Lowly the 70 shortbed convert v2.0

[landarts]

Very nice work on the paint match. Did a similar thing a few years ago on the 68 Second Chance build. Again great craftsmanship.

[Kronald_70GMC]

Very nice work on matching that patina. I'm definitely in for this one!

[rodstored-72]

wow.. very nice job, keeping tabs on this as well... I am sure it will be as nice as the blue truck too

[hewittca]

Thank you everyone, I really appreciate the kind words.

My work on the passenger fender was not complete after the last post, but I wanted to save the remainder of the work for a new post because there's a story to go along with it. After completing the front lower patch panel, I decided to tackle the rear lower patch. Another order placed with Key Parts and within a few days I had my panel, except... it wasn't Key Parts. It was a TriPlus part in a Key Parts box. It was an extremely poor fit. It lacked the appropriate body lines in the fender arch and honestly looked like it was just meant to skin over the original metal.





I decided to send an e-mail to Key Parts explaining how much I liked their front lower patch and wanted to know if there was an actual Key Parts rear lower patch available instead of the TriPlus part. To my surprise, I received a direct call from the CEO of Key Parts! He explained how they do not have a piece, which is why they resell the TriPlus part instead. He also explained that they were just finishing up the tooling for a real Key Parts reproduction panel and wanted to know if I would test fit a pre-production piece. Of course I couldn't pass on this fortunate coincidence and within two weeks I had a new patch panel in hand. This one met every expectation I had in terms of fitment and attention to detail. It even had the inner brace and mounting point.



This panel was even easier to line up compared to the front patch. A few straight cuts, some tack welds and grinding, and I had a nearly perfect repair. Honestly, I couldn't find anything that needed critical feedback. I felt the part was ready for production, for whatever my opinion's worth!







After finishing the metal work it was time to repeat the same steps outlined above for paint matching the panel. Once again, I only needed a skim coat of filler to smooth out my shortcomings in metal working.





The passenger fender is now ready to be reinstalled on the truck at this point. A quick test fit to confirm it fits and matches and then it will get set to the side until it's time to go back together, most likely many months from now.

[raggedjim]

Looks great. Did the inner support brace come with the patch? If it did that is awesome!

[hewittca]

Originally Posted by raggedjim

Looks great. Did the inner support brace come with the patch? If it did that is awesome!

Yes it did. It was a complete assembly. As if someone just cut the whole lower section off a brand new fender.

[clay68c10]

Nice work on all the paint matching!
That new patch panel is really impressive. I wonder how many more patch pieces they'll be making. Hopefully everything if the quality is like your example.

[Ol Blue K20]

Nice work, I am glad they were willing to let you test preproduction.

[Bodied67]

Im in on watching this one, loved your previous build!

[Chevys4life]

Great job for sure.....nice work!!!!

[hewittca]

It's been a few weeks since I've been able to work on the truck for good reason (more on that later), but I do have some progress to update. My stretch goal for this year is to finish all the body rust repair and modifications. I started cutting the rockers out but realized it would be easier to get to the cab corners if the bed was removed. So why not go ahead and start cutting up the bed first? I marked the bedsides where I wanted to cut, using the Metal Ox Fab technique with the diagonal line across the body line. After about 30 minutes of cutting I had my pieces removed.









One interesting finding on the front edge of the bed panel was this hole filled in with a blob of putty. It was painted over with the original paint as well. All signs point to this being an assembly line mistake that was "repaired" on the fly. Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? There are still fingerprints in the putty. Maybe I can track down the culprit and find out what happened.





The pieces fit back together, sort of. This is normal for shortening the bedsides. A bit of tweaking the panels and they will come together nicely. Rinse and repeat on the other side and now there's no turning back! This truck will officially become a shortbed. Add a custom plate and now we have the meaning behind the thread title, Lowly the shortbed convert.

[raggedjim]

Nice work, good practice for your son's truck!

Have a great Father's Day!

[hewittca]

I mentioned there was good reason I haven't made much progress on my truck, and it is because of... another truck! My kids have always been around helping me with my trucks, and my son in particular has been talking for years about eventually buying his own truck. With him turning 13 this year I thought now is a good time to foster that interest and give him something of his own to work on. My hope is that by the time he starts driving he has built up some sweat equity in the truck and confidence in his ability to work on his own vehicle. My wife and I threw in some seed funds and we were able to find a project that proved to be a perfect starting point. In some regards, it's nicer than my truck! I had him start a build thread you can find here: Oscar the 70 C10. I will leave the details for him to share, but here's one photo of his truck after we got it home and in the garage.

[Pingar]

This is a great Father’s Day post. Congrats on his first truck. Happy Father’s Day.

[loudchevy]

I followed the Metal Ox Fab video for my cuts as well. He did a great job showing the measurements/lay outs.

I cut out the side markers since I was adding a squarebody gas door in it's place for a relocated gas tank filler. It made for a little bit of an easier cut on the rear of the panel.

Nice job, so cool to have both trucks in the garage together!

[hewittca]

My motivation to get out in the garage always diminishes in the summer due to the temperature and humidity, but I'm still trying to make progress when I can. I was able to get the bed fully disassembled and cut to pieces. My bed floor was junk due to the years of wet trash that filled the bed, so every single bed bold had to be drilled out. Not fun, but it's done.





My next task is to source a bed floor so I have a solid base to mount my bedsides to. This will help me fixture the pieces and get all three aligned. I plan to wait on the frame modifications until all body panel work is complete, however, it was too easy to go ahead and chop off the 8" from the rear of the frame. That's it for now. I will most likely divert attention to the motor next since my son has been anxious to get going on that. The original 6 from my truck will end up in his as a starting point to get his truck moving under its own power.

[hewittca]

Wow, time flies. I have a few updates to catch up on, but it's been several months since I've actually worked on my truck. One reason for this is that I diverted my attention to my friend's truck for the last two months. We came up with this idea to get all the external work done on his truck to bring it to the C10 Fall Revival, which was Oct 17/18. When we started this goal the truck still needed quite a bit of work to get it ready, most notably the paint work. This is the point we were at when we started, but I will leave the conclusion up to him. He is currently working on updating his build thread to get caught up to present here.



Going back to before I was working on my friend's truck, I decided that I would pull the engine from mine and donate it to my son's project. We just needed something to get his moving on its own for now. Considering his had no drivetrain, and I will be doing another LS swap, it made sense to reuse my old inline 6. It's one of those "ran when parked" specials, so we are going to see if it can be resurrected.





His project is meant to be a confidence building exercise as much as it is for fun. Having removed the front clip made the engine removal process fairly straightforward. Here's a time lapse.

https://youtu.be/fx4lmWRjAqo

I was also able to make some progress on the bedsides. In order to properly align the pieces, I really wanted to have a bed floor available. I was able to secure an original short floor from Steve at Piedmont Traction. I've known him for a while now and he always seems to have the missing pieces I need.



Even though I had an original floor and I spent a fair amount of time marking these sides for cutting, it was still a challenge to get the pieces to line up. After many test fits and adjustments, I finally got them tacked together. I missed the mark a bit on the curved section of the rear pieces, but they were still close enough that I could stretch a tac weld across the gap.











The next step is to finish welding and grinding out these seams. I will then focus on paint matching them. This brings us back to present on the build. Hopefully going into fall I can find some time to finish these bedsides. My one year goal on this truck was to have all body panel work complete. I've missed that deadline, but if I can get it all done by the end of this year I will consider that good progress.

[Chevys4life]

Man.......you got your hands full and I see you are on top of it!!!

[zicc1835]

back in for this ride ...I have missed a lot over the last months

[hewittca]

Another two months have flown by, and I have been making progress in the background of life. On the bedsides, I was undecided on how I wanted to raise the bed up until the moment I started working on it. At first I convinced myself I would weld angle iron onto the inner bedside to recreate the flange that sits on the bedfloor. After mocking this up I was not pleased with the look, so I ended up going back to the method I used on my first truck. I left an extra inch of material and then bent that up to make a new flange. In the end, I think this was the right way to go. It created a seamless solution that still looks like it could have been factory.









The only thing I needed to massage for this to work was the corner where the recessed area of the inner bedside met the bed floor. I basically split the flange before bending it, welded it and the corner back together, and then grinded it out.





After getting all the flanges recreated it was time to mock up the bed. As everyone knows, the front panel is a pain to install by yourself, so I grabbed the nearest kid and we made quick work of it. I made sure to align everything before drilling the holes in the new flanges. This made assembly a breeze. The only thing left to do was to admire the new shallow bed and throw a wheel on to see what the final ride height would look like.

[hewittca]

On my last truck there were two things that I never got around to finishing, the wheel tubs and the gas filler door. I'm determined to make sure I get those done on this one. First up is the wheel tubs. I decided I would make the stock tubs fit without shortening them. My short tubs on the last truck were too short and I was close to rubbing. These first photos show the dropped bedside on the left only to show where the tub would land with the 6" bed floor raise.





Since the tub crosses into the region of the inner bedside that is not vertical, I had to remove a wedge from the tub.





It's a very subtle change, but it ensures that the tub mates directly with the inner bedside. At a later date I will replace the rotten flange.



Second, it was time to complete this fuel door idea I had on the last truck. I used a late '90s S10 fuel door hinge and cut a 6" diameter hole in the floor for the door. For the backing plate I used a section of bed floor that was left over from my old truck when I shortened it.





In theory the door works as I envisioned. The main issue with it is this hinge is fairly flexible, so it's very easy to tweak the door so it doesn't close properly. I will just have to be mindful of this whenever I use it, or when I load anything in the bed. Have I mentioned I still intend to use this as a truck?

[hewittca]

By this point I was starting to lose a bit of motivation to keep going. Not that I was thinking in the least of quitting, I just needed something new to spark my motivation again. I decided to commit to a wheel/tire combo and order some new parts. Again, for this truck it is about going back to the things on the first truck I never finished and completing the vision I had for that truck. One thing that was the cornerstone of my vision was black 15" wheels with meaty tires. I will hold off on the wheels for now since they are backordered, however, the tires showed up! These are 295/55 Mickey Thompson drag radials, which is the only tire I could find in this size that I wanted. I have no clue how long these will last, but they sure do look cool! I think this is safely the largest tire I can squeeze on this truck with the drop that I am after.







Here's a few more mockup shots for motivation purposes.





After this, it was time to get back to the fab work. You may have noticed in some of these shots I have finished welding the bedsides back together and started to grind them out. This, coupled with all the rust repair on the cab, is going to test my patience and will serve as good practice for my beginner welding skills.

[SCOTI]

As always, I like the details.

[raggedjim]

Nice work so far. You may be able to install a backing flange for the gas lid so it closes level, maybe with a magnet to help keep it in position.

Rg

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by raggedjim

Nice work so far. You may be able to install a backing flange for the gas lid so it closes level, maybe with a magnet to help keep it in position.

Rg

Looks like there is a backer in the images (Post #46; pics #8, 9). You can see the spot welds under the top bed skin where the square piece from the earlier image (#6) is doubling up the material around the hinged door.