72 C20 "Old Mustard"

[Mustard72]

Thanks, guys.

Ah, it was a different dremel attachment. I was just using a grinding stone.

[Mustard72]

Started on the right footwell panel and lower A pillar today. Replacing a lot more of the kick panel than I did on the other side. Drilled the spot welds out of the firewall flange connection and A-pillar connection. Still working on getting the new lower A-pillar cut and tweaked right, so haven't fired up the welder yet.

My Dad came over to help out today, as well. Always fun to work with Dad.

Threw in a pic of the fancy cold paint job on my brake booster and the newly rebuilt ($400 for the rebuild with a kit) that I just got back on Friday.

[sduckworth13]

Your moving along pretty good Nick. Old mustard has no more rust hanging off her anymore, nice job.

[87Jimmy4JP]

Awesome work, man!

very inspiring.

JP

[Mustard72]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, the cab's coming along nicely. The bed is notably absent from pictures so far though. Hopefully I'll have time before May to work on it, too. Focus is on the cab and engine at this point, though.

[Mustard72]

Managed to have a pretty productive weekend. Got some more engine parts cleaned up for the engine builder (bolts, alternator bracket, intake manifold, etc.). Lots of time spent at the bench grinder with the wire wheel cleaning stuff up. Fun, fun, fun.

Also got the passenger side kick panel, lower a-pillar, and rocker installed. I actually used almost all of the kick panel patch from LMC. Used the sheet metal screw plug weld method combined with the edge welding method (lap joint). I drilled three of the spot welds out of the firewall to kick panel flange connection, and ended up with a big hole on the inside of the cab. Not exactly sure how that happened, but I think my kick panel isn't quite where GM put the original back in the day. So, I had to weld a patch on. Should have done it from the inside, because I stink at anything resembling overhead welding. I got the patch half-ass tacked on, cleaned my mig nozzle out, and called it good.

[Mustard72]

Here's a couple pics of the patch job. I'm pretty proud.

After getting the kick panel welded in, I moved on to the lower a-pillar. Like the driver side, this ended up being a combination of lap joint and butt weld. The LMC patch required some bending to get it to fit, too. I test fit the rocker a bunch of times before finalizing the location, and welded the top first on both sides. Then I had to pound the middle part of the top section flush with the existing pillar surface right below the hinge screw holes. I left the original hinge screw holes in place. I accidentally hammered the surfaces a bit too far, so the pillar is now punched in a bit below the bottom hinge holes, but it should be OK. Welded the butt weld right below the hinge holes, hammered and clamped the bottom part of the pillar to the inner rocker of the floor, and welded it all up.

[Mustard72]

Woops. Here's the pics.

[sduckworth13]

Everything looks real solid Nick, nice job.

[Mustard72]

I thought the rocker was going to fit really well because it fit good when test fitting it for the a-pillar patch job. Unfortunately, once I put the door on to test fit, the rocker required a bunch of hammering on the ends to let the door open and close properly. Ended up making relief cuts on both ends to get it to overlap itself so I could get the right shape (or at least right enough). Had to pound down the curve at the back of the rocker where it goes up to the b-pillar quite a bit, and pound down the whole front of the rocker, too. This ended up pulling the top of the rocker towards the outside of the cab probably a half inch, which required still more beating with the hammer to get the surface to match the pillars at the front and back of the rocker. But, its steel, and fortunately it bends pretty nicely.

Plug welded the top of the rocker, along with the edge welding. Tried plug welding the bottom flange of the rocker again, but like the driver side, I had trouble with burn through due to not getting the outer rocker flange in contact with the inner rocker, even though I sheet metal screwed the gee whiz out of it. Still not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but I just pounded and clamped the lip of the outer rocker over the bottom of the inner rocker and welded it up from under the cab. Just like the driver side. Last pic shows the welds from under the cab. The shadows in the pic make it look like there's lots of burn through, but these welds are actually really good...better than most of the ones I'll have to see all the time from the top...

I am now officially out of patch panels to be welded onto the truck. Granted, the doors, fenders, inner fenders, and bed still not much attention. but I don't have any patches for them yet. Might be switching to Tabco for those patch panels. I've heard good things, and they are American made.

[gerfunken]

You may be out of parts, but this is where the tedium begins. Grind, weld, grind, weld... The nice part is that you can see the cab again.
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[87Jimmy4JP]

Thanks for posting all the trials and tribs, helps get us prepared for our own projects....springtime for me!...too cold in an unheated garage to start now!

Did the doors fit before welding?...Ill have to watch out for that if they did....

really coming along nicely...congrats on using up all those parts!

JP

[Mustard72]

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, it's starting to look like a cab again, more so than it has ever since we got the truck back in '86. The welds aren't pretty in a lot of spots, but everything seems really solid. Jumped, kicked, pounded, etc. trying to pop the panels loose, and short of nearly knocking the cab off the jackstands, nothing moved.

Gerfunken, I do have some more welding to do to fill holes and whatnot (as can be seen in some of the pictures), but I'm not going to get to worried about getting the welds flawless. I'll run out of time if I try to be too much of a perfectionist with it (although looking at the work done by other folks here is definitely inspiring), so filler will be my friend when it comes time to smoothe everything out.

JP, I'm glad you've found this useful. I am trying to write as much down as I can to help other folks who might be doing the same thing as me; sort of more a repair job for a work truck than a restoration. Granted, it's a frame off repair, but still.... I just don't have the skill or time to do what I'd call a true restoration.

And yes, the doors fit great before test fitting the rockers after getting the pillar work done. Both rockers needed some tweaking to get the backs low enough that the doors didn't rub. The passenger side also needed the front lowered. It was definitely more challenging than the drivers side, but Mr. Hammer forced it into submission and basically had to change the shape of the contoured part that is supposed to match the a-pillar connection. The doors will both work great, now. My hinges are worn, and I probably should have replaced them or at least got new pins for them, but I just lined up the doors with the worn hinges, drilled two alignment holes in each hinge (thanks, Scott, for telling me about that one), and set everything up according to that. I'll have to readjust the door alignment should I ever need to replace a hinge, but hopefully I won't have to do that, I guess (???) Man I'm cheap.

[87Jimmy4JP]

Originally Posted by Mustard72

Man I'm cheap.

Amen, brother!



JP

[Mustard72]

Started off the weekend trying to get the Pertronix Ignitor points eliminator kit into the distributor, but it turns out I have the wrong one (see pics). In the process, I also think I lost the retaining clip that holds the original breaker plate in place. At least I think I took off what appears to have been a retainer clip, and that thought was confirmed when I looked at the Chiltons manual after the effort to replace the points. The instructions from Pertronix didn't make any sense to me, but foolishly I didn't think at the time that they might be for a different distributor, I just figured it might be somewhat of a universal application type of thing.

I posted a question about this in the engine/drivetrain section and got a PM back confirming that it was the wrong kit. The fella that PM'd me said that the Pertronix kits weren't that good anyway, and I've read that elsewhere, too. I've got a line on a possible later model HEI big cap distributor for free from a guy at work that I might pursue further at this point. Does anybody know if the big cap fits on the 350 in this series of truck? I know my 76 had the big cap, but that was obviously a different body style truck.

After the distributor fiasco, I went about filling in a the remaining holes that needed filling with the welder and then started applying filler. Sort of a milestone, I guess, although I threw some on a while ago, too.

[Mustard72]

Got a bit of a late start on Sunday, as I took a bit of a snooze after church and didn't get out to the garage until 1:30 pm or so. Absolutely crappy outside here today. Chipped my left fender out of the ice outside beside the garage for starters. I was going to try and get a different one, but now I'm thinking I'm going to repair both of the fenders.

Then, I went about improving some of the fit issues with the cab corners and rockers. The first pics show the large gap between the cab corner and rocker on the right side. Probably should have done something about this before putting hte rocker on, but I didn't, so here we are. The gap between the rocker and cab corner is quite large, and the cab corner only touches hte inner rocker/floor at the bottom of the piece, leaving a large opening right into the back of the cab. The little patch I made basically just extends the flange on the cab corner over to the side of teh floor/inner rocker. With this in place, I will be able to apply a sealer between the rocker and cab corner much more effectively to close up the bottom of the cab and keep critters, water, etc. from getting up in there. I had to do basically the same thing on both sides of the cab, but on the drivers side I also had to make an extension from the bottom of the cab corner to the inner rocker/floor.

These LMC cab corners (and whoever else gets them from this supplier) are somewhat notorious for not fitting right. I'm thinking my issues have been compounded by using a non-oem floor along with my own inexperience with this work. I know their rockers are supposed to fit pretty well, typically, and I wrassled with those, too. It's all installed and solid, and tons better than what I started with, and will be good enough for a trailer pulling truck, but it's not going to win any shows, that's for sure.

[Mustard72]

These pics show the repair I did to the front of the drivers side rocker. I cut out way too much of the front panel of the rocker around where the grommet goes in during the rocker assembly. I don't recall exactly why I thought I needed to trim that much, but there it is. I just cut another piece of extra sheet metal and welded it in. I'll hole saw out another hole for the grommet and spray some sealant in there in the near future.

Once I got done with the patching, I spent the rest of the afternoon applying seam sealer to the seams at the fronts of the rockers where they join the a-pillars, the kick panel seams, the firewall to floor seam, and the seam along the back of the cab for both corners and the home made patch between the corners for the bottom of the back wall. Went through three foam brushes putting that stuff on. It's from Eastwood. I ended up wondering as I was putting it on if it were actually any improvement over the roofing tar we used during the first go around with this truck back in the late 80s. Maybe it sets up a little harder while still remaining flexible? In my cold shop, it was certainly pretty thick and not a pretty application.

Well, off to bed now. I've got some shovelling to do in the morning, as the snowblower in the back ground of many of the pics is ailing, and I'd rather work on Mustard than it...

[87Jimmy4JP]

I was chuckling as I read the last couple of posts....seems like thats the way it goes sometimes, right?...one step forward?

anyway...good to know the process you went through to get to the end product...

looks good, by the way...these smaller details just soak up so much time!

JP

[Mustard72]

Thanks, JP.

Didn't get much done this weekend, as we were at my brothers in MN racing RC cars at a really cool indoor track they have over there. Got my tail handed to me, but it was fun.

Did talk to the engine builder again. We're going to end up align honing the main bearing caps/block, so the rebuild price goes up another $125 or so. In older news that I don't think I mentioned earlier, I had one exhaust valve that was starting to crack a bit, further reinforcing the decision to have the 350 rebuilt. It wasn't too far from burning off chunks and losing compression. It's fun going over to his shop where he always has other engines that he's working on, most of which are more exciting than my rather mild 350.

[Mustard72]

Back to some more mechanical disassembly this weekend with tearing into the front suspension/brakes/bearings, etc. The pic shows the right side, which for some reason had much more caked on dirt than the left side, but it came apart much easier, too. Had to heat and beat on the upper a-arm shaft to get it loose on the left side. I'm going to end up replacing all of the ball joints and at least the upper a-arm shafts on both sides, as well as all of the stabilizer bushings and rubber bumpers in the front suspension. Haven't looked at the bearings yet, and both rubber hoses for the brakes are shot.

I'm going to haul all of the parts the do-it-yourself car wash place and blast them clean. Then repaint them, put the new goodies in them, and put it all back together. Gloss black for the parts, but maybe ochre or something for the springs and I'm thinking silver for the sway bar. Pretty fancy.

[sduckworth13]

Looking good Nick, check out rockauto.com you can get the Moog ball joints, tie rod ends, etc for almost half than at the regular parts store. Just make sure they send you Moog because sometimes like to send "off brand" parts which still fit but not the same quality.

[Mustard72]

Hmmm. Don't know how I missed this a few months ago when I tore apart the engine, but there is definitely a crack in this drivers side manifold. Had that problem a couple of years ago with the passenger side manifold. Looks like I can pick up a new drivers side manifold for about $90, or pay some more for a set of headers. I'll have to do some research on this, but I'll probably stick with the good 'ol cast iron replacement.

Also spent some time getting the remaining engine parts cleaned up, straightened up the mounting flange for the valve covers as good as I could, organized the bolts, etc. to get ready to take them over to the engine builder's shop some time this week. Picked up the free GM HEI distributor from the fella at work the other day and then proceeded to get about $90 worth of parts for it; ironically about the same amount as a Pertronix unit.

And last but not least I ordered a set of door seals along with something else that I seem to have currently forgotten (my mind is old beyond my years, apparently) from LMC. The order was manually written on an order sheet and sent back with the step side rear wiring harness I accidentally ordered, so I can't even look up on their website what I ordered until they get it in the mail and process it. Oh well.

It was up around the freezing mark this weekend, so I was able to work in the garage with the garage doors open for the first time in quite a while. That was nice.

Anyways, here's the pic of the cracked manifold...

[sduckworth13]

Nick, I have a exhaust manifold I'd sell you for 20.00 bucks and 35.00 for the pair

[Mustard72]

Originally Posted by sduckworth13

Looking good Nick, check out rockauto.com you can get the Moog ball joints, tie rod ends, etc for almost half than at the regular parts store. Just make sure they send you Moog because sometimes like to send "off brand" parts which still fit but not the same quality.

Cool, Scott. I'll check them out. I hate buying all this stuff on-line and not using the local guys, but it's hard to ignore the price differences. Moog is good stuff.

[Mustard72]

Originally Posted by sduckworth13

Nick, I have a exhaust manifold I'd sell you for 20.00 bucks and 35.00 for the pair

SOLD! I only need the driver side, as the other one was just replaced a year or so ago. I don't think its worth the shipping to have the spare.

THANKS! PM me an address or some sort of payment info.