#minijimmygmc Wifey's 1990 K5 Jimmy rebuild

[chevy3100truck]

got my assistant to help with sanding the hood down to bare metal. The hood was mint (other than horrible paint) prior to getting knocked over when it was leaned against the back of my garage...... only had a couple of dings from the issue, one on the front edge the other on the body line down the center. Luckily both were accessible from the backside of the hood as they were right at cutouts in the bracing.




Stripped the tailgate down to bare metal, again, just some typical damage near the top of the tailgate. Hammered out & a skim coat of filler ended up fixing it. I couldn't believe the rear window still worked though, the window channels inside the tailgate were basically non existent, they were only being held together by the felt liners lol.



Cowl panel - what a pain in the ass...... I wasn't going to sand this down to bare metal since the louvers are such a pain, but I couldn't leave it, so bare metal it goes...... I'm not sure how many hours it took, but it was way too many!


And the canopy - it'd been a while since I sanded the majority of it down to get rid of the factory textured paint. I had chipped out everything from the seams on it since it was loose anyhow, I figured I'd try just filling the seams completely with Everglas, hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me, but I've got another canopy and I was thinking of cleaning it up and painting it too (a different colour that this one will be). If the Everglas cracks at least I'll be able to get something else done and just swap them. Lots of little pinholes in the factory fiberglass, and lousy alignment between the two halves, I can see why GM went to using textured paint, hides it all so the quality can be crappy. What I am not doing is getting the top totally flat. It's now smooth, but the fiberglass top has waves to it where the bracing is inside and for something you can't see (it'll be about 7'3" or so off the ground), I'm not going to fix it.

[chevy3100truck]

so since it is getting closer to paint, I decided to make a list of things that still needed completing......


I shouldn't have done that lol

[chevy3100truck]

I decided to paint a few parts separately since a. I don't have a paint booth and b. it'll make it easier as I'm kind of space limited (and for obvious reasons I can't put any of this stuff outside in the pacific northwest this time of year). Good excuse to try out my new 3M Accuspray gun. Have to say I'm happy with it so far - the disposable liners & the changeable tips that take just a couple seconds to clean are awesome.

Hood, tailgate and some dash pieces I decided to paint separate from the truck.


2 coats of epoxy primer, then 2 coats of primer surfacer.
Unfortunately I had a fubar with the cowl panel during this (stupid mistake lol), so it got to get sanded down again later.....


After the two coats of primer surfacer, it was time to wetsand the primer with 400 grit...... whenever you think you're done, wipe it down and start again lol



Hood after sanding -

[chevy3100truck]

So for paint, my wife had decided on a gunmetal grey metallic colour. Nice and easy for a novice to paint lol. I'm obviously more than a bit worried about tiger striping etc, but hopefully the combination of laying down 3 coats (one across, one 45 degrees to that, and one 45 degrees to the original + a drop coat) will keep it all nice and even.



glovebox door


hood under lights -


and lastly - the day after painting it, taking the hood out in the sunshine to make sure that it doesn't have any tiger stripes (after staring at it for about an hour and a half thinking it did lol). Came out pretty decent, there are a few little flaws with dust, but I think sanding and polishing the clearcoat will get rid of everything that was there.

[chevy3100truck]

and to get up to date, the latest would be painting a couple of more pieces last night. The re-painted cowl panel, and the outside of the tailgate. I know the tailgate should be painted while vertical to keep the metallics in the same orientation, but I'm going to take my chances that it won't be too obvious when installed as it will be beside the tail lights and only the top part of the tailgate posts. Hope that doesn't bite me in the ass later.





I'm hoping to get the canopy painted this weekend if all goes well. That isn't going to be body colour and needs both the inside & outside painted, so hopefully I can wrangle a neighbour over to help lift it around lol. I still can't believe how heavy that thing is compared to canopies I've had on various trucks over the years.

[Jaysonb]

Looks great!

[SBTork]

Originally Posted by Jaysonb

Looks great!

Ditto! Looking very good, nice project!

[chevy3100truck]

Thanks. I've never tackled a project with this sort of scope before. Just trying not to screw too much up lol
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[Whamo]

You are rockin this build!

[LT7A]

A lot of work done in a short amount of time. And it looks great. You keep saying it's a driver, and I realize that you're not building it for show, but I wonder if your wife realizes just how high of a quality level you're building to. Obvious to us though, so keep on. Thanks for sharing.

[chevy3100truck]

Thanks for the compliments!

I've been working on it as much as I can since I last posted, the top is now painted inside & out

Inside before -



Scuff & Spray - I left the texture on the inside, which unfortunately meant leaving some of the cracks along the edges since I couldn't figure out a good way to fix them and keep the texture (they're just cracks in the original coating where the parts are joined together)

after - well - it's still white, but it's clean looking and coated with a satin clear coat


For the outside I smoothed the factory seams with fiberglass and sprayed a black with a satin clear coat. Not perfect - I'd never sprayed satin before, so I'll probably end up redoing it at some point, but unless you're 7' tall you can't see the top of the roof anyhow.




Basically the problem was because I had it supported too high and couldn't easily reach the middle section of the roof to get a consistent pass on the clear coat. The satin clear needs to be applied very consistently to get an even finish, so in the very center of the roof there are a couple of stipes where the gloss doesn't exactly match.

[Palf70Step]

That top is really nice!

[chevy3100truck]

Next up was the dash -
I didn't sand the dash down to bare metal as the original paint was all still sticking well. Basically sanded it with 180 grit, shot 2 coats of epoxy, 2 coats of primer surfacer, quick sand, then the colour & clear



and after the colour and clear - all the other parts were painted separately previously (glove box, ashtray, filler below column) Not the best way to do it, but easier to get it done this way and get all the edges etc.

[chevy3100truck]

primering the door sills & inside of the doors was next, these areas were mostly sanded down to bare metal, just the inner parts of the door that will be covered with the door panels weren't taken to bare metal. I filled all of the holes for the lower carpet panel as the plan right now is to leave them painted, not covered (I can always put a cover on them later if we want too, but it'd be hard to fill the screw holes and paint them if we wanted to ditch the panels later on)

[chevy3100truck]

After some final sanding to clean up the bare metal tub as well as remove the overspray from spraying the door sills it was finally primer time.



A couple coats of epoxy primer, then a bit more body work, then 3 coats of primer surfacer -




Also got around to spraying primer down on the new front fenders -

[chevy3100truck]

and to get up to date, I sprayed the colour and clear on the door jambs and inside of the doors.





I'm hoping to get the body completely painted by the end of May so I can start reassembly, but there is a lot of sanding left to do on the primer before it'll be ready for colour and clear. It's just a driver, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but trying to get it as good as I can.

[Ski-me]

What a ton of work! Nice to see it continue to move and not Peter out....like the paint job color. Beautiful!

[Wwes]

Looks great - wish I had that kind of paint skill.

[yote1234]

looks awesome!

[chevy3100truck]

so back to the Jimmy.......
Painted the front fenders, I ended up painting them separately from the rest of the tub since because of the height of the truck (and how low the garage ceiling is) I really needed to paint the tub with them off in order to reach the center of the top of the windshield (at least that's how it seemed)

[chevy3100truck]

Had a bit of a break to go play with this with the kiddo - now that the weather is decent weekends have gotten a lot busier again lol



He did pick up his first win of the season in his second race of the year (his teammate won the first race of the year).

[chevy3100truck]

Time to spray some colour on the truck finally. Getting closer to the end of the painting, but with the biggest portion still to do - the tub & doors.

3 coats of base laid out pretty decently, I was happy with this





The clear on the other hand....... ugh..... My fault, sprayed the first coat on too light. I sprayed 3 coats in total, but between the first coat being a bit textured & a significant weather change while I was spraying changing the humidity a ton (which I think was a factor - was dry when I started spraying, probably 65F, sometime after I started it poured rain and the humidity went way up). Oh well, first time ever painting a car/truck, so live and learn. Next time will be much better.

[chevy3100truck]

So since I was not very happy with the clear, I decided I couldn't leave it as is. It's just a driver, but it has to be at least decent, nowhere near perfect, but decent.







Admittedly the sanding isn't anywhere near perfect. I spent about 15 hours on it with 1500 & 2000 grit, and probably could have spent another 10, but I really am trying to get this thing done and it doesn't have to be perfect, just driver quality.

[chevy3100truck]

So, being as I've never painted a truck, I've also never wet-sanded and polished one either lol. Luckily around the time I was pissed off about the clear Canadian Tire put their cheapo 7" polishers on sale for 1/2 price. So I bought one of those and a few different grits of polishing compound and got to work......





The first couple stages of polishing it are done on the passengers side here. It still needs another polish with the final grit to get it done. Just trying not to screw it up too bad lol.

I figure by the time I'm done the polishing on the drivers side I'll want to go back and re-do this side, hopefully I learn something by then.

[Willowrun]

Hard to tell from the pics, but what is the issue with the clear? Orange peal?