Upside down, back to front, long low 63 fleet

[63inoz]

Usual unplanned situation, every horizontal surface becomes a workbench,
Was sort of planned, I heavy wire brushed the wood grain and then treated the boards with strong tea stain and steel wool/vinegar stain, then refitted them and threw tools etc at them, dragged tool boxes and other items across to get rid of the new pine shelving look.
While waiting for floor sections, had a go at the grill disaster.
I cut out the rest of the grid section and welded in 3 1/2" square bars that match in pretty well with the original horizontal sections.
As usual this is driven by the difficulty in getting replacement parts here, 63 grills are hard enough to get in the USA.
There's Ray the workshop supervisor flat out again.
The floor sections have arrived so the cab is back off the frame and onto the rotisserie.

[Paul Y]

Glad to see that Ray is there for quality control purposes.

Can never be too careful....

Looking good, like the idea of ageing the newly stained bed wood, will be borrowing that.

Do you have a picture of the bed stained? Interested in how the Tea treatment turned out. I am thinking about using Danish Oil on a wire pad but open to other options. My bed floor is old oak reclaimed from a barn so have several options.

P.

[63inoz]

Hi Paul,
i did a bit of experimenting with the tea and the steel wool/vinegar and combinations of which one first.
I thought the steel wool/vinegar gave me what I was looking for best and a second coating enhanced the first. A second coat of tea didnt seem to do anything extra.
Either one gave me a nice grey weathered look, but as some time has passed it has turned to a brownish like baltic pine look. Dont know if thats from the natural yellow pine tannin coming to the surface, it might be that the steel wool residue is actually rusting.
The wire brush I used was on a drill and dug out the grain pretty heavily so all the soft pine is gone and the hard bits of grain are left, like its been sandblasted. The results I got with the stain may have been influenced by having very little soft parts to get in to.
Heres a pic from a little further up the track, the board across the back is untreated to compare colour.

[Paul Y]

I like the effect you have achieved on that.

Mmmm.... might have an experiment over the weekend.

P.

[63inoz]

So here we have some extremely rare pics of rust in a C10.
Outer floor sections, lower a pillars, lower b pillars, footwell sides, outer rocker panels, lower cab corners.

[63inoz]

pics tell the story

[63inoz]

what can I say that hasn't been said

[63inoz]

cut, grind, weld,
repeat on the other side

[Katrina/10]

Nice work, I know that took some time!

[63inoz]

Thanks
Yep a month of part time work condensed to 4 posts.
Looks easy

[SkinnyG]

I'm so glad I'm done mine.

Good job!

[63inoz]

Life has been getting in the way again for the past few weeks, back to medium complicated as per usual again now.
So heres some more repairs.

[63inoz]

And more repairs.
Got some paint matched up to some of the original green that shws through in a few places.
So been priming all the repairs, then first coating in the green, then over that with a matched brown.
The rockers are likely to get knocked around a bit, so then the green will be exposed like the other knocked about parts of the truck.

[63inoz]

Hi,
havent been on here or updating for a while now.
Just letting anyone following know that all is not lost and the old girl went in for roadworthy test yesterday and passed. Should have registered next week.
Its been a struggle getting to this point, with covid lockdowns and associated lack of money, but we're here now.
Seems like too many build threads just stop at some point and you never know if it got there or was part of the "unfinished project" statistic.
So count me out of that statistic.
Although it never ends, actually drives pretty nice, but 4 turns lock to lock isnt doing it for me, so steering upgrade is on the cards.
Thanks in advance to everybody who has contributed steering upgrade info on here, its going to be valuable to me.

[Braunschweiger]

Congratulations on that, also for posting a degree, I've finished mine too and am enjoying driving now

[joesscamaro]

Thanks for checking back in with the exciting update. Hoping the registration goes well and you get to enjoy your hard work.

[63inoz]

Thanks Harald and Joe,
actually got registration this week, picture of the prize, brand new plates on the old girl. Probably the best color matched plates you could hope for, too bad about anyone else with an actual colored car.
Pretty happy with how the grill turned out, would have been happier to be original but you can see in earlier pics what I had to work with and getting a replacement wasnt panning out well.
A few engine bay pics just to show that its not just a rusty old survivor but everything under the outer skin is either new or reconditioned.
I have a stack of other pics that I must put up that got me through the last year or 2.
For the sake of my mind I had been avoiding posting for a while, it felt like a bit of a hopeless case for a long time. Very happy to get to this point now.