72 C20 "Old Mustard"

[87Jimmy4JP]

Awesome work, man!

very inspiring.

JP

[Mustard72]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, the cab's coming along nicely. The bed is notably absent from pictures so far though. Hopefully I'll have time before May to work on it, too. Focus is on the cab and engine at this point, though.

[Mustard72]

Managed to have a pretty productive weekend. Got some more engine parts cleaned up for the engine builder (bolts, alternator bracket, intake manifold, etc.). Lots of time spent at the bench grinder with the wire wheel cleaning stuff up. Fun, fun, fun.

Also got the passenger side kick panel, lower a-pillar, and rocker installed. I actually used almost all of the kick panel patch from LMC. Used the sheet metal screw plug weld method combined with the edge welding method (lap joint). I drilled three of the spot welds out of the firewall to kick panel flange connection, and ended up with a big hole on the inside of the cab. Not exactly sure how that happened, but I think my kick panel isn't quite where GM put the original back in the day. So, I had to weld a patch on. Should have done it from the inside, because I stink at anything resembling overhead welding. I got the patch half-ass tacked on, cleaned my mig nozzle out, and called it good.

[Mustard72]

Here's a couple pics of the patch job. I'm pretty proud.

After getting the kick panel welded in, I moved on to the lower a-pillar. Like the driver side, this ended up being a combination of lap joint and butt weld. The LMC patch required some bending to get it to fit, too. I test fit the rocker a bunch of times before finalizing the location, and welded the top first on both sides. Then I had to pound the middle part of the top section flush with the existing pillar surface right below the hinge screw holes. I left the original hinge screw holes in place. I accidentally hammered the surfaces a bit too far, so the pillar is now punched in a bit below the bottom hinge holes, but it should be OK. Welded the butt weld right below the hinge holes, hammered and clamped the bottom part of the pillar to the inner rocker of the floor, and welded it all up.

[sduckworth13]

Your moving along pretty good Nick. Old mustard has no more rust hanging off her anymore, nice job.

[sduckworth13]

Everything looks real solid Nick, nice job.

[sduckworth13]

Looking good Nick, check out rockauto.com you can get the Moog ball joints, tie rod ends, etc for almost half than at the regular parts store. Just make sure they send you Moog because sometimes like to send "off brand" parts which still fit but not the same quality.

[Mustard72]

Originally Posted by sduckworth13

Looking good Nick, check out rockauto.com you can get the Moog ball joints, tie rod ends, etc for almost half than at the regular parts store. Just make sure they send you Moog because sometimes like to send "off brand" parts which still fit but not the same quality.

Cool, Scott. I'll check them out. I hate buying all this stuff on-line and not using the local guys, but it's hard to ignore the price differences. Moog is good stuff.

[sduckworth13]

Nick, I have a exhaust manifold I'd sell you for 20.00 bucks and 35.00 for the pair

[Mustard72]

Originally Posted by sduckworth13

Nick, I have a exhaust manifold I'd sell you for 20.00 bucks and 35.00 for the pair

SOLD! I only need the driver side, as the other one was just replaced a year or so ago. I don't think its worth the shipping to have the spare.

THANKS! PM me an address or some sort of payment info.

[sduckworth13]

Nick, Thanks just recieved the paypal. Here is a picture of the exhaust manifold. It is in great shape and the heat riser still works.

[Mustard72]

Awesome. My budget thanks you. Part of me was a little excited about maybe getting headers, but your manifold combined with the year old one I have on the other side should last for many years, and I probably wouldn't really notice the difference from headers on this mild engine, anyway. Plus, I won't have to modify the exhaust pipes for headers, and with May rapidly approaching, I don't need the extra work added in. (Don't ask me why I'm painting the suspension or, for crying out loud, the torque converter)

Thanks again!

[sduckworth13]

Glad I could help. Lol, I think we paint those things just to satisfy our sense of pride. No one ever looks at our projects as hard as we look at them ourselves.

[Mustard72]

Not too exciting, but I just ordered about $250 worth of Moog and Monroe parts from Rock Auto. Upper and lower ball joints for the front, along with upper arm shafts, and a set of HD Monroe shocks for the rear (fronts are pretty good, although I'll of course have to paint them). Lower arm shafts are still pretty good, as well, as are all of the steering linkage rod ends. Already got a good used steering box from another forum member, so this front end should be tight as a rock star when I'm done. It was REALLY sloppy before, but most of that was in the steering gear box.

Engine completion is still probably a couple of weeks away. I'd be a little disappointed, but I still have plenty to do with the rest of the truck. It'd be nice get the engine/tranny installed and then put the cab on and finish it up on the frame with the bed in the other stall of the garage, but we'll work with the schedule as is. A couple weeks from now will be here before I know it anyway.

[sduckworth13]

Cool, i dont remember exactly how much I saved but it was alot and I really dreaded trips to the parts store after that knowing how much I could save thru rockauto. This is the truck I did, sold it but it had the 4.5/6 inch drop on it. It drove like it was on rails with all those new parts.

[Mustard72]

Nice truck.

I had a 76 Chevy 4x4 trail beater truck back in the day that had EXTREMELY worn tie rod ends that basically fell apart when we replaced them with a better set out of the junkyard. Scary to think that I really don't believe they had too many miles left on them before they would have self destructed on the road or trail somewhere. Just putting the used tie rod ends on that truck made a huge difference, so I'm really expecting a noticeable improvement with Mustard, too.

[Mustard72]

I got the exhaust manifold the other day. Thanks, Scott!

Finished disassembling the front suspension components (ball joints removed, upper shafts removed, rubber bumpers removed, stabilizer mounts removed). Hauled them off to the do-it-yourself car wash place to blast them clean, but it didn't work as well as I remember. Not enough pressure to really blast them clean well enough. I'll wire brush and scrape the gunk off of them and haul them off to work to clean in the big parts cleaners we have there.

Stripped all of the white paint off the roof of the cab. We spraybombed the white paint over the original white paint on the roof in the late 80s, and it was splitting all over the place from exposure to the sun, I would imagine. It didn't fare nearly as well as the ochre enamel we sprayed on at about the same time (somewhat officially with a compressor/spray gun). Used a 60 grit flapper disc on the white paint on the larger flat surface on top and a knotted wire wheel on the 4.5" grinder for the pillars and drip rail areas. Wire wheeled all of the original sealant out of the drip rail, too, as it was all split up and failing. I was able to wire wheel through any rust along the drip rail, so I think I'm good with that, fortunately.

Gooped a bunch of seam sealer into the under cab area where the cab corner wraps around the back corner of the floor panel. I'm thinking this was supposed to be a tighter fit originally, but it's not. I'll have to check the sealant up in there every once in a while and maybe come up with a Plan B if it doesn't stand the test of time, but for now I've really got to get the cab work behind me.

[Mustard72]

Also got the filler work (yep, it's Bondo) pretty much done on the cab. I might have a little more sanding to do here and there, and maybe another dab of that wonderfully aromatic putty, but I'm thinking it's pretty close to pretty good. Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand, sand......

And, of course, I put some fancy silver paint on the rebuilt tranny. This step was critical to getting this project done on time Note the exquisitely painted red handle on the dipstick.

My poor woodshop will be happy when this project is over. It's currently serving as extra parts storage and as the parts painting area. Made a stepstool in there the weekend before last for somebody at church and it was definitely a pain doing any woodworking in there with everything in the way.

[mjensen]

Looks like some good progress there!

[sduckworth13]

Your welcome Nick. You've got alot done, looking good.

[Mustard72]

I apparently forgot to post these pics after I primed the roof of the cab last Wednesday. So here they are. Using the 60 grit flapper disc might have been a bit aggressive to get the paint cleaned off (or maybe it was the operator) as there are LOTS of areas where it dug into the steel and left low spots. You can definitely see them in the primer, although with the phone cam, it looks pretty dang good. Primed all the bare spots around rest of the cab, too (rockers, cab corners, etc.)

Also, the several days ago when disassembling the front suspension, found that the rear upper arm studs were rusted pretty bad on both sides. Not sure why the rears got that way when both fronts looked pretty good. Knocked the rotten ones out with a hammer and will be looking for replacements.

[Mustard72]

Spent most of the time on Saturday cleaning and painting front suspension parts. Disassembled the front brake calipers and prepped them for a rebuild, too. Cleaned up the firewall on the cab a little bit (sealant around the heater box, greasy gunk in the tunnel area, rust converter on some rusty areas under the master cylinder area, etc.).

Also used a can of Eastwood inner frame rust converter/encapulator/sealant stuff inside both rockers and a-pillars. I think this went rather well. It is thinner than I was anticipating and therefore quite messy. I basically stuck the tube into each rocker as far as it would go through the grommet hole in the front and the door bumper hole in the back. Once it was in as far as it would go, pulled it out slowly while spraying. For the a-pillars, I pushed the tube in through an upper hinge hole and ran the tube down the inside of the pillar as far as it would go and did the same thing; pulled out slowly while spraying. I was able to double coat almost everything, falling just a bit short. Ended up with quite a bit on the floor as it ran out the bent over seems on the bottoms of the rockers and through any other nook or cranny it could. I guess this is probably a good thing, actually.

I tried to take some pictures of this, but the battery was dead on the phone, so I couldn't. Sorry. I really did do all that stuff in spite of the lack of photo evidence. The Sunday update is better......

[Mustard72]

On to Sunday.

Got a late start after church in the morning and then helping get the house cleaned up in the early afternoon. Picked the cab off the jack stands and put it off towards the back of the garage to make more room for pulling the bed off. My son (also named Nicholas, aka N2) helped out with the bed removal. He's usually not so interested in helping out, but actually managed to get tired of Legos and Pokemon in the house and came out to help today. Awesome. I wish he did this lots more. He picked a good day, because removing a bed is lots more exciting when you are 9 than sanding bondo. He got to use the air ratchet in the bed while old Dad crawled under the truck with the combination wrench to grab the nuts on the bottoms of the bed retaining bolts (which for whatever reason were already spinning by the time I got to them). The snow is melting pretty rapidly here in NW Wisconsin at this point, during which time it likes to come in under the course of concrete blocks under the walls of the garage and pool under the bed of Mustard, but I managed to get a lot of it swept out of there and didn't get too wet.

The old 67 bed has what's left of a wooden floor. The advanced state of rot made it easy to wrap straps around the bed rails for removal. Where there wasn't already a hole in the floor, N2 whapped it with a hammer a little bit to make one for the straps. Normally, there is 1/2" treated plywood on top of the rotten wood. This probably accelerated the rot, but at least made for a decent floor. Once we had it rigged up, N2 jacked the bed off and we set it off to the side on top of some saw horses next to the relocated cab.

Next it's time to go through the rear suspension and axle. I've already got shocks purchased for back there, and am anticipating that I'll need more stuff once I start digging into it (pretty much been the way things have gone here). The last pic is N2 pointing to the broken auxiliary spring bumper. I think I'll have to make a new one of those, as I haven't seen them anywhere else.

I really enjoyed working in the garage with my kid today. I've been trying to get him to help out more, but he's never really interested, and at this point I didn't really want to force it on him. When he said he'd help out today, I didn't even send him back in to change out of his church pants out of fear he might find something else to do back in the house and not come back out. We just dug into it.

[Mustard72]

A couple more pics for good measure....

Had to make sure to leave enough room in the second stall to be able to get the engine to the front of hte truck frame when I get it back in a couple of weeks. It's a bear to get it off a cherry picker and onto the engine stand that I have due to the spread out front leg configuration of the stand (PITA 2 ton Harbor Freight job), so I'm thinking it'll go right back onto the frame when I get it back.

[cleansquare]

loving the progress pics

we also had several of these mustard colored trucks at home over the years, they arent so rare to me cause of that. I love the color