Hot Rods Official 1959 Chevy Apache Build Thread

Lance,

It looks like it is aftermarket, but I have no clue what stock looked like. I traded the truck and the guy stripped everything off and had boxes of new things so I just installed them, hoping he ordered stuff correctly. So I can't really answer your question. Thank you for your compliment though!

 

Can't wait.... but it can't come soon enough!

 

not much has been done on the old girl for a little while. Work and other crap has been trying to take over my life, but I won't let it because I need my fix (of old cars that is). I just dropped off some odds and ends things to the sandblasters: one door hings, both door panels, radiator support, grill housing, grille, grill filler piece, door window frame molding.... that should be done by this weekend or early next week. In the mean time I have ordered a new door hinge for the right door (bottom hinge) and will be ordering a new tranny pan that isnt warped and doesnt slowly leak ATF on my clean garage floor. I will be working on the fenders and crap tomorrow before work at 2 PM, so I plan on getting some of this crap completed. I have already done quite a bit of patch paneling the rear fenders and have them pretty much done except for the lip that bolts everything down... both fenders need some work there. I can't wait to move onto body work.

Does anyone know of a paint booth or someone with a paint booth locally? I was planning on shoot this thing sometime before it snows, but would like to know if anyone has any ideas where I can shoot it.... my garage isn't an option. Thanks guys!

 

Here are some pictures from a patch panel that is on the passenger rear fender on the front bottom that is touching the actual step of the stepside. I forgot how hard it is to weld in the dark when being attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. Sorry about the welds.... they aren't very good, but they will hold just fine... I will be posting other pictures soon and hopefully have a majority of the dents taken out of the fenders!

 

Here are some pictures of the rot hole that is right behind the grill on the passenger front fender. I have already repaired it and used some body tools to get the rust out. I will post some pictures soon. Also I started working on the driver's side front fender behind the grill (same place) and the rot there is about 1 inch by 3 inches. So I will make a panel and weld it in... once that is done I will move to the rear fenders again and start working on the inner lip that meets the bed sides... repair the rust there and prep them for primer and paint! More pictures to come soon

 

Well I have been busy. I got my stuff back from the sandblasters and decided to hack into in and try to get the problem areas out of the way. Here are some pictures of only part of the grill support that had an issue. Tons of pictures are yet to come.

 

Here is the only other issue with the grill support, quite a bit of work, but worth it

 

Here are some of the pictures of some of the stuff I have been doing lately. I haven't been posting pictures of it, but I pretty much have the fenders ready to go short of grinding down the welds.

 

I got a new tranny pan because the stamped pans are crap. I could NOT get that thing to not leak, so I bought a nice pan for about 45 bucks to my door. The lip that bolts up to the tranny is over 1/8 of an inch thick, so I hope to god that one doesn't leak because I will be very upset.

oh and look, this one has a drain plug!!!! YAY! (the stamped one didn't have one.)

 

Here is how far I got today, I realize that the bumper will come back off once I get the fenders on, but I wanted to see how it would look with the filler panel on there. Doesn't look bad so far. I did have to weld 4 new nuts on the back of the grill... the paint was drying so I wasn't able to put it on today, otherwise it would be on as well.

 

more pictures to come tomorrow of the front fenders getting ground down and installed and possibly a little work on the inner fenders to make them fit and look better. If all goes well with that I will install those and pretty much be ready to put the hood on again. We will see, there is a lot of little crap that still has yet to be done.

 

Well I devoted today to the drivers front outer fender. There were a lot of things to grind and fix and weld and fix and grind some more. I had to install a couple patches in there and weld some nuts onto some holes that the original nuts were missing. So pretty much everything on the front clip is ready for body filler and primer. This one is ready to go on until I take it off to start into the body work as well. Prior to putting this one on I need to mess with the inner fender and get that where I would like it. those pictures are sometime tomorrow.

 

Here are some pictures of this front fender and the hours of intense grinding... and at the end is a picture with the inner fender mocked up so I can work on the bottom edge of it and make it look decent. The power steering unit is why I had to hack it up in the first place.... that and the steering shaft....

 

not a whole lot of progress, but I have been working on getting the drivers side inner fender to look somewhat decent instead of a chopped up mess. I will finish that up sometime this week and at that point I will be ready to do the minimal work on the passenger side. I just need to repair rust on both sides. Other than that everything is going great. I will post some pictures soon.

 

Just getting finished with the driver's side inner fender. I will be primering it tomorrow and then starting in on the other inner fender. At that point pretty much everything else is ready to be put together.

 

Keep on choppin wood!

 

lordy.... you aren't kidding... at this rate I am hopefully going to be ready to drive it when it starts getting a little warmer out.

 

Well I have busted my hump to get the driver's side inner fender done and it pretty much is. I will try to post some pictures on Sunday as I will out at Disney World for a much needed vacation from my 12 hour days of work. I started hacking into the rotten spot on the Passenger side inner fender and will start to repair that side when I am back from vacation.
I am planning on ordering the step for the drivers side as it was damaged in the fender bender that messed everything up long before when I got it. It is bent so much that I cant repair it without deforming some of the rolls in the floor that were pressed in by the factory. So on my vacation I will go ahead and order that.
I tried to bolt up my door hinges with my new door bolts but found that a couple of the door bolts are missing nuts, so that is something else that I am going to have to go and purchase. yay more money.... haha
I also filled the tranny with the rest of my fluid and it is ready to go. I haven't seen it leak at all, which is nice. So anyways, I will be taking care of all of this crap when I get back...
Soon it will be too cool to paint or do body work in the garage, so I will start again on the plymouth and see how far I can go!

 

Well I have been very busy trying to get everything back together on the front end when I came to the conclusion that I can do all the metal work I want, but I will just have to take it all off again to fix the step. So guess what I did after all of my metal work on the front inner fenders..... I decided to get down to business and get rid of this messed up step from the fender bender that it was in a long time ago. Here are some pictures..... What you can't really notice is that the entire step is bowed and every time I stepped on it I would slip and slide out onto the ground. haha

 

Here are some shots of me starting to clean everything up and test fitting the new patch panel.

 

Here are some pictures of the step right before I weld it up. I am getting close, so we will see. I will have to do a little work to the back towards the cab corner because I think its a little too far off. I should be able to get this side done and then get the outer fender on as well. getting there...

 

Funny....I'm doing the same rocker and corner replacement on my '58. Your truck's coming along nicely.

 

Thanks bud, I appreciate it. Anything as bad as what I have had?

 

Yep...my rust problems are pretty much the same

 

I just got a lot of sheet metal work done for this step. Since this truck was in this accident I didn't realize how badly it effected everything. Unfortunately, I also ran out of shielding gas for my MIG welder, so I had to stop welding. What also sucks about that is I am going to have someone go get the gas for me because I am on my way to work before everything opens and get home waaaay after everything closes. So I will continue my work on this thing probably monday.

 

Here are a couple more pictures... You can see towards the second to last picture that I ran out of gas.

 

Any pictures?

 

Well I went to the Super Sunday Swap Meet today and picked up a couple things.... Since I have a different, more modern engine in the truck I can't use a majority of the gauges in the cluster, so I decided to purchase a classy set of gauges to bolt under the dash. I would like to keep everything as stock as possible, minus the engine/tranny upgrade. I love traditional, but would like to have something that is dependable and can still find parts for easily. Here are some shots of some of my loot...

Oh yeah, that license plate was $10 bucks and I thought it was cool. So.... I had to have it (yay its a plate from 1959!)

 

Also... BIG SUPRISE!!! I finally gave in to earlier posts and found a sweet set of wheels to go with some WIIIIDDDDEEE White Walls when everything is about ready on this truck (they will be going on last)

I really chewed this guy down on these, he was asking way too much and hadn't made a sale yet and it was already 3 hours into the swap meet (I was watching him lol). He told me that the center caps didn't come with the wheels (I thought bs, I am sure they do, he thinks I am just stupid) So I chewed him down 25 bucks and told him to throw in some of the valve stems and a couple other things, making sure he had the center caps come with them and brought up the point that he really hadn't made a sale yet and he could if he would be willing to negotiate a little he would have a sale with me. Sure enough he did and was really cool about it after I found out he was from Central California and we talked about the same places that we both have been to and where I am from in Lake Tahoe.

All in all, it was a good day and the lady wasn't even mad that I dropped some coin for this stuff. She was actually surprised and thought everything was cool... I think we have a keeper.

And yes I know that the garage needs to be cleaned... Its all my parents shit that they are clinging onto for some reason... I will be taking care of that sometime this week

 

Cool license plate! I looked for almost 2 years before finding one for my truck and it wasn't nearly as inexpensive as yours! Mine's slightly longer than the usual plate but it is a 7000# one and in awesome condition. I believe neat touches like this multiply the cool factor. Keep it up!