Br3w City's Project omgwtfbbq

[BR3W CITY]

Thanks gents. Sponsor hardware is a plus, it'll be a while before I could get in que for feature work; but all good things come with time.

[McMurphy]

wow congrats man !!

[65 old school]

I did'nt notice if you hung the door back on to check the rocker fit before
welding?. I hope so, been there, done that. look's great!

[BR3W CITY]

didn't bother because my door bottoms needed work internally, the curvature of the door would be different anyway. We took a number of measurements, and everything stayed the same. My gaps were piss poor to start, so there really didn't seem to be an advantage to re-creating a bad gap.

[BR3W CITY]

cleaned things up and fired her off for the first time this year. My optima managed to die (hard to kill those things but it was a few years old and was only holding <5v) so I picked up a new battery, and she started up first turn of the key.


Pulled off the outer rocker on the passenger side, and cut away the bad part of the floor. Had my patch panel so I just had to cut to fit and weld her in. Not bad for an afternoons work.
l.






Just need to clean these all up/grind smooth and do some trimming for a small patch where it meets the old rocker. The holes at the top of the toe have actually been filled and smoothed but I snapped this pic 2/3 of the way through. Hopefully later in the week I should be able to get the outer rocker replaced and take a look at some sound deadening and floor covering.

[BR3W CITY]

Got a bunch of junk done today; got my passenger floor finished and put the replacement outer rocker on the passenger side as well. Forgot my camera so didn't take a pic of that yet, but I did grab my phone later a take a couple quick snaps of some of the work.
We did an initial layer of deadening on the floors, running from the back wall all the way up into the footwell area. A second layer will be added in key areas, and then we will be adding new black carpet as well as doing carpet on the back wall.





We need to change the positioning of my gas pedal to make a more comfortable drive, so we cut the old pedal into 3 pieces, saving only the foot pedal and top arm. After some positioning and measurement, we made a new lever for it. Said lever was made out of a leftover piece of shotgun barrel....not everyone can say that




I'll try to get decent pics on my camera later in the week, and I'll get some of the completed passenger rocker area too.

[BR3W CITY]

Got my regular camera back out, so I got some better shots. I still need to learn how to clean the INSIDE of this thing, I keep getting those white spots you see on some of these pics.
Floor and adding the heat mat.



So we had some warm weather and decided to finally get some clear on all those black accessories and trim pieces I painted earlier. Although I had some clear around the house, I saw this "Paint Shop Matte Clear" and wanted to try it out.


With our gun setup, we started laying 3-4 coats of clear down on all the parts.










We let everything cure for about 36hrs, and did a scratch-test on a leftover piece. The clear is extremely hard and layed down VERY well. Even the areas that I slightly oversprayed, never ran and leveled off and cleared really nicely.

Even though I have another round or so of bodywork to do before the rest of the truck gets paint and needs assembly....I REALLY wanted to test fit some components and get ready to cruise a little bit. (The truck is really really dirty)




With the new door cards I showed a few posts back (the doors themselves need finishing)


And the grill (bezels not on yet)





I also forgot I picked up some new sills from member here, so I unboxed those bad boys, and will toss them on when the carpet comes (C'mon Classic Parts, don't backorder stuff on people without having it listed as backorder on your site...thats garbage and made me miss an event)

[coulter]

thats looking goood man!!!!!! keep it up

[68GMCCustom]

that black satin looks great. is that a dbw pedal assembly you modified?

[shrunken66stroker]

The swap and paint are looking good. Dude, get a mask.

[jhrusk]

looks good,nice work.

[BR3W CITY]

Originally Posted by 68GMCCustom

that black satin looks great. is that a dbw pedal assembly you modified?

ya dbw assembly + shotgun barrel.

[62 Barnfind]

Like the look of the satin. I am going with a semi gloss look on all my white pieces. How did the paint shop work? I have been debating on using it also for some accessories.

[McMurphy]

Thanks for the photos !!
I think you just sold me on 2 things. 1. get a spay gun and mask and 2. use that matte clear coat.

Keep it rocking dude, your build is killer!

[BR3W CITY]

Originally Posted by 62 Barnfind

Like the look of the satin. I am going with a semi gloss look on all my white pieces. How did the paint shop work? I have been debating on using it also for some accessories.

The clear layed down really well, even in some less than optimal conditions. I haven't used their basecoats or anything yet, but I'm willing to try it based on this.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[68GMCCustom]

I guess some of the genIV pedals are a little different then. Mines all plastic.

[BR3W CITY]

Originally Posted by 68GMCCustom

I guess some of the genIV pedals are a little different then. Mines all plastic.

depends on the year and which setup it uses. I had an all plastic pedal originally, but got ecm errors and found out it was the incorrect year. Swapped it for a metal one with a member on here.

[BR3W CITY]

I took my camera somewhat apart, so I hope these pics are speck-free. Did a closed- hood with the new stuff all in place, I really like how the black pops (although the truck won't be grey forever)


Cleaning up some loose ends, getting old paint and crust off of some areas I never got around to in last summer set of projects. Hit the jambs, and cleaned off the handle area.



With that out of the way, I turned my attention to the in-need door bottoms. This was the drivers door I began to work on.








So with a decent amount of crust to replace, I set up some rough lines on the panel with marker and then refined them with some tape. After knowing where my cuts would need to be, I went about drilling out the spot welds (its easier to cut after you pop the welds loose, otherwise the metal flexes more and fights you when trying to drill the weld out).







Grabbed my small pry bar and hammer and started to free the spot welds and loosen the lip all the way around the bottom of the door area.






With the seams loose, I made my cuts, being careful not to go to deep. I was please to see that my doors interior was in good shape and had managed to retain all of its old sound deadening.






Hopefully I can get to the other side and get a start on both of the patches. The bad news is I have to get surgery next week, and may be out of commission for a little while. I'm hoping it won't be too long, and I can still do some small things and make my brother do the heavy lifting.

[McMurphy]

Sorry to hear you have to go under the knife!
If you dont mind my asking, what are you getting done?
The Operating Room in my place of business, I run the one up here at Ft Wainwright.

[BR3W CITY]

Sure, I don't mind....its rather strange and kinda funny. I have whats called a Chordoma....somewhat uncommon mutation of cells that would have formed my spinal chord as a kid. Although I'm pretty sure they normally get absorbed by the body like most "stem" cells, they can mutate and do weird sh*t. Basically it results in a hopefully benign mass developing on my tailbone- I'm actually having my tailbone completely removed, and the mass along with it.

Its a rather uncommon surgery, although sometimes happens for Coccydenia or repeated microtrauma. The fun part....I will officially have 1-4 (depending on person, the coccyx can be fused or in up to 4 parts) less bones than the normal person.....Weight Reduction

[BR3W CITY]

Spent some time on the other door.








Who was complaining about lack of breathing protection?


Carpet finally came in, so I wiped down the interior to clean things up, and started laying the carpet in. Still need to do final trimming around the edges, and make the carpeted section for the back wall. The carpet is the vintage style 80/20 in black loop, I really like the quality.

[62 Barnfind]

Carpet looks good. Did you get it from stock interiors? What are you going to do to cover the back wall?

[McMurphy]

Man that carpet looks really good!

Good luck on your surgery, I had a soldier a few years ago that had a similar (not qutie the same, it was higher off his spine than yours) procedure done.

Guess you will be on strict "take it easy" orders post operatively...

[BR3W CITY]

Ya, for a little while at least. Because its just healing the incision itself, I should be able to work with my hands and such, just no crawling around, heavy lifting etc.
Thats why I'm hustling now, gotta make up for a few weeks at least of non-progress.

The truck still has lots of little imperfections (and we picked up a new power sander) so we started doing some light sanding and spot-filling. We got sidetracked, so we didn't make it to sanding today.




I've been working to figure out some paint options, so I decided to spray a test panel. Since we used the blue on the engine, engine accessories and interior accessories, we figured a blue would be a great exterior color. This medium blue is light enough to show off the body lines, and similar (but not the same) as some of the lighter blues available on period trucks.
I wanted to see how it would lay down over black and over gray, so I did a side by side spray on the panel. The color looks nice, and clearly it doesn't care what color it lays down over.







The final treatment of the paint needs work, but so far this may be our color.

[BR3W CITY]

We started some work on the doors, which yielded less pictures than usual. This was caused by WAY more hammering and tinkering with the panel than we EVER expected. The panels we got from Classic Parts SUCK. The stamping is wide, and is off enough that it fits well OVER the old panel. We had to cut it down to just a base strip to make it usable. We had to do some pie cuts and tons of beating on the front and rear ends to get them to sit properly. The door patch was on and welded in place by the end of the day, and even after that we had to hit it with the hammer n dolly's again to touch some areas up from the heat of welding. This one still needs to be ground smooth and will require even more smoothing on filler and skim coat. Way more work than we have had to deal with on any other patch panel so far. The outside of the door has to get touched up as well now. The plus side, we test fit the door and the panel gaps are sweet with the trim.