I've gotten tired of having a rusted hood on my truck, so now that I've finally got off my behind I'm going to have to do something about it.

My co-worker has a neighbor who worked in a body shop for years and has his own shop on his land. He offered to sand, prime and paint the hood for $100 if I supplied a quart of paint. Naturally I jumped on that.

I've already made some progress (which says a lot cause I normally hate doing projects like this...)



Here's the victim of the peeling ford paint...



And while that's being painted, I'm going to take the bed rails off, sand them myself, and repaint them since I'm tired of looking at this...


I will offer a few words of wisdom for anybody taking off a hood.

1. Get someone to help hold the hood while your taking the hinges off. I found this one out the hard way and about broke my wrist when the hood shifted. (I'm stubborn, I admit it.)
2. Take the springs off first! Then have your helper hold the hood up while you tackle the hinges.
3. Make some alignment marks on your hinges that way you can line it back up and it shouldn't need much adjustment (if any)


4. Did I mention having another person to help you?

And while all that is happening, I'll wash the rest of the truck down and hit it with some cleaner wax and try to clean it up as best as I can.





.............This is going to be a loooooooooooooong winter.

 

I can't wait to see the finishing product. Good luck brother.

 

56K WARNING!

Since today was the first warm day in a long time, I dug the truck out of the garage, washed it, then proceeded to wax her.


This is a good comparison of before and after with the cleaner wax.


And thus onward to waxing the rear of the truck.



After about a good 4 hours work, here are the end results.






I did sand/prime/paint the bed rails, but I had a lot of problems getting the finish perfect on them, so I said forget it, at least they match the rest of the truck in apperance now (they're not peeling/rusting anymore, so I'm happy).

Is the whole truck perfect? Hell no. Is it better now? Yup. The hood will be done in the next day or two, so she'll be back on the road before christmas. Now to figure out why I have a coolant leak that I just noticed...

 

I use the same cleaner wax , some good stuff, the truck is looking great, post some pics of the hood when you get it back.

Mike

 

Do you have problems getting all the swirls when buffing while using that cleaner wax?

 

Looks hot, man. Very nice work.

 

Dang, she cleaned up good. Nice job.

 

No , it just has to dry real well , never had a problem with swirls.

Mike

 

you should send the before/after pic to the company and ask them for some free stuff in return - looks great

 

Truck looks awesome Moore. Your time and efforts were definitely worth it IMO

 

I got the hood back today and have it back on there. I would have taken pictures but it's already dark, so I'll try and take them tomorrow.

On a side note, the coolant leak is a freeze plug behind the passenger side motor mount. I've made up my mind to fix that one and start shopping for a 351W to build on the side and put in the truck when it's completed.

 

WAW i didnt know WAX did such a good job on paints :O .. waw.. keep it up

 

you made lemonade out of a lemon!! good job

Ray

 

Good looking truck....I really like the seat....never seen that before.Maguires is good stuff...the Tech wax works great too...can't wait to try the clay bar kit I got....Later

JR

 

Good job. Looks good. Makes me miss the "boxy" style years for the F-150's.