April 2006

April saw a little more progress.

  1. Here you see the welding magnets that hold the patch in place so well.
  2. I had to move the back panel out a bit to remove some of the effects of that corner dent on the driver's side rear of the box. A scissor jack with some creative cribbing did the job.
  3. Rubbing of the hole on butcher paper makes for a good template to cut the steel with.
  4. A view of the passenger side bedside. The pink bondo is not the fiberglass stuff (that was green) the regular bondo is just a final skim coat for smoothing things.
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The lower lip of the front passenger side box was pin holed with rust so badly sections had to be cut out and new patches welded in.

At some point in the trucks life someone had decided battery access would be easier if there was a hole cut in the front of the box instead of going through all the trouble to lift the battery out of the top… I don't know why this would be easier, but I guess they had their reasons. Anyway, I cut a patch to replace the removed section and welded it in.

Part of the EZ access battery conversion had been two pieces of angle iron tack welded to the base of the box. I failed to remove these before sending the box to sandblasting, so after I got them out and wire brushed the underlying rust I put down some POR-15 to seal the spots. I also used POR-15 on the seams around the boxes where the sand blaster couldn't completely penetrate. Then I coated the base of the box in fiberglass bondo.

  1. Here's my 10 year old son Keaton helping with the sanding. He wields a mean orbital sander!
  2. Here Keaton is sanding that corner we cut out because it was so badly dented. I used a piece of light gauge angle iron to rebuild the edge and it came out pretty clean. Can't tell at all from the outside, inside the outline of the heaver metal is visible.
  3. Finished box ready for paint.
  4. The boxes finally in primer… I spent a lot of time trying to take out all the little dings, but finally had to say "enough" and call it good. You can get away with that with an army truck… I guess that's why I didn't restore a Porsche. (oh, and cost… that too)
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