One Piece at a Time - A True Friend

[cornerstone]

Lovin' every post guys! I sure hope someday we locals can get together with our completed trucks and get some quality cruise time in. I'd imagine you'll be taking this beauty back home with you when its done Chief, but before you do I'd really like to see it in person. At Ron's current pace he will be done with your truck way before I will... time will tell.

[Chief5940]

Originally Posted by cornerstone

Lovin' every post guys! I sure hope someday we locals can get together with our completed trucks and get some quality cruise time in. I'd imagine you'll be taking this beauty back home with you when its done Chief, but before you do I'd really like to see it in person. At Ron's current pace he will be done with your truck way before I will... time will tell.

Thanks Brian! It is really coming along nice!! Ron is GREAT!!!

[Chief5940]

More prep work!! Ron has been getting the fenders and doors ready for paint! They are looking great!!! I believe all of these have been primed and are on their second coat of feather fill.

[Chief5940]

Ron got the new brake system installed; completely rebuilt brake pedal, new brake booster, and master cylinder, and all new braided brake lines. It all looks awesome!!! He also put in all new parts for the windshield washer and wiper motors.

[Chief5940]

The hunt for headers that work with the Dirty-Dingo motor mounts and the 5.3L Vortec engine and 4L60 transmission continues. These new headers are hitting in the same place as the Doug Thorley headers. So, I think Ron is going to order a part to relocate the shift language and we are going to go back to the Doug Thorley headers.

Also, he sand-blasted more of the miscellaneous parts and got them all painted with the correct black paint.

[SIXTY9]

Check with KOOKS headers. They have some great tech support and see what they say.

kooksheaders.com

[Chief5940]

Originally Posted by SIXTY9

Check with KOOKS headers. They have some great tech support and see what they say.

kooksheaders.com

Thanks, we are going to try the Doug Thorleys one more time. Ron ordered a kit to relocate the shifter linkage, hopefully everything will cooperate this time.

[Chief5940]

More big strides over the last couple of weeks. Ron has been studying hard on the best place to mount the computer for the engine. He settled on the inside of the firewall, under the dash, next to the Old Air A/C system. He attached it with a few rev nuts and it looks great! It's sturdy, easily accessible and out of the way. He also had to bite the bullet and drill the hole through the freshly painted firewall for the engine wiring harness. Once everything is put back together you shouldn't be able to see this unless you are actually looking for it.

The steering column is in and looks great! The newly rebuilt brake pedal assembly and accelerator pedal are also both installed, as is the new cigarette lighter, and the red spark plug wires.

[Chief5940]

The doors and fenders are ready for paint, so Ron has been working on getting the hood and cowl ready to paint. The hood was very straight, but had its share of surface rust. Ron has used a couple of different products to get the rust off of the hood. The most recent product called for it to be applied with a brush and it bonds with the rust and then you sand it all off. That finally did the trick. He also welded up a few small holes on the underside of the hood where someone had previously installed a bug guard. The hood and cowl are now in epoxy primer and ready for the final body work.

[Chief5940]

The headers have given us headaches, but we are past that now. We went back to the Doug Thorley long-tube headers and made a couple of minor modifications on the shifter linkage and a module on the transmission. They look great. We will have the remainder of the exhaust done at a local shop as one of the very last steps. Ron also finished installing the brakes; all new brake booster, master cylinder, brake lines, parking brake and parking brake cable are in and operational. The power-steering pump and hoses are in and ready to go as well. We even had the steering box rebuilt and re-calibrated to more closely resemble a new car's steering.

[Chief5940]

We purchased a new center console from a reputable restoration shop, but when it came in we weren't terribly satisfied with it. It seemed pretty thin and flimsy. So, we returned it and I found a guy out of California who restores the original ones. He cleans them up, repairs any cracks or scratches, and then primers them and paints them with three coats of paint in the factory color (in this case we wanted black). He also re-chromes the trim strip and the internal hinge assembly. He also had a bunch of cup-holder inserts machined out of aluminum and then had them powder-coated. I went with the matte finish. The cup-holder is actually a little bit larger and deeper than the factory original. All of this should arrive this week. I will take some better pictures and post them later. I'm pretty excited to see the finished product.

I also included a picture of Ron's grandson, Reid. He loves to hang out in the garage and help Ron work on trucks and drive the forklift! He'll know more about cars than most people before he even starts school!

Lastly, I found a picture that Ron's wife, Kelly, had sent me from when they were working on the Kilmat sound deadening. It's a better picture of the finished product, so i wanted to include it here.

[Chief5940]

I found a guy out of Houston who had recently purchased a 1972 C10 with factory rally wheels and BFG tires, just like I wanted and the same size we had programmed the computer to as well.

So, i took a day off and went and bought them from him. The wheels and tires were great! I cleaned the wheels and tires multiple times and we are pleased with how they turned out. The center caps and beauty rings, not so much.The caps had some major oxidation and the painted bases were really scuffed up and showing their age.

Not to worry, we had already purchased new 3" stainless beauty rings and center caps. But, when we opened the new center caps we found out they were all plastic and one of the center emblems just fell off. So, we returned them and I went to work cleaning up and restoring the original ones. I forgot to take good pictures before I started polishing the chrome part, but you can see the before on the painted part pretty well. I used the Dremel tool with a polishing pad and Mother's Aluminum and Mag wheel polish. That has worked great on all the small trim pieces so far.

[Chief5940]

Once the chrome part was all cleaned and polished, I turned my attention to the painted metal bases. I used the Dremel tool with the sanding wheel and lightly sanded and removed all of the factory paint. Then, I taped them up and sprayed several light coats of metallic flat antique nickle paint. They turned out great! There are a few deep gouges in the chrome, but you would have to look pretty hard to find them. I'm much happier knowing we are going back with metal over the plastic ones.

[Chief5940]

The latest progress has been the installation of the headliner and trim. First, Ron used LiquidNails to glue the headliner in place and cut several pieces of wood to hold everything in place for a few days until it could cure. Then he installed the new chrome trim kit that we purchased from Southwest Classics. It looks great and the black and chrome really pop against the bright red paint!

[Chief5940]

This week Ron moved one step closer to putting color on the hood, fenders, doors, cowl, and Mr. Reid's (Ron's grandson) pedal car. Ron had a well-deserved vacation this week and wanted to get the feather-fill on the metal so it will have a few days to dry and shrink before final sanding.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Well that just made up my mind. Im definitely putting a headliner into mine. That looks awesome!

[Chief5940]

Thank Kyle!! We are very happy with how this whole thing is turning out. Each new piece just makes it that it much better. Good luck with yours!!

[Chief5940]

This week was another big week! Ron, with some help from his wife Kelly and one of their daughter's friends, got the front windshield in. We purchased a new windshield from Southwest Classics. We also bought new chrome trim. The trim ended up being a little more flimsy that we wanted, so we opted for some old original trim that I had bought and polished up. It shines great, but it does have a few little dimples in it. Overall, we are very happy with how it turned out.

[Chief5940]

Not everything goes according to plan..LOL

We purchased new sun visors and completely destroyed both of them while trying to put the mounting rods into the visors. Back to the drawing board on that one.

We were successful at installing the center-caps we polished and re-painted and the new beauty rings look great as well.

[Chief5940]

The back glass is also in! Brand new glass from Southwest Classics and we used the used, original trim that we found and polished up. We returned the new trim we purchased because the weight and quality of the original stuff was just that much better. Again, we had to settle for a few small blemishes, but overall it looks great!

[Chief5940]

We installed the brand new Old Air A/C compressor and also got the necessary pulleys changed out so we could get the serpentine belt installed. We also made as much headway as we could on connecting up the engine wiring harness. So far, we are very pleased with the Old Air system's quality and the ease of installation. The instructions were very straight-forward and easy to follow.

[Chief5940]

Ron sprayed the top and bottom of the hood. They both turned out great! First, the underside. He even polished the flat parts and the shine and reflection are outstanding! He has the insulation kit to put in before we move to final assembly.

[Chief5940]

He also got the top of the hood painted. He hasn't had a chance to cut and buff it yet, but the paint looks great and I know it will be killer when he is done polishing it all up.

[Chief5940]

One last thing for this week; we were able to install the new, black dash pad. We purchased it from Southwest Classics and it fit great! All the holes lined up perfectly and the black dash pad and headliner really pop against the bright red paint.

[Chief5940]

I've fallen a few weeks behind again, so I'm going to get us caught up!

Ron has been killing it over the last few weeks. He completed the prep work on the fenders and doors and has them looking better than new. We are using factor original 1972 body parts for everything except the bed and tailgate, we bought new sheet metal for those.