I 1st signed up here in Jan of 04 during Round 1 on my 65 F250. Life or the next shiny object intervened and I left it in a coat of gray primer ... which didn't weather well. I think the wind blew it off.




Turned out to be a good thing tho because some of my Round 1 bodywork didn't withstand the test of time either. The biggest sin was over some 6" square doors in the bedsides for access to saddle tanks. I cut some patches and proceeded to warp the crap outa both sides.

But, inventive amateur that I am, I welded some braces between the inner outer walls and forced them out to where they belonged, which kept the bondo to a reasonable thickness. Got away with it on the drivers side but the extra stress proved to be more than the pass side could withstand.



Cut the area back to metal and because I love the smell of bondo I've got it back to good enough.



In the intervening years I've gained a slip roller and I'm no stranger to cleco's. I've also seen pliers to make flanges and have no doubt the "right way" would be to cut the whole panel out and replace it. But man! Them'd be some big ol' holes in the side of my truck! I'm not brave enough for that. I've caused enough injury already and there are other ares that need help too. Maybe someday .....

More to come.

 

Truck looks straight from what you can see in the pics and aside from some surface rust doesn't look like the almost 20 years sitting has hurt it to much. Should clean up well.

 

Looks like you have a solid truck and will make a good build. Good luck.

 

It's a California Truck. My Dad bought it from a Brother Elk who was the original owner. Between the two of them they kept the bed protected with camper shells for over 30 years. The tailgate's perfect! It's spent the last 25 with me here in the High Desert just outside of the LA Basin.

It's also spent every day of it's life outdoors so the rubber be like ... fossilized? I found a 6" chunk laying on the dash the other day.

But I ain't complaining. I've seen the rust a lotta guys have to deal with and I ain't anticipating any of that.

 

The Old Truck's been runnin' rough lately. Points ... again. Gap was under .010!

So I've got a Pertronix in house and only 6v to the 1.5 ohm coil with the ignition on, so I"m after the fat pink wire. It's connected to my ignition switch with a pig tail and I was hoping to find another connector somewhere in the harness ... but no joy on that. The other end terminates in the junction box. I can't imagine how I'd get it out of there or how I'd get a new wire in, but you could write volumes about the things I don't know!

Unless anybody has a better suggestion, Plan A is to cut and connect near the junction and run my own wire to the ignition switch. I've been pulling the harness wrap and substituting tie wraps to dig it all the way out and ya know what? That fat pink chick is over 4ft long! A short piece shouldn't cause enough voltage drop to be a problem.

I dunno what else to do ....

 

Sounds like any easy try at least.

 

I ran a dedicated wire from the key switch so I could use points later after that big EMP on the conspirators list...

 

Another Round 1 fail came from me welding up and skimming the seam on the rear of the cab. The filler is really thin, but primer is really porous, and I'm calling water damage on this one! Looks like a dried up mud flat.




Took it all out with a flap disc on my angle grinder, skimmed it again, and we're all good now.




Hopefully this time I'll get it sealed up with a coat of paint before the weather turns it into potato chips again.

 

Or hit it with primer sealer which I believe is not porous like regular primer.

 

Epoxy primer would seal it but I'm not sure if any primer is UV rated.

 

Another one of my Bondo fails from Round 1 was over removing the hood emblem. There's a couple of indents underneath that I just wadded full. As the years have gone by they've shrunk and cracks have appeared at the edges.

This time I made little patches to weld over the indents and got away with way less Bondo. I'm still more dependent on filler than I'd like to be ... but I'm gittin' better.

After that little bit of success I decided to take a walk on the custom side by deleting the horizontal slots in my upper valence. Been thinking about this for awhile and after taking the plunge I'm very happy with the results.



The front of my Slick just got Slicker.

 

I won't go into the horror story of how, but my pristine hood got caved in awhile back. A good smack with my palm knocked it back out but left it sprung high and wide on the drivers side.



That's as low as the hinge goes and parts are the hood are already below the cowl.

After pulling the front clip I got my porta power in place from the ground to the lower support structure inside of the hinge, core support back on with the hood latched, and with that and a bottle jack on the intake. I was able to carefully massage the hood back into alignment with the cowl. Happy Day.

But wait ... there's more ...

The raised center section wound up with pairs of dents/ripples all along it's length. 4 pairs in total and I forgot to take a picture. So now I'm practicing my practically non-existent hammer and dolly skills ... which leads me to this ...




I think the next step should be a shrinking disc and I just happen to have a 4.5" dia. of .420 thk stainless in the inventory. If there's nothing special I don't know about them, Plan A is to make my own ... but, what has me worried is ... I never even herd of a shrinking disc until I started hanging out here! Now I'm gonna make one?

If anyone sees me goin' off the deep end please speak up.

 

My homemade shrinking disc worked really well. Not only did it shrink the high spots down, it also seems to have stretched the low spots up.




I'll bondo that. It ain't gonna take much ....

 

I was surprised to find some rust damage in my core support. I know for a fact this truck has never been registered or stored outside of CA ... and I live in a desert! How did this happen?

Lower right side from the back.





Same area on the front.




I have no experience with rust repair, but that's never stopped me before. I'm gonna cut it out and do my best ....

Any advice is welcome.

 

Got the 352 out of Old Butter and on to an engine stand today, but there's a problem. That cheap **** stand ain't even stout enough! It was fine during racecar days but a 352 ain't no Pinto. I had to get help just to roll it into the garage and when the 1st wheel got to the joint between the two ... it snapped right off!! Almost toppled the motor.

So now I gotta build an engine stand. I'm gonna start with these because I already got 'em.



Nuthin' like a little bit of overkill.