Hot Rods Official 1959 Chevy Apache Build Thread

Oh, Step and hinge pocket replacement... That brings back memories. You are making awesome progress. Looks great!

 

Yeah, its not much fun is it?!

Thanks Lunchbox

I will post some more progress tonight.

 

Well, its in, ground down, and ready for some primer. I went ahead and cleaned up the supports and the lip all the way around and will weld up the holes in the vertical and horizontal parts. I will grind those down, install my door hinges, reinstall the door and get my step in there. I am pretty happy with it so far.. I decided to wash and wax my C10 today... 4 hours of fun right there and only part of the way done..... YAY! More tomorrow... I will hopefully have everything set to install the step tomorrow.

 

Well I decided to get the other door mounted, so that means that the lower door hinge needed to be replaced... and wow... someone long ago decided to weld a washer and nut on the back of that hinge.... Not cool. Also, since this side of the truck hit something this whole lower hinge area was damaged, mishapen, you name it. I got the hammer out, straightened it back out, and now it looks as good as the other side.

I got it cut out, matched it with the new patch and welded it in... I ran out of gas, so I will have to take care of that tomorrow afternoon.

 

Mine wasn't as rusted as your, but my captive nuts were missing. I created two new nut straps and welded them on from the backside before I welded the new pocket on.

 

Well I owe a HUGE thanks to Jason (Indy47Caddy) here on the HAMB. I never met the guy before, but he found some time in his schedule to come over, check out my projects and spent over 5 hours of his time hanging doors.

The passenger is perfect, I do not think I am going to take it off again until I am ready for paint. The driver's is a mess... the repop is all over the place, but at 11:00 PM last night I went back out there after spending several hours getting the step ready on the passenger side and pulled the driver's door off, routed out the hinges with a Dremel and stuck it back on. The hinge holes that bolt to the door, not the jamb, must be cut with a plasma table because the inside of the hole is really close to 7/16 OD and the edges are far closer to 3/8 OD, this had to be corrected and it was, but this is the only hinge I have had a problem with. This seemed to work very well, however I may have to do it again... I don't know if I will though, it seems like everything is lining up just right

This helped tremendously, but I will have to modify the door frame just slightly since the new door latches are too long from the parts place. In addition they have a rivet on the replacements that the old ones didn't have before, so they are scraping in a couple areas on the doorjamb before being able to close.

I will post pictures sometime after work on the progress. Again, thanks a ton Jason, When you need a hand with something on your project, you know the number!

 

Here are some shots of last night. I will take a few pictures of the driver's side tonight.

 

Man, You are rocking along!

Something we found out, The weather stripping will change where it hangs.
We had everything painted and hanging perfect. Then put the weather stripping on, and had to start adjusting all over again again. Never would have guessed that would have happened.

 

Ugghh is all I have to say about hanging the doors again..

Thanks Lunchbox... it is a crap load of work, it will be nice to be done with this.

Here are some shots of the driver's side I just took, does anyone have any suggestions about the wing window stick out? I don't think it is going to be a good idea to tip the top hinge in anymore.. the door latch side is already good all the way down the door.... I have a feeling that I may have to cut and bend it to make it fit right. Also I may need to even up the door gap with trimming the door... Help is welcome.

 

Well you got that driver's door fitting better since I last seem it! Nice work!

 

Thanks! Yeah I pulled the door one more time and routed out the lower hinge slots so that they are even all the way through the cross-section. I put the door on, tilted the upper hinge towards the inside of the cab and that seemed to help a lot of my issues. Some of the body lines on the door are slightly off, but the door latch hits the door frame the same amount as the other side. I may tweak it some more, but I think it is as good as it is going to get for now. You can be the judge of it when you see it.

Tonight I will try to knock the step out of the way and move onto something else. I pull the column and get it shot in epoxy tonight, who knows.

 

Well I got the hood springs off, everything else loosened up on the front clip, added the fenders back into the mix and pulled the clip forward to see how everything will line up. It looks like a lot will be close, but it looks pretty good from where I am standing. I will wait for Jason to come over so we can finish this crap up finally. I am looking forward to it. I will post pictures later this evening of what is going on.

Once this nightmare is over with then I can finally get back to working on the floors. I have a goal to have the truck ready to drive around the block within one month (when my parents get here from moving). They will be dropping the Model T off so I can take it to some shows and stuff like that. I would like to take them around the block in the truck if it is at all possible

 

don't you just wish that some days you had the magic of televisions where you can achieve 6 months worth of work in 12 minutes? I want an A team to come and assist me with building my truck!!!
These are the jobs that build character and give you a better understanding of what you're doing and why you have to do it. By the looks of it, you're going to have a really nice rust free straight bodied pickup when you're done with it.

You and I share the same goal, to drive our trucks around the block within a months time. I'm getting down to the nitty gritty crap so it'll be safe to put it in gear, hit the gas and go. And hopefully be able to stop on a dime to. We fired the engine for the first time on Thursday so now I have to get some pipes on it and break that cam in

 

Yeah I wish that was the case, if it was I wouldn't have been working on this thing for 3 years already! Yeah I hope I don't have to use a whole lot of bondo and can just have a pretty thin layer of filler if any at all... I know there are always problems with filler every time you turn around so I am trying to avoid it.

Cool! I will have to check out your video. I am going to have to dick around with my brake pedal to get it from feeling so squishy... The ratio maybe off or somethings wrong with it because It feels so smooth that I think its not connected to anything.. That is just not right, so you maybe able to drive yours more than me starting out!

I am looking forward to your break in video/burnout video

 

Well Indy47caddy came back over and helped line up the front fenders, and helped me reassemble the from clip in general. Thanks again dude!! We even got the hood springs back on, so that was nice. Everything lines up okay now, enough for it to be drivable. After the victory last night, I really didn't feel like doing much else, so I came back out later and install my speedo with new lens face and chrome bezel.

I will have to take care of the step, the door jambs, and a couple other things tonight. I will pull the column this evening and get that all taken care of (stripped and painted in epoxy primer. I think my goal is going to be reasonable now. I have a few more things to take care of, but overall it is looking good. I will post pictures soon.

 

I got the door jambs finished for the latch mechanism and corrected a couple spots that were rubbing. I got it caved in pretty nicely Jason, thanks for the tip. I also ground down the rest of the door hinge patch panel on the drivers side and will hopefully get this stuff ready for epoxy shortly. I need to finish up the step on the passenger side still.... the door latches took a while to fix, grind and paint. I will tackle it tomorrow and hopefully get it taken care of. I also installed my gauge cluster with my new bezel and faceplate. It is starting to look really nice.

Here are some shots:

 

Gauge cluster looks really nice.

 

The door jams worked out nice, flattening that section of bead will not even be noticeable now that you have it finished and painted. Hard to believe that the reproduction latches are that far off of the originals. Dig'n the new gauges!

I decided tonight to say the hell with the yard work, worked on the car instead!

 

Thanks Buzznut, I will try to get the dash together soon. If I keep this pace it's looking like I am going to be able to meet my goal of driving it within a month!

 

Thanks! Yeah I probably could have got away with just hitting them with a hammer and brass rod and it would have cleared, but this made it work way better. Yeah I am not really a happy camper when it comes to those latches, but they work now, so I don't have anything to complain about.

Good for you on the yard work... I wish I could have said the same, I would have had more done on the truck. I did yard work too because that company finally dropped that tree and hauled away the old mess!!! The water softener guy also stopped by and he installed that too... THEN I went out to the garage at 10:00 PM to 11:30 PM.

I was really jealous that I didn't have your welding helmet last night.... so jealous....

 

Got 3-4 hours in on the truck tonight.I reinstalled the door latches too... I am kind of prepping to do the floors this weekend... Some grinding is needed on the step and a little on the floor, but it will be taken care of soon! Here are some pictures:

 

I have the Service Tool Manager looking for a helmet for ya....we'll see what we come up with!

Got some time to work on my Caddy this morning. Bolt is out of the cross member, rest of the front suspension is finished - welded and grounded down. Going to work on mounting the master cylinder later tonight.

Looks like the cruise-in is a wash out tonight!!!

 

Sweet deal! I am glad you got that stuff done on the Caddy. Did you get the MC installed? Just let me know when you need a hand.

 

Well I got some work done this morning, I will go out later after I go pick up my new grill and get some lunch with the Misses.

I decided to switch gears and work on something else. Since I needed to do this before I put the seat in, I worked on installing my other sun visor.

Here is a sneak peek of what the interior is going to look like:

 

I took out the visors since the interior isnt suppose to go in yet and worked on the dash to get it ready, that included sanding down the radio nob hole and making the old choke hole into the windshield wiper hole since the dash clock is now in the place where the switch used to be.

This next week is going to be busy, 3 10 hour days and then they are paying me holiday plus friday off, pretty sweet... but it will be long for sure.

Anyway, here are the shots of what I finished before I got in for dinner:










I am really looking forward to cleaning the whole cab up, it was much nicer when it wasn't dusty.

 

Well life decided it wanted to get in the way, so I wound up building a bbq from the box at 12 AM because it was ridiculous to wait close to a week for the dorks at Lowe's to put it together. I had a lot of trouble with the '66 running correctly yesterday all day, so today I bought a replacement carb, new fuel pump and another inline filter. I will have to install at least the fuel pump to get the '66 to move to the other parking spot (it is blocking the part of the garage that I need to get the other two cars in... one to sell, the other to replace the struts on it).

I went to give the other car a tune-up before selling and they put the wrong plug wires in my bag, they gave me some old v8 with a coil setup... this car that I am working on is a jap 4 banger with HEI... Where I could just make my own wires from what was there I would rather just do it the easy way and replace them with the stock set. So that is going back tomorrow...

So that was last night.. It hasn't stopped raining the past two days, so when it does that screws me on doing yard work all day this week/weekend. Fortunately I get Thurs-Sun off... so that means I swap the struts out on my wifes car and troubleshoot a couple other things... THEN clean up the other car and finally get to work on the Apache.

Since I fired up the bbq today, got it broken in, and did a bunch of other randome crap I decided to get that bay of the garage cleaned out... that meant the steering column needed to be out of the way and since it is easy to blow apart and primer I did that today along with a couple other little things on the dash and tucked away some wiring.

Here are some shots:

 

Nice job on the steering column Scott, getting closer to finishing every day!

 

Thanks Eric, I am looking forward to the end of this process... 3 years is too long lol

 

I'm at 3.5 years now and still have a little way to go.........

 

Yours is way nicer than mine and will be finished first. I am still in the process of getting everything together.


I am going to finish up the column tonight and will start working on getting the grinding done on the floor... the end of the interior stuff is near!