A '54 named Busty

[Gregski]

putting this off as long as I can today, ha ha

honestly fellers this being a Nevada truck this is the worst of it, the rest is solid, I am so happy with this truck, yes the metal is bent all over the place to you know what, but it's all surface rust and really solid

[Gregski]

so we begin with a little dirt extraction, followed by a date with the wire wheel

[Gregski]

alright, nothing to it but to do it

I've had these jumbo pipe remnants for 50 years so by golly I was going to find a use for them

the original plan of attack was to do the left side of that ridge first so that we would not loose the shape of the piece, and I honestly did not know it was all one piece

[Gregski]

so we were getting there, and then this happened

[Gregski]

in unrelated news, technically before I ranned out of wire, I also weldered up those silly turn signal holes atop the front fenders

Fact: The smaller the job, the longer it takes, am I right fellas?

[Gregski]

say hello to my little friend - R2D2

[Gregski]

Amazon $185 with tax and license, out the door - even came with three bags of walnut media (one tore in the bowl, ha ha)! Rad!

sorry about the trellis shadows

[Gregski]

lets work smarter not harder... this is the fender and grille hardware, we're going to give it a go with just plain dry walnut media

Note: you can run this thing wet somehow, haven't figured that out yet, nor what jazz to lube it with.

[Gregski]

so yeah, half a day later, the walnut shells did nothing - really wish they would have told you that, oh wait...

[Gregski]

so on to the louder, I mean plastic media

[Gregski]

took it easy today on account of injuring my right elbow and forearm from all that wire wheelin' and grindin' (take care of your bodies young bloods)

I call this the hood release panel, here it is with the brown primer wet and dry

[Gregski]

I also primed, primered? primertized?? the insides of the fenders

[Gregski]

and the radiator frame got some love too

I don't know about you, but there sure seems to be a ton of pieces that make up the front clip, let's see if we can count em

1. hood - not being treated at this time
2. driver fender
3. passenger fender
4. driver inner fender
5. passenger inner fender
6. driver fender bracket
7. passenger fender bracket
8. radiator frame
9. hood release panel
10. upper grille piece
11. grille nose
12. grille driver middle piece
13. grille passenger middle piece
14. grille bottom piece
15. grille driver parking light piece
16. grille passenger parking light piece
17. radiator frame driver bracket (home made)
18. radiator frame passanger bracket (home made)
19. radiator splash panel sits above the bumper
20. front bumper
21. driver headlight bucket
22. passenger headlight bucket
23. driver headlight bezel
24. passenger headlight bezel
25. driver fender support rod
26. passanger fender support rod

and that's that

[LT7A]

Originally Posted by Gregski

LOL, thank you Northman! you mean the zig zag around the power steering box?

Yep, that's the one. I could tell it was purposeful, I just I hadn't figured out what the purpose was. BTW, that was the third of three comments, just in case you missed the other two

You're doing a great job getting that front end support work cleaned up and tied together. Getting rid of the rust and protecting the inner and underside of the fenders is good work. When you bolt those pieces securely back on you'll know that you have a good foothold in making this truck right and making it yours.

[Gregski]

so all that wire wheeling hurt my right elbow and forearm [insert dirty joke here, I'll hold]

it hurts so bad I have to use the mouse with my left hand

[Gregski]

but I managed to press on and got the inside of both fenders painted Semi-Gloss using the RUST-OLEUM Professional spray can paint, not a fan of this much shinines but it's there for protection only as it will get covered up with undercoat soon anyway

[Gregski]

and primered and painted the fender braces - there's a lot of doo dads

[Gregski]

a while back we've determined that there is no room for the mechanical fan

well even in order for me to run a stock but new aluminum radiator (radiators were tall and narrow back then, now they are short and wide) I have to mount it in front of the radiator frame not behind it, if you are standing in front of the truck, that's the only way to even fit an electric fan in between it and the water pump pulley

so in order to mount the radiator fan in front of the radiator frame I had to chop and roll the bottom grille piece. This happens to be a very unique grille limited only to 54 and early 55 years, I believe the earlier grilles allowed for way more real estate behind them, oh well, I love this grille

I believe rolling it over like that will keep some of it's integrity, I wish I had a shrinking machine

[Father&son56project]

Good progress Gregski. A few posts up you mentioned switching to plastic media for that tumbler. Did you try it yet? I am curious because I received one of those tumblers as a gift, and found that it just didn't do much. I switched back to using my hillbilly tumbler* which is loud, but works like a charm.

Stephan

*Hillbilly Tumbler: Bolt an electric palm sander to the bottom of an old paint can. Toss in your cruddy parts and some sand. Hang the paint pan by its handle, turn on the sander, walk away for an hour, return to perfectly clean parts.

[8man]

That's a lot of progress Gregski!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Father&son56project

Good progress Gregski. A few posts up you mentioned switching to plastic media for that tumbler. Did you try it yet? I am curious because I received one of those tumblers as a gift, and found that it just didn't do much. I switched back to using my hillbilly tumbler* which is loud, but works like a charm.

Stephan

So glad you followed up Stephan. Yes I tried tumbling using the blue mystery rocks as I call 'em, ha ha and though they generate some sort of dust in the tumbler bowl I am hugely disappointed with the way they do NOT remove rust, not to my satisfaction anyway. I ran it for like 6 or 8 hours, hewk maybe more, checking on the hardware being cleaned every 2 hours or so but not even turning it off, just shoving my hand in there and pulling out a bit and examining it.

Here were the thoughts going through my head:

1. Maybe I did not waste my life spending upteen hours cleaning all those bolts in the past with a wire wheel, ha ha (4.5" angle grinder wire wheels will run you $20 in the big box stores, and $10 online) I can clean a larger bolt with a wire wheel in a minute or so either in a vice or holding it in vice grips so I can rotate it, don't need 10 hours of tumbling, granted you can feed the "Beast" couple handfuls of bolts at once.

2. How much brand new hardware could I've bought for the $185 I spent on this thing!!! ha ha (reason I did not go this route is that some hardware is irreplaceable and also I do not trust the aftermarket steel, it's junk - I'm looking at you LMC Truck)

Originally Posted by Father&son56project

*Hillbilly Tumbler: Bolt an electric palm sander to the bottom of an old paint can. Toss in your cruddy parts and some sand. Hang the paint pan by its handle, turn on the sander, walk away for an hour, return to perfectly clean parts.

I'm buying what you're selling, got a pic?

The reason I already had the plastic media is because I've done did something similar only using an old quart sized plastic Folgers coffee can attached to a 1/2" heavy duty drill, but it didn't work too well and now I think we can blame this stupid fake media.

LESSONS LEARNED so far...

Even if the tumbler do clean your parts it don't leave them shinny, (think media blasting large panels like fenders, etc.) the parts come out dull, so often times if your end game is Zinc plating you still need to wire wheel these bits to get them nice and smooth

It may be time to roll your own media like Josh did here in this there video [spoiler alert: using quick dry aka cat litter and walnut shells]:

Harbor Freight 18 lb. Vibrating Bowl 1year Review

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by 8man

That's a lot of progress Gregski!

Thanks Robert, not bad for the one arm bandit, ha ha. I also custom tinted the windows in my non insulated West facing garage door, which heats up to 3,750°F every afternoon!

[dsraven]

cool, you got the dark limo tint for fords, matches the paper bag you gotta wear over your head when you drive a ford, so nobody knows it was you driving, haha.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by dsraven

cool, you got the dark limo tint for fords, matches the paper bag you gotta wear over your head when you drive a ford, so nobody knows it was you driving, haha.

that's hillarious, luv it!

[8man]

Let's see, heat in Sacramento vs heat in Bryan by GAWD TEXAS!

I do understand the need for anything that saves one from heat stroke!