Hot Rods Official 1959 Chevy Apache Build Thread

I spent 4 hours stripping the back of the cab. It was a pain because of all of the little contours. I will have to finish the left cab corner and all the hard to get places tomorrow evening and start stripping around the back window. It is supposed to be somewhat decent this week so I will try to get home one of the nights and get the back of the cab in some epoxy

 

well I got my rubber washers to shim up my front clip with the help of the misses. I also had to stick in about 5, 1/8th inch steel washers to shim it up properly (probably more are needed) I am going to talk to squirrel about this to see how many he has under his trucks. Overall it fixed most of my gap issues, but since I had to let loose the fender bolts the entire clip has scooted back, but at least the gap is the same all the way down the fender. More to come on this soon, so I can line up the doors and at least be able to open them.

 

Well I shimmed these up, but am still having a problem with body alignment. The body mounts are not rusty, the top bolts are good (no issues), and I have the front shimmed up quite a bit. Does anyone have any idea on what is going on or what I need to add to fix this? Any help is appreciated.

 

I bought a new drill (7 amps) and holy crap there is a difference, since my crappy old one took a dump yesterday. I stripped the hard stuff on the top side in about an hour. Had I had this the other day I would have had the truck in primer by now.

 

The front..as in front of fender, or top of fender where it bolts onto the cowl or whatever??

 

the radiator support has been shimmed with about 1/2 an inch of steel washers and the rubber mounting pads in their correct place and it is still not enough.

 

Hmm....from the pics it looks to me like the rear of the fender needs to come up some and either the door or the fender needs to move to open that gap up. I'm not sure if thats what you're trying to fix or something else that I'm not seeing.

 

that is what I am trying to fix. I already know that the fender is back because of the hood springs yanking it back. My issue is the fender is sitting too low and find it ridiculous that I need to have 1/2 an inch of shims under the rear fender bolt. I am thinking something isn't correct. Too many body shims?

 

Looking good there Scott!

 

Are the fenders new? or old? what's their history?

They usually only need one or two shims at the top rear.

And you kind of need to have the hood off when you're setting them up.

 

Old fenders, they were blasted, but they kept the heat down. No damage, just rust on the lower firewall side, but were patched correctly. How thick of a shim am I supposed to have on the top rear? How many do there have to be under the body (maybe I have too many there)?

 

thanks Eric, I am getting there...

 

I'll have to look at some trucks when I get home tomorrow. Usually there are a couple under the front of the cab, and one or two at the top rear of the fender where it sits on the cab. Does it look like the mounting tab area has been repaired? or the nut piece that's welded to the cab?

 

No, everything seems to be stock regarding the fender or in the cab mounting areas, no patches or repairs short of what I did to it (I double checked just to be safe). Yeah I can see where I could put in some shims to get it where it needs to be on the top of the rear fender, it just seems really excessive (half an inch). Thanks for checking, you are my go-to man when I don't know lol

 

I got the rest of the rear of the cab stripped. Here are some pictures. I just have to do a couple finishing touches to a couple areas and then go through and weld up my holes, then primer. I was debating about getting part of the roof done, but I think that will be another day.

 

I finished up the rear of the cab as far as stripping, filled in all of the holes, ground them down and finished them off. I also found a couple drum sanders that were small enough to fit on my 90 degree pneumatic angle grinder to get in the tough spots. I taped off the windows, chrome and will try to get the back of this in primer tomorrow evening.

 

After 2 hours of getting my bed from the blasters, 4 hours of prep work following, and 6 hours of nonstop painting I was able to get the bed, the back of the cab, and a box of misc parts in epoxy. Lordy was it a lot of work. Here are some pictures

 

Here are some more pictures

 

Finally the last batch of pictures. I fired the truck up yesterday too and she ran well. I will need to replace the power steering gear box and fix my exhaust and steering linkage before making it a real driver. Other than that everything is going well.

 

That looks like a pretty clean strip job, what are you using and what's your technique?

Also, what brand epoxy Primer are you using? Is that stuff tintable...it doesn't look like primer gray.

 

Well I had two things that I was doing. First I was using the 3M mesh paint and rust remover wheels. That took about 4 hours to strip the bottom half of the cab. My black and decker drill took a dump for the 2nd time so I just bought a dewalt 7 amp wrist breaking drill. This drill is worth the money and frankly cut my stripping time in half. The wire wheel had the top part of the cab stripped in 1 hour and 45 minutes, way faster. Just take your time and do the hard stuff first, like all the contours. Then for the hard to reach places I used my dremel tool with a round sanding drum (very small 1/4 inch drum) and that took care of it.

The epoxy is a dark gray Dupont epoxy 2570S and 2505S activator. It looks green and this epoxy is non tintable. The high build that goes over it is tintable, so that is fine. I am going to have to probably scuff and shoot more epoxy on all of this stuff before doing any of the body work (filler, etc.) because I have a couple dry spots and used an entire gallon of this primer for both sides of everything. I tried to put some thicker coats on stuff when I got close to the end when I realized I did not have enough. You will need 1 gallon and 2 quarts of the activator since it is a 2:1 mix. Your total for this stuff should be about $400

 

You've been busy, great progress.

 

Thanks Camaro Mike, I've been trying

 

Looking good man! I'm getting close to putting primer on mine too!

 

What are these?

 

Covers for the kick panel air vents, you can see the right side vent in this pic...

 

Nice work 1959apache! Sweet interior black sheep.

 

Ah........P.O. replaced the oem kick panels with diamond plate....never new they existed.

 

Nice work Scott, you're getting there!

 

Thanks apachegail!