Thanks guys...appreciate it.

*UPDATE*...The tailgate is hung, and so are the doors! I added a couple new shots to the album today.

Oh, also for those of you that have ever purchased, or are considering purchasing the tailgate latch brackets from LMC, be advised that the holes on them are not the same as stock, and the tailgate may not close without shimming them (which will affect alignment). Luckily, I still had the old ones, so they're gonna be sanded down, and painted up to clean them up.

Anyway, for those of you keeping tabs, enjoy.

 

Man that truck looks great. How easy was it for you to align the doors. Mine seemed like a PITA. And I'm still a schmidit off on the drivers door and can't get it perfect. I think I will have to fix my hinge pin. At first, I thought it wasn't loose, but it is actually just a tad and I think it's causing me issues.

 

According to the guys at the body shop, hanging the doors was a huge pain in the ***. It took them 3 hours to get them aligned properly, and even then the gap will never be perfect. Add that on top of when I'll put the new weatherstrip in, it will almost be guaranteed to be knocked off kilter.

Once I get it home, hopefully in the next couple weeks, I'll get to start reassembling everything and will find out for sure. I'm not looking forward to adjusting the doors after the weatherstrip is in, but I'm guessing it'll be necessary.

As for the tailgate, the initial hanging went ok, but getting it to latch up was a pain. When I got there yesterday afternoon, they were still fighting with it. I started to look at it, and that's where I figured out that the latch brackets from LMC weren't made properly. So, we took the old original ones, and had to tweak them a little, but the gate closes quite well now. Actually, the latch on the driver's side had to be altered a bit, as there was a small lip of metal that was hanging things up. We got out the dremel, and ground about 1/16" off that lip, and it worked fine.

 

Man, this is just what I want to do with a supercab 4x4.

Nice truck, keep on postin', I'll be keepin' an eye on it. This is gonna be a real beauty, that's for sure.

Well, among many, maaany things I've been debating as a project to start on in June, this is one of them. I've been considering doin' a frame off, bulletproofin' the drivetrain, but leavin' the body 'til I have the time to restore it.

How long did it take you from the frame and drivetrain as was, to all powdercoated and all? How much did the powdercoating cost?

 

Well.....to be quite honest, the timeline from the moment I got the rolling chassis home while the body was at the body shop, to the point where it was ready to be towed back to the body shop, was approximately 6 weeks.

Yup...a completely unrealistic, ridiculously fast, basically spastically insane turnaround time. Why, you may ask? Simple. I blame the fact that it turned into a frame-off resto on the guy that owns the body shop. He called me one day in mid November saying, "hey, we had to take the cab off the frame, so if you want to take the chassis home to clean it up, now is the time.

This put me in quite the dilemma....first, without knowing it, he was appealing to my obsessive/compulsive side, by giving me the opportunity to clean up my rig before the body went back on. So, I reevaluated the budget for this...that, involved terminating my Lincoln project which was going nowhere, and turning my focus onto Buford.

So, I disassembled the chassis down to the bolt, took the rear end assmblies into the garage to focus on them as well as the springs, and took boxes and boxes of nuts, bolts, screws, etc. to the local Ace Hardware to match up with new grade 8 or stainless steel replacements (depending on purpose). I disassembled all the springs, and started taking loads of parts to the powdercoater, while I prepared the frame for transport. In the album, there's a picture of the frame on Maynard, which I managed by myself (do NOT attempt that...it was dumb of me to do so, but I'm stubborn).

I then took the transmission to a local shop here in town to have it gone through, and picked up the new transfer case from a different shop. I then ran all the hard lines to a brake shop to have them copied with new line. While all these respective shops were doing their thing, I was at home either studying catalogs, calling for parts, running for parts, or rebuilding what I could with what parts I had available.

After about a week, I got the frame back as evidenced in the album by the U-haul trailer with the frame on it. I didn't let it sit long, as I took the other parts from the coater, and reassembled the leaf springs, and the front and rear suspension assemblies that weekend. Once they were set, I took a couple pictures of them, and then prepared to roll the frame into the garage, and connect each assembly to the frame. This, was not an easy thing, as the new bushings, as well as the sheer weight and difficulty of aligning everything by myself had me using all sorts of colorful language that day.

After I got the basic chassis back together, I went to pick up the hard lines which were finished, and took them home and started mounting them back up. I also bought a few rolls of various rubber line to put in the proper places. All the hard lines are held in with rubber coated metal clamps, held in place with stainless bolts and nyloks. Once that was done, I took the gas tanks that I had painted, and placed new sending units in, and mounted them with the powdercoated brackets.

Then it was a flurry of installing the engine mounts, shock mounts, shocks, bushings, the harness which I cleaned and retaped, and then covered in plastic shrouding with tie-wraps every 4 inches or so. The final step was that I forgot about the fuel fill tubes, so i took them in to be powdercoated, and installed them the night before the towtruck arrived to take it back to the shop.

So, I managed to restore my first truck chassis in six weeks time. This was probably not the most cost-effective build, but it was fast. As for specific cost on the coating of the frame, I posted a breakdown in another thread about sandblasting, but here was the summary:

"The blasting of the body was roughtly $550
The blasting of the frame by itself was another $240
Blasting and coating of all the parts, to include the core support, inner fenders, and all the hardware mentioned above was around $460
The coating of the frame was another $300

I've added my receipts, and I'm into the powdercoating shop for exactly $1680.20, and I've still got a few things that I'll be taking to them (which I don't see going much over another $100 bucks)."

So, that's it... six weeks to restore the chassis without the body. Proof positive I need to seek serious professional help.

 

Well if you need serious professional help, then I better book myself in for admiring your work. And moreso for the fact that I'd see myself attempting your frame on truck feat.

Were you working at the same time? haha
If I were to be able to do what you've done I'd be able to finish a whole ground up resto with lots of mods in the time I'd figured on bein' able to just do the frame and drivetrain. But I know that ain't happenin'.

Thanks for the details. Helps me get an idea of what I'm in for. But I'm lookin' forward to every last bit of it. And hopefully I'll be able to allay some frustrations I come across with good ol' beer

And you don't live too far from me, maybe I'll get to see the completed Buford first hand sometime.

 

Well, I took one week off for the disassembly, and to transport each of the components to the respective shop that would have to deal with it. After that, i was back to work, and was doing what I could at night and on the weekends.

 

I've been working on mine for 3 years now..........but I didn't do much the first year. Just dissassembled and slow started to put together.

 

*UPDATE* 05/21/2008

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything, so I figured I'd bring folks up to speed. The trim is on the sides and the tailgate, the tailgate emblem is on, and the letters have been airbrushed.

On Monday, Buford was towed from the bodyshop (you have NO idea how happy they were to see him go), to the Line-X shop in Tumwater, WA. For those that don't know, Line-X is a truck bedliner company. I had the bed and the cab floor and walls bedlined. Should serve as serious protection from moisture in the cab, as well as excellent sound deadener.

Today, I went to the Line-X shop, and met the towtruck, and it was brought home.....FINALLY! We unloaded and put Buford in his new canopy I purchased and assembled. Now I can start tinkering on the weekends again!

Anyway, I just wanted to give everybody a progress report, and I've posted a bunch of new pictures in my album. I also had to delete a bunch, as the max you can have is 50 (I didn't know that).

Enjoy!

 

06/01/2008

Not a lot to update...got the bumper on, the rear lenses, rear marker lenses, gas door bumpers, and the cargo light installed. Buford is starting to at least look good from the butt end.....The front end is another matter.

The bumper is one of those Fey replacements, and I know it's not top of the line, but it will serve the purpose until I can afford the ones I want from Reunel. It doesn't look half bad, tho. I did take a little precaution, and sprayed the inside of the bumper with spray-on bedliner from the local auto parts house. It should help to keep corrosion away for a while.

Today, I also took my engine apart and will be taking the block to the machine shop to be checked out before I make my purchase from Tim Meyer. No real pictures of the engine, as it's only a block right now, and an ugly one at that.

Anyway, I added a couple new pictures, but I notice not many people bother looking in the gallery. So, I'll stick one up here.

'later

 

wow really looks great. I look forward to these updates. Keep it up!

 

07/04/2008 (and a Happy Independence Day to everyone too)

Well, I have a little bit to update...Spent the last several days installing the on-door, and on-cab weatherstrip that I got from Dennis Carpenter. By the way, should any of you be wondering about quality differences in the weatherstrip, I can say without fear of contradiction, that the weatherstrip from Dennis Carpenter is a much better grade of rubber. The stuff from LMC is thinner, softer, limper, and you can tell that it's not the same. That being said, the stuff from DC is a serious pain in the butt to fanagle into position properly.

The on-door strip was a breeze for the most part. I used the 3M weatherstrip adhesive, which looks like black gorilla snot, and has about the same consistency. On a hot day that stuff will begin to kick rather quickly, so you need to work in small sections, and not overextend what you can cleanly install.

The on-cab strip was a much more involved process. I used a couple tips I found here, as well as the directions from Dennis Carpenter. I positioned the entire strip with tape (low tack bodyshop tape, so as not to damage the new paint). Once it was in position, with the split at the bottom center of the door, I began at the top center. I removed the tape strips over a small section, and applied the adhesive in thin layers on both the strip and the mounting surface. Once I let it sit for a few moments, I then pressed it into position, and taped it down so it wouldn't move. I would then let that section cure before I moved onto the next, so that the strip wouldn't stretch or migrate. I'd do the same sections on each door, so I could at least get them both done at the same time. It took 4 days to finish them up, but they're on, they're not stretched, and they look like they belong there. I'll post a couple new pictures in my album in a couple days.

I also got all my windows back from the tinter, so they're ready to be installed. The front and back windows are in, and the rear is tinted. I'm only going with like a 40% tint, which is not very dark. Just enough to knock down that "fishbowl" effect that clear glass tends to give.

I then took the weather seals for the wing windows, and sat down to figure out how to install them. I can offer a couple tips to folks here on this particular step. First and foremost, the seals from Dennis Carpenter are superior to LMC, yet again. They are also much more difficult to manipulate as they are much more substantial rubber. So, the two best things I can offer in the way of advice is one: Get the delux nylon pry-tool set from Eastwood company (it's a bodyshop paint and tool catalog). It's a 10 piece kit, and comes in REALLY handy for this sort of thing. The second piece of advice: fill a bowl with water and a lot of dishwashing soap. You want enough soap in the water to make it feel just a bit slimy. Also, you don't need suds, just the soap dilute in the water. When you're positioning the seal in the frame, you just dip your hand in the water, and run your fingers over the mounting surfaces of the seal, so that it will slide more easily into position. I did this, and with the help of the round tipped nylon pry-tool, I had the seals in, and the wing windows bolted in in less than an hour. If I had tried to do this with dry seals, I'd have been at it all day, and wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Today, my plan was to install the outer door handles, locks, latch mechanism, and all the associated connecting rods. First, I chose the best latch mechanisms I had (I have 4 sets), and them dropped them both into a bucket of SuperClean degreaser/cleaner to soak for an hour. I then used a toothbrush to clean them thoroughly. Once clean, I then put them both in my dishwasher for a wash and dry. Once they were dry, I got out the multi-purpose grease and the Q-tips, and greased all the moving surfaces to reduce friction. I then installed the latches, and the rods with all new plastic keepers (there are 3 different kinds...luckily I got all three from DC). Once I got everything installed into position, I closed the drivers door, and it closed PERFECTLY!!! The door was flush, and it closed like a brand new truck. Just one problem...I lifted the handle, and nothing...the friggin door wouldn't open! So, I crawled into the other side, and pulled the inner latch rod, and it popped open really easily. I decided to try the same test on the passenger side door. It didn't close as perfectly, but that's just a striker plate reposition issue. What did happen was that the outer door handle didn't open that door either. Needless to say, i was a bit irritated as I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't work.

Finally, the light in my head came on, and I realized that the outer door handles were purchased from LMC Truck. Knowing the kinds of problems I've had with fitment and function issues with other parts of theirs, I decided to swap out the handle, and go back to an old original one. Yup, you guessed it, worked like a champ. The handles from LMC don't move the latch rod enough to be able to disengage the latch. It's just another example of poor workmanship, and poor quality parts from LMC. I've had to pay the price for buying from them on at least 8 different occasions now, so I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, I now need to order new handles from Dennis Carpenter, which sets back my plans of installing the windows and regulators a week or two. You live and learn, I guess. I'll try to post a couple pictures of my progress, although it's not anything to major in the visual department. I did manage to post a few pictures of my engine teardown in a new album, if you're curious.

So, that's all i've got for now. Hope you all enjoy your 4th, and I'll post a new update when I have more to report. 'later!

 

She's looking great. You do know that most people would have been completely happy woth the truck before you took it apart, I think we both suffer from the same illness. Mine was appraised for 10 grand and a week later it was tore down to frame as well. Now if I can find the time to work on my own truck instead of everybody elses stuff I might get it back together.
Love the airbrush on the tailgate, really stands out. Can't wait to see the finished product, might give me some incentive to get to mine.

 

07/12/2008

A couple new steps have been completed. I managed to get the Dynamat into the doors, and on the ceiling, and the weatherstrip is on the cab and all cleaned up. I also removed the firewall insulation mat, as I have a new one coming in, and I was able to remove about 50 yards of useless wire from under the dash from about 3 different previous stereos that someone wired like crap, an old set of temp/oil pressure guages, and the old trailer brake control. I then installed the cowl lacing on the outside firewall (I know, big deal...but it's another step).

I did run into one drawback. The glove compartment door which I thought was just dusty, was painted like crap, so I need to get that redone. Not a big deal, but just another glitch.

Anyway, a couple pics...I'll add more to the gallery later.

 

Very nice! Hoping to get a duck-tail for my truck (no idea what it's called, that piece above the windshield - people with hair like that have a duck-tail style hairdo). It adds so much character to everything.

I've been doing a lot of research as to how I'm restoring my truck (My mother is coming into around $90k in inheritance from my great grandfather, and said she will give me some to restore my grandfather's truck). I'll have the frame sandblasted, then I'll paint it with Rustoleum primer and Enamel paint (I've heard people say POR-15 is better, but it's a hell of a lot more expensive, and Rustoleum seems to be plenty strong).

For the cab, I want do something similar - I want to strip it, then rusto primer it, and mix up a solution of microbeads and rusto (microbeads are supposed to give it much enhanced sound-proofing and heat shielding properties - it's what makes Lizard Skin useful). Then I'll cover everything in the cab with B-Quiet Ultimate or Raammat BXT60, with a pad on the floor under carpet (and I'm thinking about putting heavy plastic between the carpet and pad, to block out water).

I really want my truck to be super quiet when I'm running it (from the inside, at least) and I live in the desert, so heat proofing is important (and the winters get pretty harsh as well). And the rusto and microbead combo should be durable enough to also line the engine compartment, and not look bad at all.


I'm also rolling my own paint on the truck, using *shock* rusto. The warm look of enamel instead of clear coat should give it that real classic truck look.