pdx-sanity66

[pdxhall]

pics of the hood.

[53Sparky]

Originally Posted by pdxhall

I've almost completed all the mechanical and wiring of the truck. I have been working heavily on body work right now. I've been working on stripping the outsides of the door panels. I've also repatched the gas fill hole after a complete fail with the aftermarket patch I wasted $10 on. I cut it out and made my own patch. It worked out much better.

Looking good! What method are you using to strip the doors? It looks even and clean.
The gas fill repair 2.0 looks better, too!

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by 53Sparky

Looking good! What method are you using to strip the doors? It looks even and clean.
The gas fill repair 2.0 looks better, too!

Thanks. I used my 5" random orbit disk sander with 80 grit. Then did a little sanding by blocks and 120 grit. These doors are in extremely good condition on the outside. I will be media blasting the insides and after I cut the bottom inside rust out I will media blast the insides before patching things back up. I really prefer to large panels by hand rather than media blasting. I can get a better feel for any problem areas as I strip them. As for the gas fill, I had some left over steel from my cab corner patch that I was able to form the bends with a little tweaking here and there and a light skim coat of filler.

[pdxhall]

I have given up on the hood patch for now. I have tried several times to patch it and I just can't get a pesky warp out. I have covered it up so I won't keep obsessing about it. If anybody has a scrap hood laying around that has a good passenger rear corner piece I will pay a fair price for it.
So I am moving ahead for now. I decided to start on the doors. passenger side first. I removed the door, inspected what was needed on the bottom, and cut it out and fitted up the patch. it seems to fit fairly well with a small amount of adjustment. So now it's time to media blast the rest of the door inside and out, and epoxy prime before welding in the patch. I have to go out and pick up more crushed glass media before I start. We're having some wind and rain moving through so I'm also waiting for better weather.

[roll_the_dice]

Sometimes you just have to step back and take a break! I have many times hit my head against the wall...stopped waiting and then it all made sense and I got done what I needed.

Door looks good...that is about the only thing I still need to do to mine...but I am enjoying driving it too much to take the door off. haha

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by roll_the_dice

Sometimes you just have to step back and take a break! I have many times hit my head against the wall...stopped waiting and then it all made sense and I got done what I needed.

Door looks good...that is about the only thing I still need to do to mine...but I am enjoying driving it too much to take the door off. haha

Thanks. This was supposed to be my last body work and I was going to wait until I got on the road before starting them. But now I have this hood thing going on I decided to go ahead with the doors.
Yesterday I decided to cut up the driver door bottom and prep it for blasting. It's such a messy job I figure I will do both doors while I'm at it. I'll post some progress pics later.

[pdxhall]

I've got the driver door bottom cut out. It is not as bad as the pass. side. I'm still working on it but as soon as our winter weather here in Tucson improves I'll be media blasting both doors. I got my LED tail light and front turn signal lights a couple of days ago. I installed and tested the front lights even though I haven't got them installed and they are real nice. The tail lights are another story, first try after installing the LEDs and I have no power going to the rear. I need to trouble shoot but I don't anticipate anything serious.

[SkinnyG]

Nice to see drains in those patches. Mine didn't come with drains; I had to put them in.

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by SkinnyG

Nice to see drains in those patches. Mine didn't come with drains; I had to put them in.

I noticed that on your build page. These are tri-plus pieces and the fit is very nice. Not perfect but an easy adjustment. Right now I'm waiting for nicer weather so I can do some blasting and move ahead with this project.

[pdxhall]

Here are a few more pics of the pass. door. I blasted the entire inside and then coated the inside with rust reformer and then a coat of Eastwood rust encapsulater the patch has been tack welded on. test fitted to make sure it fit. Now I will finish welding it up and then the outside gets epoxy. I'm also at the same point with the drivers door. pics to follow.

[Android04]

Looking good!

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by Android04

Looking good!

Thanks for compliment.
Here are the pics of the drivers door. There is much less surface rust on the inside and the corners are better. Same procedure as the other door. The one shot shows the pie cuts and manipulation to make the sides match up. The corners on the original are sharper than the patch so I had to get them to blend together. I had to do this on both doors. Now that I've checked the fit I get to finish weld the whole thing.

[cwcarpenter98]

Your repairs are lookin' great! Having doors without giant holes in the bottom is so nice. There's considerably less road noise even without adding any sound deadening

[roll_the_dice]

I've got to repair the bottom of my doors...I just got my welding setup...time to start practicing before I do the doors. What adjustments did you have to do to the bottom patch panel to make it work better? Love the drain holes!

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by roll_the_dice

I've got to repair the bottom of my doors...I just got my welding setup...time to start practicing before I do the doors. What adjustments did you have to do to the bottom patch panel to make it work better? Love the drain holes!

The patches on the sides had a more rounded edges where it joined the side of the doors which have a sharper 90 deg edge . I had to make a few pie cuts to blend things together. the rest fit together very well and they came with drain holes.

[pdxhall]

I've got the welding and grinding done on the inner patches of both doors. I am going to get some epoxy primer on both sides of them before before continuing. So I'm working on setting them up to spray today. I'm also trying to set up scaffolding of sorts so I can get to the front of the roof to start installation of the roof lights.

[aggie91]

Looking good!

[pdxhall]

Well, I've been real lazy about posting my progress but I have made a lot of progress and I've tried to check in on others work almost daily. By the way. thanks Karl. I have the doors epoxy primed and ready to continue with some more bodywork, I made a redneck scaffolding and got my roof lights wired, and I revisited my attempt to fix the passenger side rear corner of the hood that I totally botched the first attempt. It was so bad I'm embarrassed to show pics so I covered it up with a rag so I would quit being obsessed about it and let it go. My biggest dilemma was finding a patch. Trying to find a decent hood patch was not working out. I decided to cut out the bad patching job while looking for a solution. There are a lot of complex curves involved so I just didn't want to tackle fabricating what I needed.
So I'm sitting looking at the hole in the hood and I had an idea. If you take the cowl extension from the opposite side that you are working on, you can drill a few spot welds out (this gives you a perfect back lip) and then carefully cut the rest of the brackets including the extension. This gave me an almost perfect 12"x12" patch for the corner. I'd be surprised if nobody has thought of this but it worked out great. I had a bigger area that I needed to replace. I still had pieces of my donor hood to extend the patch another 3" or so. I welded the patches together and also used a piece to extend the bottom lip(the cowl extension has about a half inch lip so I welded a piece in to extend the lip to match the rest of the lip). I am very happy with the fit and I started to tack things in place. Here are some pics of the project.

[roll_the_dice]

Brilliant idea about the cowls! How did you wire the lights? Are they wired to your regular lighting or do you have a separate switch?

[cwcarpenter98]

Necessity is the mother of invention right?

The new patch looks great! Once it's done, no one will know that it was from the cowl unless you tell them

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by roll_the_dice

Brilliant idea about the cowls! How did you wire the lights? Are they wired to your regular lighting or do you have a separate switch?

I'm still amazed at how well it worked and I got the cowl free from my great neighbor James. He's the guy that gave me the donor hood. I spliced into the taillight wiring running down the frame rail below

Originally Posted by cwcarpenter98

Necessity is the mother of invention right?

The new patch looks great! Once it's done, no one will know that it was from the cowl unless you tell them

Thanks Christian.
I finished the welding on the hood today except the bottom edge. Since I don't posses the ability to weld upside down. I'll take care of it when the hood comes off for paint.

[pdxhall]

I've got the entire top of the hood to strip, bodywork, and epoxy.
Here are some pics of the wiring of the roof lights and my scaffolding (what a crazy setup but it worked) made with my extension ladder. One end on my workbench and the end held up by my overhead by my crane and various straps to stabilize that end. It worked fine to get to the front of the roof. I had totally given up on snaking the power wire from the roof down into the cab. I mean every possible way and with no luck. I made an executive decision to go ahead and drill the hole in the roof where the center light power wire is and work from there. After drilling the hole it took about 10 minutes of fishing around and I was able to run the wire down the rear driver corner where the courtesy light comes down. I was then able to to get the other two lights wired. I've got the connectors hooked up so all I have to do is plug in the pigtails when I mount the lights. I need to drill a few more holes to mount the lights. I've got LED bulbs and new pigtails for the lights and I've got some gasket material on order to go between the light assembly and the roof. I hope it works.

[ElReeso]

One crazy thread with very helpful information! Subbed!

[pdxhall]

Originally Posted by ElReeso

One crazy thread with very helpful information! Subbed!

Thanks for looking in.

[clemdaddy]

Killer idea on using the cowl corners to fix the hood... consider it stolen.
Great work my friend, stay after it.