Project "My Happy Mess"

[litew8]

Did a little more work today, nothing serious or very productive.
I plan to work overtime cleaning truck metal these next few days and my
goal is to have all metal cleaned up and ready for the next phase.








Found another stamping on the tailgate. In the picture, the numbers are
right-side up, but on the tailgate - they are stamped up-side down on the
lower back, passenger side.




Started cleaning the cowl, and blasted the spare tire holder.






The Fixer's last truck project stopped by today, so I took some pics
to show everyone the quality work to be expected when it comes time to
paint my truck. Those that know will notice this Chevy truck isn't all Chevy.
It's got some F**d parts, the bed box is one of them. This was a quick
restore The Fixer did for a Veteran. He wasn't looking to have it
redone for show quality - but you should have seen this truck before!
The engine was also built by The Fixer, and dropped in.

We support our troops, past and present!

[litew8]

"Found another stamping on the tailgate. In the picture, the numbers are
right-side up, but on the tailgate - they are stamped up-side down on the
lower back, passenger side."

Driver's side, not passenger's.

[oldman3]

Nice looking truck....Jim

[litew8]

Thanks Jim For whatever reason, the original bed wasn't usable so
they went with what they could get. The owner didn't care so long as he had
his 46 (I think) to drive. If I remember right, it was a barn find for him. It was
in really bad shape when The Fixer brought it in. He fab'd up the stainless
for the inner bed. We have some cell phone pics, not sure they'll clean up and
are blurry. I'll try and see if I can clean them up some and post later.

Found another picture of my truck just before tear-down of the front clip, but
right after having removed the bed (late June 2011).

Man! We've come a long way! Notice the fender pinstripe




And a couple - who can guess this? pictures

[litew8]

Here are the before pictures - 46 Chevy truck. Can you spot the mock up engine?




Back to work.
Cleaning of the cowl vent panel a little more, the other day -




Funny how things are in plain sight but never noticed. More grease pen
markings & metal stamping from the factory/assembly line. 1971 U.S.A.


On the underside of the cowl vent panel:




On the inside, driver's fender:




Number stamp, inside, driver's fender.
Two different styled 3's? Cool.




Went to clean up the insides of the fenders. Not looking to take down
to bare metal entirely since the factory paint is a good base/primer in of
itself. We'll shoot directly over it for added protection. There also seems
to already be a black primer/protection beneath the remaining paint. The
stuff doesn't remove easily. They'll get primed and coated with something
later on.




Inside of the OEM replacement fender I got, back when. The lower trim
holes were welded up, and here you can see the upper trim holes also welded
up - very nicely done! Not a disappointment to see PO work here!
Someone did it right, and we'll use the welds as markers for re-drilling the
holes for the upper/lower trim. I cleaned up around them good, the
rest I just scuffed or better depending on the amount of visible surface rust,
and how easily I could access. I wanted to keep as much original coating as
possible, where allowed.




Other areas of the replacement fender needing attention -






Finished -

















Going over them with the da, or larger - tomorrow to finish them up.
Maybe hit the hood while I'm at it.

.

[mightymouse]

hey litew8, looking good

[chevy2racr]

you know that tailgate woulda looked great just how it was on my 71 lwb...

[litew8]

Thanks

chevy2racr, just for ^ comment, you get more tailgate pics
A couple more hours of work. Can't wait for this stint of work to be over with.
And I'm willing to bet, for how boring my pics have been lately, neither can you!


Tailgate finished, almost, I have a little on each end left




Took the handle/guts out and cleaned them up today. The screws broke
free after having to buy a #4 Phillips screwdriver. Damn For being
41 years old and never touched, we kicked their asses and they broke free




Just noticed, I missed one




Fenders pretty much finished (see a trend here ). Pic from the other day.




Yesterday, put the hoist to use
Remember when I first started to paint the frame of the truck and I intended
to use the hoist to spray the underside - but there were no pictures of that?
That's because my truck's frame is too skinny to fit on The Fixer's hoist

We could have modified it with some beams, but didn't. We are lazy
Anyway, here's the hood getting some attention. On the hoist, raised up a little
more than waist high.










Another stamp found. This is on the hood, driver's edge -
That's an awfully weak looking 3




Misc.

[oldman3]

Moving right along.....Jim

[litew8]

Body work and primer coming up next.

[litew8]

Couple more hours of work today.
Went and got the other tailgate parts I had stashed away and cleaned them.






Then I jumped back over and gave the hood more attention.
One edge I hadn't gotten to the other day, and double checked the rest.








Notice in the picture above ^ , how the hood looks kind of bad on the
underside? I decided to break out the degrease-r and clean it up some.
To my surprise, the black is shinny BLACK and the white pinstripe didn't wipe off.
The Fixer thinks it's POR15, or something similar, to have held
up so well. Maybe they repainted the underside 20+ years ago before they
applied the pinstripe? Not sure, but they did a good job.

I went ahead and cleaned the whole underside a couple of times to fully
remove any grease/dirt. The white is clean/bright and the black is clean/dark.

I'm strongly considering just leaving it as is - except maybe taking some
lacquer thinner to the two lower corner ones, and removing the circular
shape - leaving the winged parts only. This will save us labor and paint.
I'm not really concerned, nor do I really care - what the underside of the
hood looks like, as long as it is in decent shape. The firewall and the inside
of the cab are not getting repainted either. The inside of the cab may get
repainted in a year or two. No hurry.

I'll photoslop and post the removal of some of the pinstripe later.












Pictures for the Pit Boss.
Craftsmanship by The Fixer. Idea by me.
Simple but a very nice improvement.

[litew8]

More...

Edited the hood pic, removed the two circular parts on each end near
the front of the hood.

Before:




Edited:




Started working on the kick panels today. A previous owner thought it be
cool to put 4 screws into the passenger's kick panel. 3 circles on the pic below,
but there's really 4 holes. 2 next to each other in the middle circle. The only guess
I could come up with was that there might have been a small garbage can installed
here. Otherwise, the screws/holes have no known purpose - unless I forgot
what they were for

We decided to fill the holes on the cheap without doing actual body work.
The Fixer's craftsmanship - cheap and dirty, put over-sized screws into the holes
then cut off the heads and grind smooth - done. A nice little surprise for the next
owner -














Both panels - paint scuffed and cleaned beforehand.
Both sides were shot, ready for paint (soon) -




A little more work to the hood -

[litew8]

Just now seeing (diff. monitor) how bad my edit job is on the pic above.
I'll redo a version and post later.

[litew8]

Buona Pasqua tutti. (Happy Easter everyone.)

[litew8]

Removed and revised the pic. I think I'll just leave the custom pinstripe
alone. The hood hardly gets opened anyway, and someone took the time
to paint these on by hand. They did a clean job, I'd guess they were going
for a country western theme.

Here's a re-revised pic just for fun.




More original shots -






Misc. - Name this area.

[litew8]

I was mistaken about the year for this truck, it's a 1941 not a 1946!

[Low Elco]

Gitche Gumee! Fixer's truck looks good.! I need a blast cabinet!

[litew8]

You've been forewarned. The next few posts may display
disconcerting graphics, and not so favorable comments towards
the body shop that worked on my truck. I'll post the pictures for all to
see, and later I will post a full page article, with pictures in the review
section of the site. This stuff is disturbing.

Never again.

The Fixer's high quality workmanship is able to correct it all with
little effort - he's that good. So all is not lost. But it's worth sharing with
others who may be deciding on getting work done to their trucks, to think
twice before.

[Low Elco]

Sorry, man. It always seems to be a crap shoot.
Posted via Mobile Device

[litew8]

Hey Low Elco, my brother thanks you for the compliment. As for the crap shoot, we find it funny that they used a CRAP load of bondo. I never asked for that kind of body work and they did it quickly, in between my visits. They only put it on to cover-up their CRAP job. What I could not take pictures of successfully - are all the large DENTS they made on the driver's cab corner. I might be able to invert the picture to draw out the concave areas. I have a ton of pictures of that, and other stuff we've been doing lately and will try and post some later today.

[litew8]

This post contains DISTURBING graphics not suitable for
children or experienced auto body professionals. Please be advised what
you are about to see is the work of a body shop that performed work on
my truck. In prepping the truck for paint, we find some very awkward
workmanship and we are VERY DISSATISFIED.

I will NEVER again bring my truck to that establishment, nor will
I EVER refer anybody to them.

-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------

The Fixer and I are prepping the cab for primer. To do so, we
need to sand the surface. One morning he begins to remove "the body
shop's" primer - due to it being what he calls "CHEAP CRAP". While sanding
the primer, the surprises begin to reveal themselves. The driver's cab corner
being the worse.

Lets start with pictures taken RIGHT BEFORE I took my truck home. These
shots were taken on the body shop's driveway - sitting waiting for me.
Take a long good look at this pictures!





Look at this picture, notice anything UNUSUAL about it?
I can't believe I didn't spot it before.




Now the stomach ulcers begin! The Fixer removing the "CHEAP CRAP"
find something even MORE SICKENING! Damn near ONE INCH of BONDO! WTF!???


Driver's side -





- - - - -








Passenger's side -





- - - - -


The mess left after removing it all. WTF!!!!!!







Now with all the CRAP removed, we see things even more DISTURBING!
Backside of passenger's cab corner is bowing inward.




Backside of driver's cab corner is all DENTED TO HELL!! Someone
got hammer happy and really F*CKED this one up and didn't know how to
fix it so they filled it in with A SH!T LOAD of bondo! WTF!!!!!!
The camera won't pick up the dents so I outlined the entire area.

Picture inverted




The further we go, the more CRAP WORKMANSHIP we find!
Look at their welds, they didn't even grind them down!

Speaking of grinding, my windshield is all F*CKED up NOW (after having
left the body shop), I've got tons of metal specks EMBEDED on the inside
the windshield. That's right, I've got metal from grinding melted into my
glass. My windshield is WORTHLESS NOW thanks to some
DUMB F*CKERS!




Look at this picture. Some DUMB F*CK bondo'd my trim holes up!




And look at this CRAP! Some IDIOT cut the rocker too short and left a gap!
Of course you couldn't see it because it was full of bondo! AS*HOLES!

Over on the passenger's side -




====================================================
====================================================

My Brother (The Fixer) is a highly skilled craftsman in many fields,
especially body/paint work. The only reason why he didn't do this work to
my truck in the first place was due to another job and no time. My Brother
has since fixed all of these issues with little effort and I'll post pics up next.

I never asked the body shop to bondo the LIVING CRAP out of my truck.
All I wanted was the panels attached. They put all this crap bondo on in
between my visits, quickly covering up their POOR workmanship. Norwalk,
Iowa - PM me for their website address.

[oldman3]

Sorry for all the **** you are going through, I've seen a lot of this type of work. I've corrected more than I wanted to for friends that wanted to save a few bucks and went to the wrong places.....Jim

[doubleb's69]

Thats screwed up. All that hard work just to have to do it all over again. I think you should let everyone know what shop did this and who was the foreman in charge of the idiots that thought they could do body work.

[YBNORML]

Nice build! I think it is pretty cool that you are going to leave the underhood as the PO left it.

Unfortunately there seems to be more crappy body shops than there is quality ones. I'm glad you noticed that poor workmanship before you got too far into the final stages of bodywork. I think it is the scariest part of any build!

[litew8]

Originally Posted by oldman3

Sorry for all the **** you are going through, I've seen a lot of this type of work. I've corrected more than I wanted to for friends that wanted to save a few bucks and went to the wrong places.....Jim

When the owner tells you that they specialize in
our trucks, I guess that's a red flag. What a joke.

Originally Posted by doubleb's69

Thats screwed up. All that hard work just to have to do it all over again. I think you should let everyone know what shop did this and who was the foreman in charge of the idiots that thought they could do body work.

Not sure it was solely the "foreman" that is
accountable, since I dealt directly with the owner for all work. It's a small
shop with only a few employees - he's for sure in charge and the one I'd
lay blame.

Originally Posted by YBNORML

Nice build! I think it is pretty cool that you are going to leave the underhood as the PO left it.

Unfortunately there seems to be more crappy body shops than there is quality ones. I'm glad you noticed that poor workmanship before you got too far into the final stages of bodywork. I think it is the scariest part of any build!

Thanks for the compliments. We are going to shoot
the supports that border the underside of the hood with a chassis black. We're thinking we'll
also use the chassis black for the front inner wheel housings.

Re: workmanship of that body shop: At least they managed to actually weld the panels on
I'd like to know what they thought - that we weren't going to dig into it and
find all this garbage work? LOL again, what a joke.


Here's their website, and they make claim of doing restoration work.
Can't speak for anyone else, but they sure as hell didn't restore mine satisfactorily.

Warren County Customs LLC
6294 55th Ave
Norwalk, IA 50211
515-371-4782

http://www.warrencountycustomsllc.com/

Give them a call if you want work as shown above done.
I did mention the windshield to him as being ruined due to cutting/grinding of the cab
corners and rockers - he refused to acknowledge it and said it must have happened when
I had taken my truck to the sand blaster. Yeah, right - like sand is going to somehow,
magically, embed/melt pieces of metal into my windshield rather than simply etch. Wrong.
I guess I'm lucky they didn't burn holes in my dash pad.

What a joke.