77 Bonanza Progress

[LBJ]

Doing some more work on the 77 prior to paint. Changed out the cab bushings today with poly jobs. The old ones were in pretty bad shape. Came off pretty easy though. Also been painting behind the grill area with POR-15 to clean it up and stop some surface rust. Couple of areas around the left and right fenders that showed some potential to get really rusted. POR dries to look like powder coating, but must be topped off with another paint to stop UV damage. This only applies to areas where the POR will be exposed to sunlight. I'm not sure about how much light will penetrate the grille area, so will go over it with POR Chassis Black topcoat. Also installed a new vent window assembly Sat. Went right in. These are still available for the 1985 -87 trucks. Only thing that did not work well was the window catch. Had to modify it a bit to work on this window. The one for the 1985 was $35 and I'll take it back - didn't look right anyway. New dash pad and radio from LMC. I used the dual speaker dash speaker for stereo. goes right where the old one did.

[Pyrotechnic]

Hello fellow Texan! What city ?

Nice job. I wish I didn't have to drive mine all week so I could get that detailed with mine.

[LBJ]

Hey Pyrotechnic,

I'm here in Ft Worth.

I'm doing more to this than I first envisioned. I have the mindset that , "well, I hate to paint it without doing this, and that leads to this, and this..." and before too long there is a huge pile of parts off and new ones ordered, or, waiting to be grit blasted and primed. It's like a disease. My wallet is screaming and I still haven't gotten it to the paint shop. On the other end is a new tailgate and front bed panel (well actually the front panel is up at the paint shop so it can get paint on the side between the cab and bed otherwise it would never get painted). You can still get a few parts thru GM. It's hit or miss, but they still list some. The tailgate came thru my local chevy dealer. According to the date on the packaging, it was made in 2001. Pretty cool that they still made parts for it that long.