed.
I never did order the engine gasket set and engine bolt kit. On short notice, my work is sending me to our Xiamen, China facility, so it will be next month before I write anything again.
December 1, 2003
I just got back from my business trip. During my last week in China, I ordered the engine gaskets and bolts. In the meantime, I am waiting for those to come in and I've got to rearrange the garage (again!) to get the x-mas decorations out (and put the Thanksgiving ones up). Hopefully I will have something new to report next weekend. Anyways, I didn't want Rusty's loyal fans to worry about me!
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