Educating a Ford guy...

[sizzle-fry]

Originally Posted by Cue-Ball

It's been just shy of a year since you updated your build thread.

Yeah.... I spose I oughta at least give some sort of status. Thread kind of got suspended in winter of 2010... why?

So, I have a nice huge shop and it's really nice in the late spring through early fall. It absolutely sucks in winter though, can't keep it heated when the exhaust fan is running. This ain't so bad, I can sandblast in the cold. I cannot lay down paint though. So I finished sandblasting (I have pics - will post once I recover the old garage PC)... for the most part, it got cold in winter of 2010, so I hung it up till spring. Spring came and the wife/property took my dough and time all the way until summer. Summer was packed with things happening in the family, plus maintenance of the yard, house, and gardens, Alaskan cruise, etc and I just didn't get to the stage where painting was possible.

To my great amazement however, I am finally ready to paint that damned chassis now. The cross members, chassis are all blasted and acid etched. The springs, overloads, mount hardware, panhard bar, shock hardware etc are blasted and painted. I have all new nuts and bolts for rear chassis re-assembly sitting here on the parts bench waiting. New trailing arms are pending order (prolly two weeks from now I place order for these) and new front end parts are being selected right now.

But I still can't put any paint on the damned chassis yet. I spoke to you (live) about having someone come pick the sucker up and powder coat it - this is becoming a more plausible option to me with each passing week. Life will get way easy once that chassis is assembled... got a couple hundred bucks worth of urethane/ceramic paint all ready to go though so I still hesitate.

In short, I'm blocked on painting chassis components due to weather.

Originally Posted by Cue-Ball

I was pretty sure you were gonna finish your truck before I finished my Camaro, but now I think I'm well ahead of you. :-)

Man, once this chassis is done you might just find yerself behind the gun again =) These trucks can go together way fast. You have all your tin-work done though, and I'm nowhere near that just yet. Realistically though, you'll prolly be on power tour this summer before I even touch my sheet metal.

I'll be better about this thread update business... and I'll have some additional photos up soon.