Father n Son 71 Short Bed
 

My son and I have finally moved the truck into the garage to get started. It barely ran good enough to pull it in. PO says blown head gaskets and I would agree but it probably isn't the only issue. I love pics of projects as much as the next guy so I will try to always be pic heavy.

Our plan for this truck is to take it off the frame and fix all the rust in the body panels, refresh the motor and tranny and put it mostly back into stock form. We plan to lower the stance but not slammed and bagged. My son hasn't quite made up his mind on the body moldings, but he definitely wants it RED and I totally agree with that. I don't plan to spend a ton of money on making it perfect (that will be hard for the engineer in me to not do) but we will obviously be making everything safe. Enjoy the pics.

Re: Father n Son 71 Short Bed
 

Got the bed off this weekend. For some crazy reason the PO had installed a Gooseneck hitch in the truck and did quite a horrible job of it. It is actually welded to the frame, but not very well so it should be easy to grind off the welds and remove the hitch. The frame and trailing arms are in good shape.

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Removed the hood and cowl this weekend also. The cowl and hood are both in pretty nice condition too. Just a few little spots of surface rust under the cowl.

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Pulled the seat and random crap out of the interior. Except for the one really crappy panel that was sorta welded in the floor on the driver's side, the floor of the cab is really pretty solid. The door sills and rockers are a different story, they are in pretty bad shape and somebody did a pretty bad job of welding in a patch panel that will be getting removed and done the right way. Luckily they only did one side and gave me the patch panel for the other side.

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I think my son learned a lot this weekend and we are barely even started. I'm going to try to document this as much as I can so he can always look back on this. I don't have many pictures of the days where me and my dad were building my 67 Camaro (no I don't still have it, sold it when I was in college and don't want to talk about it).

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The doors are decent but have some cracks near the front and back of the window. Looks like a repair was started but not well done or complete. Is this a common problem with the doors?

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I guess when I have a real pressing question, I will start a new thread and explicitly ask the question.

Anyway, we made some more progress this weekend. Finally got the front clip off after having to take the sawzall to a couple bolts between the inner and outer fender of both sides.

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Forgot to give my son some props. He has been spending quite a bit of time helping me. Not quite the enthusiasm that I had at his age, but I didn't have an iPhone and an Xbox either.

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Spent some time cleaning up the engine bay. The amount of hoses and crap on this AC is crazy. I plan to simplify this as much as possible when we put this back together. I guess I may go with the Vintage Air for factory AC, but we plenty of time to think about that.

Re: Father n Son 71 Short Bed
 

Haven't updated in a while, but we have been making a little more progress each weekend. A friend of mine has access to a high temp pressure washer ("Hotsy" as he calls it) so we pulled out most everything from the dash, squeezed the truck on my trailer (clears by less than an inch) and headed to his place to give the engine bay and cab a bath.

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Man, that Hotsy does an incredible job, Areas that were covered in grease and grime are just clean metal now. It isn't perfect but it sure is a lot less to deal with while we finish tearing this baby apart.

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I dont know how I missed this one but Im in for the rest .

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Finally got around to pulling out the heater core and AC. I am starting to suspect that this AC was added in. The vent holes in the dash don't look factory cut and neither do the holes where the heater hoses pass through the firewall.

Does anyone know if the SPID specifically calls out Air Conditioning if a truck has it? Mine does not, but I thought that "CUST COMF & CONV EQ" could possibly have included AC. Any ideas??

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Mine was a non A/C truck and it looked different from yours ,I bet yours is factory.If you dont plan to re use those A/C parts they are worth selling to someone that wants factory stuff .

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I was guessing that I hadn't posted anything since April. Not only have I not posted but we have barely done anything since then. Between mowing the yard, camping, boating and football, we haven't gotten much done at all. We did remove the bumper and the class 3 hitch plus that ridiculous goose neck hitch that the PO installed (rigged). Finally got around to pulling the motor out. Looks like we have a 76-82 350 4 bolt main. Here are a few pics. As the weather cools off a bit I hope that we can start making some progress. My son's football practice Mon-Thur and Friday night games kill the weekday progress.

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What part of East TN? My family and I just moved up to Maryville from Columbia, SC. Looks like a great biuld, I'm probably about 12-13 years from this with my toddler son ;)

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I'm in Loudon County, right next door to Murville.

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I completely understand how other things in life get in the way of the build. I'm also at the beginning stage of a father son build. I agree weekdays are shot and now that college football has started, prying my son away from the TV is near impossible on Saturdays. Unlike him I would spend a lot of my free time on the truck but that would defeat the objective of teaching him some basic skills. :chevy:

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When I was a kid we had a 68 that we got from the original owner and was bought in our small town dealer ahen it arrived at the dealer it didn't have AC but was supposed to and the dealer installed factory air not the under dash crap. I wish I could remember the SPID but I cant

Looks like it was originally white red white red?

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Yep, I'm with you on that, I try not to do any work without involving my son, sometimes it is just fetching me a wrench, but that is still a teaching moment that hardly any of his friends will ever get.

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I am no expert on these trucks, but I didn't see anything that pointed to non-factory AC, until I started tearing it down. Yes, the original colors were red/white/red.

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High's were only in the 70's this weekend so we got some work done on the 71. Got the firewall cleaned up, steering column and everything else out of the cab. Now we just need to get the glass out and this cab will be ready to take off and head to the blaster.

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Nice project ! Where you guys from? ( what part of TN? )

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Same here with the weather being in the upper 70's low 80's today. Was a great day to work on the truck. You guys made some good progress today. The glass is a PITA to get out.

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We are in Loudon County. About an hour (I drive really fast) up I-75 from you.

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Yeah I saved the glass for last because I have been dreading it. I did collect the tools to do it when I had my 54 5-window but I don't remember how bad it was to get it out. Guess I will find out next weekend. We have football games 3 nights this week so no more truck work till next Sat morning.

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Finally got around to pulling out the windshield yesterday. First I tried the trick of wedging something between the rubber seal and the inside of the cab. I had a piece of rope that I used but after pushing carefully for a while I decided that it was going to take a little more than the rope.

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So I decided to justify the fact that you can't have too many screwdrivers. I just carefully wedged them in across the top and started to pry away the glass from the outside along the sides. Then poof it just popped right out!! The glass wasn't in good shape to begin with but I didn't want to break it and make a big mess. The chrome trim is in perfect condition so I wanted to be careful with that too. Next step is taking out the back glass and then unbolt the cab from the frame.

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I forgot to show the zoomed in pics of the lower corners. Not as bad as I had feared but it will need a little rust repair.

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Great to see a Father and son project. The screwdrivers worked really well! Tagging along for the rest.

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Had a little time today to pull out the back glass. That was much easier than the windshield but it also had a little more rust than I had anticipated. My son really pitched in a lot today.

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Couple more pics from today cleaning off the door seals and removing the door striker plates.

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Has anyone ever seen a power steering box pull the frame apart like this before? The big problem is that the lower bolt is even with the wall of the frame rail so I can't get a socket on it to remove the steering box. I decided to use the persuasion tool and a wooden block to see if I can move it enough to get a socket on it. I whacked it a few times and really couldn't even tell that I did anything. Any ideas??

Re: Father n Son 71 Short Bed
 

That is unusual for sure I have never seen one but I'm sure if it happened to yours it has happened to another one before.
Your only two options is to force it back into position or drill the head off.
Try loosening the other bolts first to relieve some pressure off of the broken part of the frame.

Re: Father n Son 71 Short Bed
 

Great build so far. You guys are doing some good work.

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You might try to weld a longer bolt (maybe an old starter bolt) to the head of the lower bolt and see if you can turn it out that way.

Good luck, Rg

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Yeah I am afraid you are right. I will take pictures of whatever I do.

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There is always more than one way to skin a cat. :lol: I got feed up with trying and went the route of just cutting off the lip of the seal to justify buying a new seal when we reinstall the windshield.

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Looks like a pervious owner might have taken it stump jumping and caught one on the bottom end of the steering box. ;) Diffidently something new I haven't seen before.

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We got the cab off this afternoon with our homemade lift attachment.