Projects 1950 3100 Truck Project

That sucks man, we just hung the doors and found a few issues, but nothing like that. Hang in there, you'll get it figured out!

 

You might want to lower the fuel line that goes over the rear end, and get rid of that Fram filter, as I just fixed a problem on my dad's '58 Chevy truck where I had the almost exact situation on the fuel line going over the rear end. You always want the fuel filter between the pump and the carb as well.The fuel line would trap air as it was rather high, and the truck would run out of gas at the carb as the fuel pump would suck air.

A good way to test your system would be to put some gas in the tank, and see if the fuel flows by itself all the way to the pump. You need a siphon at the fuel pump for everything to work properly, if fuel does not flow in a siphon, there is a restriction or the fuel line is too high. Trust me on this one as I chased this problem for two years.

 

I'll keep that in mind. I have not secured the line yet, but I will wait and see if I have a problem before throwing out all the stuff I spent good money on. It makes sense what you say though, at least if if I have the issue I'll know where to start.

Anyway, got all my bed parts...



Put it together and squared it up



Body filler to straighten everything out, got my tailgate put on



Had the bed spray lined. didt the front and back of the front panel, pulled the angle strips and had the bedsides completely sprayed, all the cross sills and tailgate, had it wrapped over the rail. I know I know, not trad, but looking for long term protection and it looks bad ass....



Had the running boards lined after filling all the dents and waves, looks killer up close...



Put it all together, rear tires barely fit but look soooo good...



overall pic, really coming together now.



Will start trying to fix the lower pillar next, probably going to cut it loose then off and replace it as well as a section of the cab corner. Should be too big a deal then the pass door will be next....see ya later...

 

God I love this build. Everything is looking great man! Sorry to hear about the passenger door.

 

The start of this thread was tough! Lesson learned...You're a trooper though, definitely making it happen. Good job!

 

Today I tackled the one area I have been dreading since I bought the truck. Adding a front cross member to support the front sheet metal. Turns out, it wasn't a big deal at all, and another wild ass guess seems to have worked out.

First of all I hacked off the ugly PO's hack job of front frame hornage. Looks much better, and if I can muster the motivation to cap it all off I may do that.



I bought some 1 1/4" square tubing and a 1/4" thick flat bar 2" wide and when I got home I sat down to figure out where I was going to locate the cross member as there isn't many places it could go. As it turned out, there was almost exactly enough space for the bar to go in front of the sway bar mounts. So I made up some tabs and used the front sway bar bolts to mount it up. Then Made some more tabs and had them come up front and attach to the frame with grade 8 hardware.






Lastly, it just so happened that the 1 1/4" tubing was an exact fit between the bottom of the core support and the cross member. The core actually sit right on top of my sway bar so the tubing goes back about 3" from the cross member.



The finished product looks great, just need to drill holes for the bolts for the cor support, and pull it back off, maybe add a few gussets for strength, paint it up a slap it back on. When I get the front end back together I want to see about mounting the front bumper to the cross member as well, but first need to blast and coat the core support, inner fenders, do some filling on the cowl and paint the cowl and firewall. Till next time...

 

That looks like the easiest hurdle you've jumped so far! Glad at least one thing was easy on ya!

 

Nice job....Jim

 

Enjoying how far youve come. Man what a mess you started with!

 

BTW, I forgot to mention that I got all my bed parts from MAR-K. They were a little bit more than LMC or others but seem to be a little better made and are built in Oklahoma City, good ol' USA, so it is worth it to me. The specialize in classic truck beds and shipping was reasonable as well. Thumbs up from me...

 

So, this weekend was a bitch....Wake up saturday morning and hit the hardware store for some sand, planned on blasting the inner fenders and core support. Get home and the wife wants to go to town to shop..dammit. Figure while im in town I'll visit the parts stores and try and find the paint and primer I am going to use and come across this stuff.



Remembered that I saw it on Trucks! or something so bought the primer, jet black, and matte clear coat quarts at $25 bux a pop. BUT my thinking is if you can just pour it straight out of the can I am ahead of the game..So, after driving around all morning I finally get home around 2pm. Think I'll get out the blaster and get to work. Forgot that the last time I used it I tried the soda conversion and so I had to swap it back out.

Start blasting the core support and damn, my compressor cant seem to keep up, it basically ran the whole time and I had to stop bout every 30 seconds to get enough pressure to blast. WTF, it didnt do that last time I used it...hmm, oh well. What I thought would take me couple hours took me till dark just to do the core support, and three frickin bags of sand.

I decided afterwords to spray it and the fenders down with acid and let them soak overnight, get a fresh start tomorrow. Wake up early and get after it, still kicking my ass with the sand blaster and I actually swept up all the sand and screened it and reused it.

Several hours later and halfway through the second inner fender the nozzle blew out, burned a hole through it from the sand, and thats when i realized I hadnt changed out the large diameter nozzle for soda blasting. Put the small sand blast nozzle on and was able to do in 10 minute what took me almost and hour, I never had to stop once for pressure and my sand usage was cut in half or more.

While i was pouting from my stupidity for not putting two and two together and all the time I wasted I saw my phone that I have had for 2 yrs had a front camera, so I thought I would let you all know what I think of sand blasting.



Decided to just do the outside part of the inner fenders, and half ass blast the inside, then red primer and undercoat. After fumble fucking around I was finally able to prime everything, sand and re prime, then ran out of daylight, but for all the hassle, here is what I ended up with. Should be able to shoot the color and clear on them next weekend. Rattle canned the core just to make me feel better, at least one thing is done...

 

this is so similar to my build its unreal lol. granted your much further along than me but i overpayed for my truck, i was young and it sounded great so i bought it. long story short, 2 years later i have a new cab, bed, and ass loads of other fresh parts because the originals were rotted to hell. it took me a while to find them for good prices though. now my build is on its way ! killer work man. awesome to see you hung through it all and knocked it out. keep it up

 

Oh the joys of building these toys. I think most of us have had days like that, hang in there. Will be waiting for the next update...Jim

 

Btw is all the leak seal youve been using the rattle can type ? Like the household type rubberized coating ?

Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app

 

Thats it, but yea, it'll be worth it in the end.

Ha, thanks...

Yep, thats it. Made by Rustoleum. Worst part is I have no idea if it holds up as well as the trad undercoating or not, but it sure looks nicer and the spray tip makes a nice texture. Still stinks though...

 

So there was still a little sunlight left when I got home and the wife was still getting dinner goin so I snuck outside and spray a few coats of color on the inner fenders. This may not be right but I didnt sand the primer at all. My thinking was it would leave a little more textured finish, and it did alright. We'll see how it turns out.




So natually, as I was admiring my work, a lonley little fucking bastard butterfly decided to flip and flop around everywhere and land right on the wet paint just as I was about to snap a pic. Bastard....



Then, to top it off, I was done and decided to leave them outside in the driveway for a while to dry and while I was eating I heard this, it was dark by now by the way, anyway, I heard this strange noise, sounded like a lawnmower. Nah, its dark, who would be outside mowing. Sure as shit, my neighbor decided to move his front yard....in the dark....right after I painted my fenders....the only hope I have is he is actually across the street and the wind was blowing kinda down the street and not really towards me. I am going out there before bedtime to bring them in and see what awaits....

 

Nothing like some good night time mowing...man, people are amazing

 

Yep, but hey, he had headlights on his mower, so what the hell.

Anyway, its all good, there was some grass shavings on them when I got them out of the drive but it wiped off, nothing in the paint and they looked great. I took a screw driver to an area that you wont see and really scraped around with it. I was worried about my not really sanding the primer before painting it, but they seemed ok. I will scuff up the paint and shoot the matte clear this weekend and hope it all holds up.

 

So this weekend I bought a 3M bristle disc and got the firewall to bare metal. Did some amateur filler work and sanded the living shit out of it, still didnt look all that great, then primed it. Took all weekend but looks good. At this point I am coming to the realization that my ideas for how it is should look and my skill level dont quite match up, so I am just going to do it and stop worrying about it. It is after all my first go at this and probably something most people wouldnt even attempt.







Guess who decided to finish their mowing job not 2 minutes after I shot this.....I rolled it back in the garage and shut the door. Its time for a beer...

 

Looks great.

I think your neighbor just sits and waits for you to paint something.

 

Haha, neighbor must be a Ford man

 

I just went through the whole buid (just spotted it up) good job! And here I thought that my AD was hammered ass!

Seeing as you are a detail oriented builder check out my build thread in my sig line.....I wrote a tech thread on perfecting your door gaps that you may be interested in....

Great work!

 

Wtf is up with the mowing neighbor!!!!!! Shoot some fireworks at him or sumthing hahah. Nice job tho man

Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app

 

Not that I would do anything like this, but get some diesel and write something nice in his lawn that he will be able to read a few times(ha ha)...Jim

 

Nah, neighbors cool, just not very observant...

Awesome, I'll have to check it out. I read your entire build a while back...awesome. I will check that info on the gaps.

 

Well, 1 step forward and then 2 back...



Tonight I thought I would do some sanding, had a couple spots that needed a little more filler and then needed to smooth out the rest and scuff it lightly to get ready for paint. When I started sanding I was using 220, and it was clogging up the paper badly. I noticed the sanded off stuff was rolling into little balls, almost as if it was still not completely dry. This was orig done on Sunday, 3 days ago. I stepped down to 150 and the notice the primer was actually peeling off and rolling up rather than sanding off.

It was about that time I noticed that cute little girl scout was 10 stories tall, I was like "damn you lock ness monster!!" Oh wait, I meant it was about that time I realized my mistake. I think in using the 3m bristle pad which is rubber, I was actually polishing the old paint off and making the metal smooth. On the top of the cowl there wasn't a whole lot of filler needed so I didnt go back and sand it down to give the primer something to bite into.

The other possibility, or maybe both in combo, is I didnt go back and wipe it down with anything other than a micro fiber towel. I had been using wax and grease remover but was afraid to use that on the areas with filler, which was in various places all over.
So I broke out the wire wheel and stripped down the top and sides of the cowl. I think I am good on the face of the cowl, as I sanded almost all day on it, and the firewall was new so I just scuffed up the black primer and shot over it. I also think I am good with the inner fenders because I sand blasted those and that were fairly rough.

So is it safe to use grease/wax remover over the filller or not. I will hit the whole area with 100grit and re-shoot it and see what happens. Sucks to do something twice, but better than wasting a bunch of paint and clear and not finding out till its all back together..

 

This. Is. Awesome. I have a 52 Im doing a chassis swap on and then all the sheet metal work. Awesome write up and pics, definitely helping bigtime as this is my first restoration/ project of this scale. I look forward to reading more!

 

Glad I could help, I guess its a form of paying it forward as the only way I had the confidence to do what I did is by reading others build threads with the same kind of info and pics. Pretty much every rough spot someone on here chimed in or PM'd me with the info I needed. There are some guys on here that will blow your mind if you stick around.

With that said, I am still coming across things I did early on that I see that I could have done differently/better/easier or cheaper, guess thats part of the process though...

 

I've put wax and grease remover over filler and have not had a problem with it. I just use air to blow on the filler and make sure it is dry. Someone else that has more knowledge that me, may disagree. Just my 2 cents worth.....Jim

 

I decided to strip down the whole cowl as I thnk I found the root of my problem. If you look back a few pages you'll see I sprayed my cowl down with rusty metal primer after I sand blasted it the first time. That is what i had ground off with the 3m pad this time prior to priming the cowl. Rusty metal primer is an oil based enamel, and there were a lot of spots/nooks/crannys that had remenants of the paint in them. I think since I didnt clean it well that was essentially a coating of oil on the cowl that was preventing the paint from sticking.

So I stripped it bare, filler and all, wiped it multiple times with grease remover, let it dry. I then started the filler over only this time I made small batches and put on very thin coats of filler as opposed to the first time where I made baseball sized blobs that started to set up halfway through, and gobbed it on thinking I could easily sand it down. Sanded till my hands were numb and it looked terrible. So this time it should be easier sanding, and may just half to do multiple thin coats of filler. Then wipe it down again with grease remover, sand all, wipe down and then prime. I think I will be good to go after that.