1963 LWB bagged project

[uber cool]

Nice 63, I sold my s10 for the same reason too lol

[provelless]

Since I wasn't sure what I was going to do on the door, re-skin or find a used one, I moved on to the bed. Started on the drivers side because it looked the worse. Actually the rust repair didn't look that bad to fix but damn there is bondo from tail light to two feet past wheel well.

[provelless]

I got to this point on drivers side and decided to see what the pass side looked like. Again rust repair does look that bad but double damnnn on the bondo! There's places over 3/8 's deep in bondo and bondo from tail light to front.

[provelless]

So at this point I have to decide if this bed is worth saving and if I can find another bed, parts around here are impossible to find. Looking at the driver side , it looks pretty straight so I'm not sure why all the bondo. I may go ahead and grind the pass side down to metal and see what it looks like.

Meanwhile I mocked a engine and trans up. I've been very curious as how the transmission was going to fit the tunnel since the 2" z-frame. It's close, I have about 1/2" clearance at front of doghouse and rest of trans clears good. My hump is 7" high so FYI if your zing a frame and have a smaller hump you may be cutting the floor. I could also drop engine about one and a half inches and may do that to get a little more clearance.

[provelless]

Ok so it's been a while but I'm making some progress I couldn't find a good bed so I decided to repair mine, this took a while. Both sides had deep bondo from tail light to front, both sides were bowed out in the middle quite a bit then the rust repair. I ended up taking the whole bed down to metal because the top layer of paint was coming loose and under it was a layer of primer that had rust coming through. I used paint remover, sand paper, and a sand blaster some. In hind sight I would have been weeks ahead if I would have taken it somewhere and had it sand blasted.

[provelless]

One of the many problems I had on the body work was the wheel well lip. I kept trying to get it to look right but I wasn't even getting close. Then I made this little tool, probably took about 15 minutes to make and it worked great.











I would spread the bondo on the lip then start at the back of the wheel well, tilt the tool slighty as I pulled it toward me and it would squeeze out a perfect lip.

[provelless]

So now the bed is painted and back on the truck.

[provelless]

Now that the bed is back on the wheels/tires look so tiny. Wheels are 17," tires are 27.5 tall any suggestions on what wheel/ tire would looked best? I played with some plasti dip on rear wheel to see if black wheels would look better with the paint

[1963c-10]

Great progress on the bed sides. A lot of time and work in it, but it came out great!!!!

[provelless]

Thanks 1963c10, I wouldn't want to paint it gloss black but it's not bad. Since dealing with the bed, the door I wanted to replace doesn't seem so bad. So I replaced the bottom and grinded out all the bondo. The door had been hit vertically right down the middle and had been pulled back out. This left the middle of the door bowed out. I'm not a body man and I always have trouble with large areas of sheetmetal that's bowed in or out. My solution this time was to make a cut right down the middle of the door and weld it back up. This worked great!

[provelless]

So finished up the body work and sprayed them last night. Came home and bolted them up.

[CHIZZLER]

Looking good.

[provelless]

Ok so it's been a while since my last post but I'm finally finished with this project. This is the longest time I've ever took to get one finished and just got burned out or maybe just getting old, not sure I ended up rebuilding a 305 I had and adding a small Summit cam sounds great and will boils the tires thru second gear, good enough. My air compressor wasn't reliable so I ended up using my ac compressor to supply air to the bags. So far this has worked great and will fill the tank in about 20 seconds.

[provelless]

[Rorkrado]

Loving the LB! I may have missed it, but where are the rear wheel tubs from?? Need something similar for my 66 long bed.