"BUILD: 1970 C10 LWB--->SWB “Jumping Cholla”

[loudchevy]

Pics

[raggedjim]

You have brought that cab back to life. I dread doing mine!

[zicc1835]

just read through your build...outstanding ......you have lots of metal work talent and tackling a SWB conversion along the way great accomplishment and all this in less than 6 months ...and all that wire wheeling ....amazing..... looking forward to seeing more and the finish product

[Chaparralman1974]

She is looking good Scott! You will have that truck back on the road in no time!! :-)

Clay

[loudchevy]

Thanks Gents

[loudchevy]

I had another weekend of great progress. I got the hood and doors all stripped down on Thursday and Friday to be ready with the bottom of the cab for some primer on Saturday and Sunday. Sat morning I got the inner side of the doors and hood and the bottom of the cab sprayed.

[loudchevy]

Sunday morning I flipped the hood and doors over and got the outside sprayed with epoxy. Then I sprayed 2 coats of Raptorliner on the bottom of the cab. The way that Raptor looked on the bottom made all the hours of cleaning worth it. I'm pretty pleased with how everything turned out so far.

[rodstored-72]

scott, nice progress looks really nice!! before ya know it...you'll be pulling your hair out wiring it!!...

[loudchevy]

Originally Posted by rodstored-72

scott, nice progress looks really nice!! before ya know it...you'll be pulling your hair out wiring it!!...

Good thing I shave my head on a weekly basis! I actually enjoy wiring when you can start with a clean slate. Digging into someone's rat nest of wiring hacks, splices, and general garbage is the worst.

[Chaparralman1974]

Damn Scott! Looking great!! Keep it up! I gotta step up my game now. LOL!


Clay

[loudchevy]

On Saturday the boy I and bolted all the panels together and made everything look like a truck again. I still have some work to do on gaps and panel alignment but by the end of the day on Sunday, I had everything but the hood gaps looking decent. I put the door seals and the door latch hardware on and got the doors opening and closing. I went through the door hinges and cleaned them up so they actually would move on the hinge. The doors open all the way without extra effort to push them open.

I also had to give the garage a deep cleaning, swept/vacuumed, cleaned and put away hand tools, organized, and finally tossed some old junk that wasn't going to be re-used on the truck. There was months of C10 building debris everywhere.

It felt great to roll the truck out of the garage and take a look at it in the sun. I tossed on the the beat up OG grille, cracked a beer and smiled

Next up will be some body filler on the visible dents.

[Chaparralman1974]

She's alive!!!! Great work Scott!

Did you take the hinges off of the doors? Have you tried to align them back yet? I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to align mine.

Clay

[loudchevy]

Originally Posted by Chaparralman1974

She's alive!!!! Great work Scott!
Did you take the hinges off of the doors? Have you tried to align them back yet? I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to align mine.
Clay

Thanks Clay! I did take them off the doors, but before I removed them I drilled 2 locator holes in each hinge through to the door. It definitely helped getting them back on and having a good starting point so I really only had to worry about the hinge to A pillar connections. I should've drilled the holes in pillar sides of the hinges months ago when I first took them off the cab, but that didn't happen.

[rodstored-72]

great progress scott, nice to see you "moving" forward & that you are posting on here...

[Chaparralman1974]

Originally Posted by loudchevy

Thanks Clay! I did take them off the doors, but before I removed them I drilled 2 locator holes in each hinge through to the door. It definitely helped getting them back on and having a good starting point so I really only had to worry about the hinge to A pillar connections. I should've drilled the holes in pillar sides of the hinges months ago when I first took them off the cab, but that didn't happen.

Man, I wish I would have thought of that!!

I have been playing like hell to get the doors aligned....I don't know how they managed to do it on the assembly line.


Clay

[loudchevy]

I remember seeing that trick many years ago on TV and I finally got to use it.

Good luck on yours!

[D.B]

Originally Posted by loudchevy

On Saturday the boy I and bolted all the panels together and made everything look like a truck again. I still have some work to do on gaps and panel alignment but by the end of the day on Sunday, I had everything but the hood gaps looking decent. I put the door seals and the door latch hardware on and got the doors opening and closing. I went through the door hinges and cleaned them up so they actually would move on the hinge. The doors open all the way without extra effort to push them open.

I also had to give the garage a deep cleaning, swept/vacuumed, cleaned and put away hand tools, organized, and finally tossed some old junk that wasn't going to be re-used on the truck. There was months of C10 building debris everywhere.

It felt great to roll the truck out of the garage and take a look at it in the sun. I tossed on the the beat up OG grille, cracked a beer and smiled

Next up will be some body filler on the visible dents.

It looks like you fit right in with your neighbor across the street. Always nice to be around like minded people.

[loudchevy]

Originally Posted by D.B

It looks like you fit right in with your neighbor across the street. Always nice to be around like minded people.

The guy 2 doors down from me has a nice 72 C10 in glossy black as well.

[loudchevy]

Slow progress on the bodywork. Much like being noob on replacing rusted rockers, I started my noob bodywork journey on the wheel wells. I figured this was the best place to start as they are hidden under the hood. I hammered out as many dents as I could see and filled in the rest with some filler. I pictured applying filler in the same way you use plaster with drywall. It's similar but filler dries pretty quick and is much more difficult to sand down. I laid down another coat of epoxy primer after the filler and then hit it with some low gloss Eastwood Underhood Black. They turned out not terrible so I moved on to some body panels.

[loudchevy]

It's hard to stop and take pictures when you and everything around you is covered in filler dust. Overall the body is in decent shape. A few dings here and there but nothing crazy, except the drivers door. I did my best to pull out the dent in the middle of the panel and got it within 1/8" of being straight. The dent was centered on the body line in the middle of the door. I tried to shape it and keep the bodyline without toooo much filler. I just have the top of the cab to fill a couple of spots and then seam seal the drip rail. I still have some body gap lines to adjust around the quarter panels, cowl, and hood.

I'll be happy when this body work is done. Once these last couple things are complete, I'll cover everything in a reduced coat of epoxy and then spray some high build primer for a final sanding.

No wonder why this costs so much for professionals to do. It's a ton of work.

[Chaparralman1974]

Originally Posted by loudchevy

It's hard to stop and take pictures when you and everything around you is covered in filler dust. Overall the body is in decent shape. A few dings here and there but nothing crazy, except the drivers door. I did my best to pull out the dent in the middle of the panel and got it within 1/8" of being straight. The dent was centered on the body line in the middle of the door. I tried to shape it and keep the bodyline without toooo much filler. I just have the top of the cab to fill a couple of spots and then seam seal the drip rail. I still have some body gap lines to adjust around the quarter panels, cowl, and hood.

I'll be happy when this body work is done. Once these last couple things are complete, I'll cover everything in a reduced coat of epoxy and then spray some high build primer for a final sanding.

No wonder why this costs so much for professionals to do. It's a ton of work.

Looking great Scott!! That is why it is called "Body Work"!! This is definitely the worst part of the project!


Clay

[loudchevy]

Some decent progress was made on Saturday. The firewall is now filled and sanded smooth along with some wavy portions of the top of the cab. I stripped all the panels off and started over with just the cab on the frame making sure it was level and square on the fame mounts. Then I slowly made my way to the front bolting and shimming panels to get the gaps to look nice. It's the best I got in me and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

We'll be pulling all the panels back apart soon and fitting the 454/700R4 between the frame rails. I still need to clean up the engine block and throw some fresh hugger orange on it. At the same time I'm gonna ditch the leaky chrome oil pan, clean up the serpentine belt accessories/brackets, and block off the mechanical fuel pump. Once the drivetrain is installed on the frame I really don't want to remove it, just add other ancillaries to it!

[Chaparralman1974]

Looking great Scott! That truck is coming together nicely.


Clay

[loudchevy]

Final item of test fitting....PO must have bumped into a pipe bollard or post because there was a big dent in the hood (where the filler is) on the passenger side and it continued down into the grill. I have put in a lot of time and effort into trying to re-use the OG grille, but it was just too banged up to get straightened and cleaned up to put back on the C10 and I gave up.

I bought a new reproduction piece from LMC as I didn't want to break the bank for a NOS piece. My expectation wasn't very high for it fitting right out of box and it's being the same thickness of metal, and I was right. However, after a few hours of tweaking here and there, I had it fitting pretty well. I had pulled off the mounting brackets from the OG grill, cleaned, and painted them to re-use on this repo. Once I got the mounting backets bolted to the fenders, most of the rivet holes on the new grill matched up to the holes in the brackets which was a nice surprise. I'm pretty happy with the end result even though I didn't drop the extra 150 bucks for the grill stamped with "CHEVROLET". The repo has the black color offset around the light bezels which I actually like better than the OG as it breaks up the shiny aluminum mass. The old grill will now become garage wall art!

[Chaparralman1974]

Looking great Scott!! I really have to step up my game a bit more to keep up with you!! :-)


Clay