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.

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by 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.

I've been thinking about doing that or something similar, and looked at a few things at Home Depot today, just didn't pull the trigger yet. Is a chainfall the same thing as a come-along?



In other news, I got the AC evaporator and blower motor housing off. Of course, with that, comes the first "bad news". Rust. Lots of it. Most of it is surface, but there is some that's getting pretty bad around the hood hinge area. There is a section where leaves/twigs/schtuff have gathered over the years, and held moisture. That's the area with the most rust. Unfortunately, that area is a PITA to get to, so I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle it yet.

My main thought is to get a 360* sprayer from Eastwood and chemically treat, then coat it with Rust Encapsulator or POR-15. This would seem to be the easiest route and probably a reasonably long lasting repair.

My other option that's floating through my head, is drilling the spot welds and tearing down that section of sheet metal to it's individual components. Not only would that be a COMPLETE pain in the rear axle, I'm not sure if I trust myself to get that involved with sheet metal and be able to get it back together in the right places.

Any thoughts on the best way to tackle this? My camera batteries are dead right now, but once I get some fresh ones, I'll try to snap some pictures of the cancer.

[MalibuSSwagon]

a chainfall is pretty much a hoist.



One of the things I plan on building into my house is a trolley system in the ceiling of the garage. That way I can pull an engine or bed or something equally heavy and move it pretty much anywhere in the garage. I do plan on a 4 car garage so that would be quite handy

[foamypirate]

So, I had a chance to go out with the camera and take a closer picture of the rust in the blower motor area. It's all pretty much located in the following spot:














Here, you can see what I assume to be the root cause of the issue. It appears that this small area (the small piece of sheet metal welded into the cab in above pictures) has gathered leaves/dirt/stuff over the years and held moisture, causing the rust.



This piece here should be pretty easy to fix. Most of this was caused by the foam attached to the cab in the door hinge area:



The other issue I'm seeing is along the seam in the cowl area, where the seam sealer has pulled backed, and it's beginning to rust along the seam.





What do you guys think as far as fixing these areas? I'm hesitate to just chemically treat and use rust encapsulator, because I want this restore to last a good long time, and I'm just not sure of their long term durability. However, the thought of drilling out 50 million spot welds to remove these panels for access is pretty daunting. What are ya'lls thoughts on how to repair this area?

The good news is that the rest of the cab is pretty solid. Here is a picture of the outer/inner rockers:

[MalibuSSwagon]

Looks like you may need to pull your windshield as well.

[foamypirate]

Originally Posted by MalibuSSwagon

Looks like you may need to pull your windshield as well.

Yeah, that's definitely on the list. In fact, that rust around the windshield seal is what really prompted me to get started on this. The truck ran and drove great, but I don't want to let it rust away.

I may not be able to make a lot of progress quickly due to budget concerns, but I am certainly going to make my best effort to get this Square on the road for a long time yet to come!

[foamypirate]

On a positive note, I got my garage cleaned up and ready to get the bed off (almost). Unfortunately, I still have too much **** laying around, so I'm going to use a chunk of my budget to build shelves all along one side of the garage. I currently have no shelves except for my bench, and a crappy closet style one the previous owner mounted about 1 foot from the ceiling. Once the shelves are done and I can move a lot of the stuff onto them, I should have all the room I need. Some of the crap can go in the garden shed, too.

I picked up decent 2x4, 2x6 and some plywood scraps dumpster diving in the new neighborhood going up near my brother's house, so I might be able to start on the shelves soon. Depends if my wife gets her way, she wants me to build a cat house for our outside cat...

[foamypirate]

Well, I was able to start on removing the interior tonight. Got the seats, carpet, head liner, trim, floor padding and etc. out.

Made an interesting discovery. Hmmm, you think this truck had a bad heater core leak at some point in time?



Uhhh, yeah. It had a REAL bad heater core leak, it would seem. Hasn't gotten too far into the kick panel or rocker, but I'm thinking about maybe replacing them just for peace of mind. The floor damage isn't through the floor at least, so I can probably just grind it out and paint it. Not sure yet, I may end up patching it.

Here are the rest of the pics. Sadly, I don't think you can call this truck porn. :****sweak:

[foamypirate]

Had a chance to get out and play stabby stabby with the floor tonight (poking with a big screwdriver to check for weak sheet metal). Didn't break through anywhere; the floor seems pretty solid.

I also cleaned it up a bit more with the wire wheel to get most of the loose paint and scale off.

I think I am going to go the POR-15 route, but I had a few concerns. I've heard that POR-15 doesn't stick well to clean metal, even when prepped with their Metal Ready and Marine Clean. The problem that presents for me, is that in order to get all of the loose paint/scale off, I'm definitely going to have clean metal in some areas (you can see some in the pictures below, already). I don't want to leave any of the old paint behind either, as POR-15's instructions recommend against it.

Should I just prep how they recommend and hope it sticks to the clean areas?


Floor carnage:





This bit here seems to be the worst section of the floor as far as pitting goes. I think I'll clean this area out really well and run a weld bead over it to give it a little bit more meat. I don't like how thin it is here to just leave it as-is.

[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.