One Family '59 Apache, new shop truck.

[1project2many]

That 1 could be reproduced by a CNC machinist. Once chromed, no difference would be noticed.

3) Recommend replacing ball bearings in front with needle bearings. It will roll easier and make the steering effort light.

"Nothing rolls like a ball!"
http://vintage-ads.com/AdDetail.asp?ItemNum=1945-5014
And actually, "barrel" or spherical roller bearings are the best choice as they are most tolerant of misalignment.

[Zoomad75]

Not much done on the Apache front except for a little cleaning. My tech had to fix our car wash so he took the Apache over with him as he didn't want our detail crew on it yet. He had a couple of cans of cold oven cleaner, the dollar store stuff and fogged down the engine compartment. He let it sit while he swapped out one of the high pressure pump motors. About 30 minutes later he fired up the hand wash bays to test out the pump and rinsed off the oven cleaner. He also rinsed off the body.

All I can say is what a difference. All the black fungi on the paint rinsed off. It's actually got some color! The oven cleaner for only being $1 a can did way better than gunk or any other stuff you get from the parts store. Got it down to paint and bare metal. No more rat turds. Plus it got it down to the point you can see the screw heads on the timing cover. My tech pull that trick out of his bag as I've never used oven cleaner like that, much less dollar store stuff.

On to some clean pics!!!





I'd drive the snot out of this truck as is at this point! It's only going to be this original one time. I didn't get to take a shot of the clean engine as it started pouring rain then. I'll get one later.

[Kim57]

Cleaned up real nice.
Kim

[SCHRUMGMC]

Very interesting, my truck has a lot of history to it as well. Keep up the good work

[Zoomad75]

Time for an update. Sorry, no pics right now as I have them scattered on my phone and two computers at work. Need to consolidate and get them all in the same place.

Anyway, the teardown has begun. In a big way too. In the matter of a couple of days, our body shop disassembled the bed, pulled the seat and front clip off the cab. The seat went to a local guy (The dealer owner's son's future father in law, got to love small towns!) and is adding a little custom trick of covering the entire seat back in the same pattern as the front side. The doors were yanked and the truck was driven one last time from the body shop to the main service dept. to get the dash disassembled, wiring pulled and remaining dash parts pulled. My tech pulled the fuel tank and got the cab ready to pull from the frame also.

We rolled the truck to an overhead lift and removed the cab and got the rolling chassis back into a flat stall to pull the engine and trans. He pulled both and we pulled the tin from the engine to see what we got. We did take a compression reading before hand and considering the age it was ok at an average of 106 with all within less than 8% of each other. Problem was the epic level of sludge this thing had. The general feeling from my senior techs was that the original owner was a habitual Pennzoil user. Our first plan on the engine was to clean it up, reseal it and paint it since the compression was decent but the sludge factor changed those plans. Add to the plan that the owner plans to drive this to Gunnison CO for his son's wedding in August we have to make sure nothing goes wrong. So we yanked the heads to find a good sized ring ridge, but clean cylinders. A quick call to the machine shop and we arranged to get the block/heads cleaned up as well as a full rebuild kit and an overbore to the cylinders. We ended up at .030 over.

I've ordered close to $10,000 in parts so far. Sheet metal so far is inner/outer cab corners, lower hinge pockets (inner and outer), Tailgate, front bed wall, 4 inside bedside patches, both wheel tubs, both front doors and a fender patch panel. Front and back glass as well as vent and door glass assemblies. We've got the bed wood kit and all supports under the bed. New front and rear bumpers, fuel tank, radiator, heater core, temp valve and control cables and levers. There is a ton of little things that have come from a couple of orders too that add to the total.

The boss had some sticker shock after the 2nd order I made for parts, but after we got it blown apart we've been able to illustrate why we need to go for a new part vs repair an original I had ordered the left door due to the huge dent in it, but the right door looked straight so he was dead set in keeping it. It wasn't until we got it off and found a ton of rot in the lower inner panel plus an old repair with a lot of bondo in it. When you figured what the man-hours would be to fix the old damage and replace rotten sheet metal we'd have more in it in cost than what the new door is. The are doors are Dynacorn and so far are very well built. Plus they shipped them in a heavy crate to protect them from crazy freight truck drivers.

We still have the water/soda blaster to come in next week to strip the sheetmetal and frame. The engine is back from the machine shop and the short block is only missing the cam to complete it. Heads will get reconditioned next week, painted and installed. I'll organize the photos and get a sampling posted up here next week.

[Zoomad75]

Got some time today to organize our photos from the teardown and now into the blasting process. So without further delay, here are some of the details..

Last photo of the truck in it's original form.


Last shot of the interior.


Bed Condition.. Rough!


First major part off, the farm truck bumper. Brand new chrome unit is already here..


Crust where the wheel tubs meet the bedsides. Prelude of things to come.


Bed is off for further teardown.


The seat got pulled too. A local guy that is our owner's son's future father in law is going to re-upholster the seat and door panels.


Bed is blown apart. Took a lot of PB blaster and some help with the blue tipped wrench.


The bedsides. A lot of work needed here since nobody re-pop's these. Good thing we have a body tech that is old school. He's up for the challenge.


The Hood. Only a couple of minor dings. No Rust

We chose to not get the hood blasted for fear of warpage and stripped it with aircraft stripper.


Front clip is off.


Ready to roll down to the mechanical shop to remove the rest of the interior parts, wiring and then the cab.


Glass is out, waiting to come back inside.


Front clip torn down. Customer's '69 Camaro Convertible in the background. Repairing the front fender and door from a BFG tire that blew out.


Cab is off for the first time since 1959.


Interior torn down.


Here is the rolling chassis.


Engine/trans.


Slick way to move the cab around.


Engine and trans getting a soak in oven cleaner. Needed two soaks to cut the epic level of grime.


The engine awaiting further disassembly. Take a look at the extreme corrosion to the thermostat housing. NO we aren't putting the chrome replacement on there!


I've seen a lot of rodent nests in cars over my lifetime, but never one in this place. The resident of this home was evicted.


Transmission.


Block after getting machined. Can't find the sludge pics. Cleaned up nice.


Fresh slugs.


Heads reconditioned and installed with the intake.



Almost complete engine.


The blaster is now here!


Cab getting rolled out for it's date with the blaster.


Frame is ready to get blasted.


Bedside was one of the first to get hit. Hidden damage revealed in the center.


Front fender getting it's turn.


Action shot. This is a water type blast setup. Keeps the heat down on the sheet metal. Still, 1000 pounds of sand has to end up somewhere! Our back lot feels like a beach now!


Cleaned up front clip parts.


Cab partially blasted. He ran out of sand and light. The guy is coming back Sunday to finish the cab and chassis.



Some of the front clip parts repaired and ready for primer/sealer in the booth.


Next stage of the plan is to get the frame straight as we discovered a slight whammy in the right rail. Then prep for paint. Once the frame is fresh we can drop the engine/trans back in it. We'll be waiting for the cab to be done first in the body shop so we can get it back on the frame and start running the new wiring harness and reinstalling the interior. We are moving now!

[SCHRUMGMC]

Wonderful work on the truck. I am excited to see the outcome of this

[Kim57]

That's a lot of work you got done.
Looking good.
Kim

[Zoomad75]

Our 2nd date with the blaster was a rainout yesterday. Bummer. Delays suck but we got other work to do for sure. I just need to know if I need to order any more sheetmetal. Brother's is running a big sale that ends at the end of the month.

Once we get on the re-assembly side of life, I've got to organize what we are going to do with the collection of original parts we aren't going to use on the build. So the parts that were going to take too much to time to refurbish going to be sold. I don't want this to turn into a for sale thread so I won't list the parts in this thread. Once I have the list together, I'll put it up in the for sale area first, before I put it out to the kooks and whackjobs on craigslist.

[Zoomad75]

Little update. Another cancel by the blaster. I think the boss is going to have a stroke if he don't come finish the job. So as to not waste time waiting, our body man got to work on the fenders. We've got more sheetmetal coming too. Check out the pile of parts that's here already. More on the way!



Anyway onto some metal working porn...Like I said before this guy is old school.

This fender I had originally ordered a patch panel for the rear section due to significant crease and the possibility for rust from what we could see before we blew it apart.


Needless to say our body guy made me look like a fool by working the crease out. No rust in the lower area either. The front half had a lot of bondo and with it stripped out the metal was as lumpy as cottage cheese. He's smoothed all that out too. He won't need a gallon of mud like the last hack did for sure!

Front of the fender. Needs a little patch on the eyebrow still. Check out the reflection with nothing more than 40 grit.


Here's where he made me look like a fool. Rear of the fender minus the crease.



Lower front fender. I can see myself in the reflection.

[RockinKees]

This is a nice project!
I didn't seen it before? But I'm in now!
Sorry for thr setbacks you had, but I think it will come out just the way you want!!

Keep up the great work!

[Kim57]

A good body man can work wonders.
Wish I could afford one but will have to plug along on my own.
Kim

[Zoomad75]

A little more progress. The chassis and cab were finally blasted last sunday. Our painter spent spare time between jobs scraping old grease and gunk off the frame that the blaster didn't remove. Plus our body man took the small kink out of the right hand rail and fixed a couple of old repairs. Seems as if the front bumper was hit at one time and the frame cracked at the front frame horn.

After a final wash and dry on the chassis it was rolled into the booth for some black paint.













I left as they were cranking up the booth to bake the paint on. We get to move onto some reassembly next week!

[Kim57]

Looks real nice.
Kim

[Zoomad75]

Here's another couple of update shots. Metal work has started on the roof of the cab. He's taken close to 16 hail dents out so far.





The underside of the hood is painted too. (it's a little nicer than what the factory applied I think..


The rolling chassis out of the booth.



One might wonder why we didn't tear the suspension all the way down, pull the springs/bushings and steering off. The main reason was everything was so well lubricated (all the spring bushings ride on greasable bolts), nothing was really worn to require replacement. The bushings were encased in a cocoon of old nasty dried up grease that really didn't let them dry out at all. It also proves that if you put a grease zerk on something, a farmer or rancher is going to lube them on a regular basis. The next reason, was time. This saved us a ton of teardown and reassembly time. Time is money. So far the count on hours is almost at 100 for my body tech, 50 for the painter and 50 for my mechanical tech. Cost for labor has eclipsed the parts already. I knew it would as we still got sheetmetal to replace in the cab and those pesky bedsides too.

Chassis is coming back to my end of the shop for my mechanical tech to drop the engine/trans in and get it ready for a ride on the rollback to get the exhaust done. Exhaust is one of the few things we don't do in house. But my Warranty admin's husband is an old tube bender at a independent garage here in town so he's been volunteered to replicate the factory exhaust system.

Wheels will be the first to get the Tartan turquoise color shot on them. Radial wide white walls are coming in from a local tire store too. We went with radials mainly to avoid the major flat spotting that will come from this truck sitting between drives. The boss has bias wide whites on his 56 Chevy 2dr sedan that as he puts it "will rattle your fillings out of your teeth in the first few miles". He didn't want to repeat that. Plus it should encourage him to drive it more.

[Kim57]

Everything is looking real good.
Kim

[Ratpin]

Looking good! Keep all the great pictures coming!

[Zoomad75]

We rolled the chassis down from the body shop yesterday morning. By 8:30 the engine and trans were dropped back on the rails. Today we added the new radiator and freshly painted core support bolted in with fresh rubber mounts. My tech then added the hoses and topped the cooling system off with straight water to allow us to fire the engine off. My tech added a oil pressure gauge and his "car theft kit" that he attached to power the coil/ignition system and the starter solenoid. The little 283 came back to life without much fuss. After a little dialing in on the carb it was idling quite smoothly.

On to the pics..

[Kim57]

Looks and sounds real good.
Kim

[_Ogre]

that body was in exceptional shape, no surprises after blasting the sheet metal; that's a bonus
nice that he found an original v8 truck with all the parts, no one makes a fan shroud like that one

[Zoomad75]

Thanks all. It's really a team effort. Today we got the first taste of what Tartan Turquoise is. Hood, wheels and cowl vent got shot in color today. First coat of clear applied too. The hood and cowl vent will get a 1000 grit rub down and another shot of clear.

Looks bright!

[DirtyLarry]

Looking awesome! Bet Steve is getting excited

[Kim57]

Very nice color.
Kim

[Zoomad75]

He is excited. Great to see color on some parts. Just have to keep from scratching the finished parts. Chassis is out getting the exhaust done right now.
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[GMCNUT]

Wow....I am feeling so inspired after seeing this resto - my 59 Short Fleet is identical to this one minus being solid White from the factory, but I am thinking I will change that to a two-tone after seeing this one....holy smokes this one is exciting to watch come together. So on page 1 you had asked about the headlight bezels by saying "Pass side fender paint split and headlights (still T3's by the way). In all the photos I've reviewed on the web of stock Apaches I've seen some with chrome headlight bezels, these are white. Curious as to what the chrome was supposed to come on vs the painted. Early or late?"

And the answer to that is simply that all 58-59 Chevy trucks came with painted white bezels regardless of trim level - even the most decked out ones like yours and mine with the "Double Deluxe" stainless bed treatment came this way. Now, hundreds of 55-59 truck guys will argue they came with chrome, but that is simply not true. GMC did however offer its Deluxe trucks in 58-59 with Anodized Aluminum bezels, but never chrome. Google the Lambrecht 58 Cameo and you will see White bezels on it - nothing trumps the fancy nature of a Cameo, so if Cameos had White ones, that's pretty much all the proof you need. I do however admit I added Chrome ones to mine while I am driving it unrestored, but they will be White when it goes to the paint shop. Hope this helps and congrats on the awesome truck