Well, the chassis paint is now complete. And I am very pleased as it means I can get on with some other jobs.
One of the things to do is to start preparing the cross baces for the bed strips that I will be making up at some point.
However, my truck has a plywood floor with minimal steel braces. Martin may have one or two for me, or else I will go to the scrap yard and make up something that works.
My loadbed currently looks like this with only one brace ahead of the wheel arches, toward the cab.
There should possibly be two more.
This is a diagram taken from the LMC catalogue, showing all the braces needed.
This is a Short Fleetside bed pulled by DaddyOh in Southern California recently, showing all the braces in place.
So my question is this: Can one live with bed strips, without any of these braces? In case I do not get any from mate Martin.
Last night I pulled out my oil filled garage heaters and set them in place between the chassis rails as I wanted to see if I could push the 0'C temperature down there, up a bit so that I could paint the rest of the chassis and rear axle and prop shaft. I had wanted to do this for a long time.
This morning at 07.00 I went down to the garage to switch them on so that they could start breaking the cold and dry the air out.
When I opened the big door, I realised the heaters had been on all night.
Checking my thermometers ( I have a few of them around) I could see the temperature had gone up to 5'C so I decided to leave them on and come back down by 10.00 to see if it was warmer.
By 10.00 it was up to 6'C, so I decided to mask up the last bits that I did not want to get paint on.
This was what I started painting at 11.00 then.
It took about three hours to complete and by the time I was finished, the garage temperature had gone up to 10'C which is a good temperature for the paint to dry and harden.
Finished, really pleased with the way this has turned out.
I find it really rewarding to see where I came from and where the chassis is now.
And of course tonight........
I also painted the rear brake drums while I was at it. Did the fronts in silver, but decided to go for a light industrial grey instead as the Rallye wheels will cover them anyway. So may repaint the front as well in the grey. Heater up close to help the drying.
After all that I was a bit bored, so I decided to paint up all the rolling wheels in the same red as the springs.
Should look better than the rusted look they had before.
Next up I will remove all the brake lines and mark them up.
Martin has found a guy some distance from where I live who will reproduce all our brake lines at a reasonable rate.
So this is the next little job I never planned.
An then I want to fit a new fuel line from the tank to the front.
Happy tonight.