Project Texas Snowball 1987 R10

[foamypirate]

So, I finally started tearing my truck down. I've had it for almost 2 years now, with the intentions to restore it the whole time. There were a whole host of things that came up that made it impossible to do at that time, not to mention the least of which was living in an apartment. Whoops. Fast forward to now, and I've finally got my own house and garage, and plenty of time to work on it.

I kind of snowballed into it (hence the title), as I was really just going to remove the AC condenser to get measurements so I could order a new parallel flow condenser and get my AC working again. That turned into, "well, these head light buckets are getting kind of rusty...better take these off and get them powder coated." Then off came the battery tray...and the bumper, and the hood latch, and the radiator support.

That's where I'm at as of now, so not too far into it. I'm planning on powder coating all of the miscellaneous little bits in the engine bay (brackets, head light buckets, battery tray, etc). Then I'll move onto the rest of the truck to do body work and frame cleanup. Paint color is undecided, but will probably be some sort of pearl or metallic blue. Drive train will be some sort of LS engine in front of a TKO600/500 and 3.42. I'll probably change my mind 10 times before I get around to actually doing this portion though.

I'm definitely not going to go crazy and bag it and slam it or anything. To get an idea of what I'm looking to accomplish, here is a picture of one of our member's truck that I LOVE!

Inspiration!



Pictures of the beast itself!

When I brought her home:


Cleaned up the hood (which quickly faded again because the paint is toast):


As she stood as of last week:


How she stands now:




It's going to be a long journey, and I look forward to sharing it with you guys! Thanks for reading my wall of text.

[Gordonr1973]

Nice rims! Its going to look good!!

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by Gordonr1973

Nice rims! Its going to look good!!

Thanks! If it turns out anywhere near as good as yours is looking so far, I'll be a happy camper!

[foamypirate]

Well, made a little bit of progress before the heat took its toll on me tonight! Got the hood off with the help of my brother, and then got the passenger fender and inner wheel well off.
I also finally got the truck moved into my (tiny) garage. You'll notice the sweet trimmer string holding the battery to the frame so I could move it around!

I know you guys have seen pictures of a square getting torn down a million times, but I'll probably get yelled at if I don't post pictures of the progress!



My garage...it's not so big. The truck baaaaarely fits length wise. This is with the front tires bumping the lip at the front of the garage. There is probably 2-3" between my bumper and the garage door.

[notyo_cheez]

House came before my project so I found a short bed, and I feel your pain about the heat. Is this what h*ll feels like? Looks like a clean start unlike my '81...

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by notyo_cheez

House came before my project so I found a short bed, and I feel your pain about the heat. Is this what h*ll feels like? Looks like a clean start unlike my '81...

Yeah, it's going to be fun moving the cab/bed/frame around the garage once I get this thing disassembled!

I'm pretty sure Hell is actually slightly cooler than we have been.
Got any pics or a build thread of your 81'? I'd love to take a look. The rust certainly can't be worse than my brother's 70' C10. That thing is scary; I'm honestly surprised it hasn't literally fallen apart driving down the road!

[Gordonr1973]

Originally Posted by foamypirate

Yeah, it's going to be fun moving the cab/bed/frame around the garage once I get this thing disassembled!

I'm pretty sure Hell is actually slightly cooler than we have been.
Got any pics or a build thread of your 81'? I'd love to take a look. The rust certainly can't be worse than my brother's 70' C10. That thing is scary; I'm honestly surprised it hasn't literally fallen apart driving down the road!

Get wheel dolly's for the frame & build a dolly to move the cab and bed around otherwise you will go crazy!! Doing this inside a garage does take longer but at least it's out of the weather....

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by Gordonr1973

Get wheel dolly's for the frame & build a dolly to move the cab and bed around otherwise you will go crazy!! Doing this inside a garage does take longer but at least it's out of the weather....

Yeah, I'd planned on building one for the bed at least. I was going to run to Home Depot the other day to pick up some lumber, then I remembered my truck was in pieces!

I've been working on getting my brother's 70' up and running so I can use that to make parts/supplies runs. Finished up the rear brakes last night, and just need to pull the bum 200-4R and replace it with the built TH350 he's got sitting around.

[notyo_cheez]

Originally Posted by foamypirate

Yeah, it's going to be fun moving the cab/bed/frame around the garage once I get this thing disassembled!

I'm pretty sure Hell is actually slightly cooler than we have been.
Got any pics or a build thread of your 81'? I'd love to take a look. The rust certainly can't be worse than my brother's 70' C10. That thing is scary; I'm honestly surprised it hasn't literally fallen apart driving down the road!

Link to build thread: http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=459818

I took an old pallet and mounted casters to it for my donor cab, casters were $30 or so from Harbor Freight and the pallet was free. It came up a little short lengthwise but at least I can roll it around.

It's pretty rusty all right, some areas prefab patch panels aren't available and I can't get a MIG welder unless I upgrade the electrical service for the entire house, so I'm trying to get this done within my capabilities. Been slow going lately because of the heat.

[foamypirate]

Progress at last! Even if it is fairly small. Finally was able to make a run to Home Depot to get some lumber for the bed dolly. I must have good luck too, because I got EVERY SINGLE BED BOLT out without stripping the square hole in the bed. Most came out pretty easy, and any resistance was mostly just crud build up. In fact, I had a bigger fight getting the rear bumper off than I did the bed bolts! Now I just need to find a couple of strong lads or rig up something to get the bed off the truck, but it is at least loose. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here goes! We'll start with the most recent truck teardown pictures:







Here is the bed dolly. Simple enough, just some 2x4s and 4x4s with 175lb casters (figure 4x175 should be enough to hold the bed, I can always go bigger/heavier duty if I need). I used a paddle bit to recess the holes so the lag screw heads wouldn't touch the bed at all. The bolt heads you can see on the crossbeam 2x4s are the carriage bolts I will use to hold the bed to the dolly. The 4x4 blocks at the bottom that the casters attach to are attached to the vertical 4x4 with 3/8ths 6" lag screws, so they are super sturdy:






I also finally settled on a color for the truck. I am going to go one solid color. The color of choice is Denim Blue from Kia (ugh, Kia, but a nice color!).

Here is an example pic:

[MalibuSSwagon]

Well man, if you have solid joists or even a beam in your garage, you could pickup a chainfall to lift the bed off the truck.

[67_SS396]

Over the years, I've had great luck using Rust Bullet. It's not as tempermental as Por15. I have a 48 Farmall that my grandpa bought new that I'm restoring very slowly. I treated the rusty battery box over five years ago and haven't painted yet. The rust still hasn't come back. I coated the floor pans of a 67 Camaro that I did some work on and they haven't shown any rust growth. That was seven years ago.
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[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by 67_SS396

Over the years, I've had great luck using Rust Bullet. It's not as tempermental as Por15. I have a 48 Farmall that my grandpa bought new that I'm restoring very slowly. I treated the rusty battery box over five years ago and haven't painted yet. The rust still hasn't come back. I coated the floor pans of a 67 Camaro that I did some work on and they haven't shown any rust growth. That was seven years ago.

Thanks for the tip! Unfortunately, after the discovery I made today, I think I'm going to avoid the POR-15/Rust Bullet/Rust Encapsulator route, and go more for the sheet metal replacement.

Ruh, roh!

Got the windshield out this morning (in one piece, no less!) and made another unpleasant discovery... more rust! It was definitely worse than I expected based on the small bits of rust on the outside of the seal, but it's manageable.

I've been re-thinking the POR-15 plan. This windshield area is beyond POR-15'ing, and if I'm going to go through the effort to patch this up, I will probably just patch everything else too. That also means I'm going to be removing the blower box area panel from the cab. It won't be fun, but I really want this to last a long time, and POR-15 seems kind of like a bandaid. It might last 5 years, maybe 10 years. But I want this to last at least another 25 years! Whether that's foolish thinking, I don't know, but it's what I'm striving for. I just know having POR-15 covering up rust will bother me in the long run, because, well...there is still rust.

Here is the majority of the rust (passenger side). I think this is also definitely the source of the floor rust as well, as I can see the trail from up there down the firewall and to the floor. I've got a photo of that too.





Driver's side is better:






Gently cleaned some of the scale and loose rust off of the other side with a toothbrush:







Here, you can see the water trail from the windshield down the firewall:

[67_SS396]

You know what they say about opinions, but I'll give mine. That's not all that bad. If you can stop it now, it will last a long dang time.
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[foamypirate]

Made a decent snatch on Craigslist today. I got ALL of this for $50. Two bucket seats, center console, extra lid for the center console, trim pieces, seatbelts, extra gauge cluster, motor mounts, wiring harnesses, nuts and bolts, dog dish hub caps, tail gate (STRAIGHT STRAIGHT STRAIGHT! NO dents whatsoever on the top of the gate, AT ALL). Also got some 6x9 speaker brackets made by bigblock73 (I think).

I don't think I did too bad for $50. The springs in the seats are in great shape, as is the foam. I plan to get them re-upholstered in vinyl, maybe cloth, not sure. Probably do the same color with black piping. Should go well with my interior plans.



































Aaaand...a random picture of me that my wife took while I was removing a swallows nest from above our front door. Don't call OSHA.

[67_SS396]

You did get a good score! Congrats. Do the speaker brackets go in the corners of the cab, behind the seat?
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[MalibuSSwagon]

Damn nice haul! I rarely if ever get that lucky. Damn cheap yankees here wont let anything go for less than double what its worth.

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by 67_SS396

You did get a good score! Congrats. Do the speaker brackets go in the corners of the cab, behind the seat?
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Yep! They are a good way to get some better noises out of the sound system without trying to fit subs in the truck. I plan on welding up the seams, and getting them powdercoated gloss black.

Originally Posted by MalibuSSwagon

Damn nice haul! I rarely if ever get that lucky. Damn cheap yankees here wont let anything go for less than double what its worth.

Thanks! I got pretty lucky on this one! It's usually the same way down here, but the guy was moving out of his house on Wednesday. He's actually a member on here too.

[foamypirate]

Sweet! Went digging through the "junk" in the center console, and found the brackets for the bucket seats. Dude knew what he was doing!

[foamypirate]

Woo hoo! Victory! Got the bed off at last.

Managed to get it off with just myself and my lovely wife. Just took a little thinking and a small amount of work. I jacked up the diff high enough to get the wheels off, and then supported the frame at that height with jack stands. I then let the diff down with the jack, which drooped the suspension enough that with the wheels off, the bed sides missed the drums. My wife and I then shimmied the bed backwards and worked it onto the dolly I built. I added rails lengthwise so we could slide it along easily. After that, it was just a matter of lining up the holes in the bed with the holes I drilled to attach it to the dolly, and voila, done.

Oh, and I really need to buy some pegboard....can you tell?

[foamypirate]

Made some progress on tearing down the rear suspension. I got the passenger side leaf pack off and started cleaning them up. Also got both bushings/bushing shells out of the main leaf. Now I just need to clean up the rest of the leafs, hit them with paint, and order some bushings.

Thursday is payday, so I will be ordering the bushings then.


Managed to get all the U-bolts out without destroying any of them. Lots of PB blaster, plus I wire wheeled the visible threads, which made it pretty easy.


Dirty leafs. They all still have a pretty good arch though. Anyone know where to order the leaf spring pads? Some of mine are pretty hammered. Can't honestly say I've looked for them, but I'm feeling pretty lazy today. :baby:


Die bushings, DIE!!!!


The end result after bushing removal and cleaning up the rest of the leaf. I still need to clean the rust out of the bushing area, then I'll hit it with some paint.

[notyo_cheez]

That's nothing, the rot around the rear window. Mine is much worse, not a big deal since I'm swapping the cab anyway. This was one of several common places for rust to form on the squares.

If you decide not to graft new sheet metal you can go old school and melt some lead in there. At least yours has enough still intact where you can do that, mine's too far gone...

[foamypirate]

Been a while since I've updated. Been working like crazy on paying off debt and gathering the needed tools. Picked up an engine hoist, stand, and a welder w/ gas cylinder this month to get started on the truck again.

Got the engine out and the cab off, finally, during this past weekend.

[custom97]

U sure have a loving wife. Mine would've been on my ass about the project in the garage.

[foamypirate]

She definitely is a sweet heart! Got the garage picked up a little, but still need to do more clean up before I can get to work. Nothing like tripping over extension cords and tools to ruin your day, haha. After that's done, I'll be borrowing a co-workers pressure washer and buying some oven cleaner to degrease the frame. Then saving some cash to drop and rebuild the front suspension.