Well this project I will share with everybody took us 2 years to complete 10 months of that were at the paint shop, but I was still able to work on other things while it got painted. I live in NM and while visiting family out in Denver I was searching Craigslist and found a couple of trucks in the area that had potential and in my price range. We finally decided on this blue diamond in the rough. https://talk.classicparts.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=14796&stc=1&d=1438402166 https://talk.classicparts.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=14795&stc=1&d=1438402166 https://talk.classicparts.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=14794&stc=1&d=1438402166 https://talk.classicparts.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=14793&stc=1&d=1438402166 https://talk.classicparts.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=14792&stc=1&d=1438402166
First on the priority list was to determine what needed to be fixed before it went to the paint shop. As usual, the drivers side cab corner was rusted through, both interior corners of the floor board had holes along with the kick panels both sides. So I hired a friend of mine I work with that is an awesome welder to repair my rust.
After driving the truck around town for a couple months enjoying the noisy ride crossing my fingers that the truck would get us home with the weak 6v starting system, we started to disassemble the truck by removing the front fenders and pulling the engine.
First and most importantly, I want to thank my beautiful wife for her patience and many hours of help to restore this truck for her. Here she is after we removed the cab ourselves and loading the frame up to the sand blaster to clean up the frame. Its nice to have such a quick turn around at the media blaster ship (one day) but I got excited and inpatient about not having paint on the frame of a bare metal and painted it before I took any pictures of the clean frame. But while the cab was off the frame, I was able to clean up the bottom of the cab and DA the outside and inside of the cab where I learned that it was more work than I wanted to do so I left the rest for the paint shop. Of course before we sent it off to paint the cab was re-married to the frame.
Keeping this truck as simple as possible, here I am with the dirty distributor and after I restored it.
Paint shop day. This was a great day because it shows progress and also gives me the opportunity to park my car in the garage (57 Bel Air) and my personal car. But any progress is good progress no matter how slow it goes.
Like I said, 10 months at the paint shop was plenty of time to get the small things done before the truck came back home. So, Here was the steering wheel project. As you can see with any 60+ old steering wheel, there will be cracks. So what i did was use my dremel tool with a carbide rounded bit to grind out every crack down to the metal frame of the steering wheel and in the gaps that were created by the dremel, I bought an 2 part epoxy putty at home depot (around $6 a tube and I needed only one) and filled in the gaps and sanded them smooth just as a new steering wheel would look. Don't under estimate this project it was messy and time consuming but on the other hand it was very rewarding.
Keeping the three on the tree was imperative to our restoration so I cleaned out the three speed tranny and made it look new. The oil buildup on the bell housing was a pain to remove but in the end it came out looking new. Sorry no pics of the finished transmission. But you can probably guess it looks good.
Well the vent windows were no walk in the park either. Just removing the old hard as rock rubber seals were a pain in the A**. It took me probably about an hour with a screw driver and lots of patience. But after the old was removed, I cleaned, sanded and painted the frames and they came out looking great. As far as putting in the new rubber seals (vertical) i used rivets on the inside where the glass sits and they were concealed perfect when the felt kit was installed and just behind the rubber flap the that glass sits on so give it a try. The Felt kit was not too bad either, i also used rivets at the bottom of the tracks to hold in the felt so it wouldn't shift while rolling up and down the window. Now for the vent glass. I ordered the glass install tape from our vendor and i do have to say that it is rather thick and a real pain to fit the glass and the tape into the channel at once. So I opted to use a cut up bicycle inner tube. I simply, cut the tube in half, long ways, and used a solution of soap and water to spray prior to installing the glass. When installing the glass, I used a rubber mallet and a piece of wood at the corner of the frame to absorb the impact. After the glass was set into the frame I used a razor blade and trimmed off the excess gasket was sticking out.
Meanwhile at the paint shop, we learned that our bed was in such poor shape, it was going to be cheaper for us to buy a new bed than to have the paint shop repair the one that we had and take the risk of it not coming out the way we wanted it to after all the work we were putting into this project. As I look at it, It was a win/win for me due to me being able to sell my old bed for $300 and buying a new for $800.
Another opportunity to take advantage of the truck at the paint shop. We got the motor (235) back from the engine shop, painted it and started the rebuild. All went well putting back the engine together. My first attempt at rebuilding a straight six (I'm used to V8's). My only regret is that I wish I would've taken more pictures of the inside while I dismantled the thing to reference during the rebuild. Such as the Oil pump pickup screen. I don't remember removing any spacer that bolts down the screen housing but when I received it back from the engine shop and started to rebuild, it seemed odd that there wasn't anything under the screen. So I went to ACE hardware and bought some spacers to put under the screen so the bolt would have something to lock down onto. So does anybody have a picture of what goes under the oil pump screen? Another issue I had with the engine rebuild, was the rear main seal. I feel really stupid about this but when putting the main caps on, my kit came with a rope seal and a Neoprene seal. So in my mind I thought that "why don't I use both to ensure a perfect seal", wrong! I had placed the rope seal into the oil drain from the rear main bearing and the neoprene into the correct position. After I started the engine the first time, I noticed the oil drooling from underneath the engine. So I had to remove the oilpan and rear main bearing cap to figure out what was wrong. I was able to easily remove the rope seal and keep the neoprene and now only have a slight drip while engine is running.
Well it is midnight here, so I will resume the rest of this thread tomorrow and hopefully complete this weekend.
Well this was round one at the paint shop. The Light color was finished and it was ready to be picked up. My wife and I were so excited, the paint job turned out almost flawless and we were anxious to get it home. Now the bad part. We got the truck home safely however, after looking at the truck closer we noticed the light silver paint was a bit purple. So We had to load everything back up and take it back to the paint shop to have them repaint the light silver that we wanted without any purple in it. The paint shop agreed with our findings and noticed the purple in the color and determined that the problem happened when mixing the paint.
So we finally got the truck back from the paint shop the second time and this time the color was correct. Unfortunately they were not able to mask off the frame like I was hoping so we once again had to remove the cab and I had to repaint the frame. This time with the addition of the doors the cab was much heavier and it required the help of a couple more friends of mine to lift off and help put it back on again.
Now it was time to give our butts a nice place to rest while driving. The old seat was still in decent shape, and all the springs were in tact. We started out with removing the old fabric and padding, then cleaning and painting the frames. I was not happy with the choices of seat covers available through our vendor so I was able to find some more options and cheaper prices through RockAuto.com. I also went to Walmart and purchased memory foam padding to cushion the seats for $20. The cover went on perfect and we were very pleased with the material we choose due to not having AC in the truck so we won't stick to any leather/vinyl covers.
The tailgate lettering was really easy with the correct tools. We used a water/soap solution to spray on the raised letters before applying the adhesive stickers on. This solution allows you to place the sticker exactly where you want it before it sticks. After the water was pushed out from behind the sticker/letters, we used a blowdryer on low setting to push down the little fingers that popped up at the rounded parts of the raised letters.
