I am restoring my 77 F150 and I'm at the stage where my rolling chassis is done complete with drive train components. I paint the fire-wall and underside of cab before I installed back on the frame. It's pretty cold in Upstate NY right now, so I am waiting for the warmer weather in the spring to do my first paint job on this truck. But I did go ahead and paint the interior of the cab along with the window channels and door jambs, so I could work on installing the interior components while I wait for the warmer weather. I figured with the window channels and door jambs painted I could install the windshield / rear glass and door seals / doors. This way when my interior is finished I will be able to protect my work my just closing the doors. That was the plan, but here's where I made a mistake. When deciding how far out around the window channels to paint, I using the new window gaskets to see how far they extend from the channel and then I painted ~ 1/8-1/4" past the gasket. Well last Sunday my brother-in-law and I installed the rear window (what a work out!) and I found that once the window and gasket are installed in the truck, that the gaskets expands and ending up extending 1/4" past where I painted. After all the work it took to install the rear glass my brother-in-law and I were trying to come up with ways to paint behind the seal or trying to convince ourselves that it had two coats of epoxy primer and two coated primer surfacer and if I painted up to the gasket when I painted the truck in the Spring, that it would be alright. I just could not make myself believe any of the things we came up with would work, so we decided to remove the rear window and do the job right. Taking out the rear glass was only slightly easier than taking it out BTW. I'm telling this story, so that others can learn from my mistake as I did. This weekend I plan to repaint the window channels correctly, so I can keep this project moving.

 

I normally use the 1 coat system for interior. And 2 coat systems for exterior. Doing so requires the doors to be off to gain full access. But there is nothing wrong with using interior pain in the door jams since they are not normally exposed to the same enviroment as the exterior. If you used 2 coat system for interior that is even more durable.

When ever in dought Paint it. You will be surprised how much little stuff will come and bite you. I never try to paint lines, I prefer to overlap. The only exception is 2 tone. and interior/exterior body lines.

You discovered that window channels need to be fully painted. If you are not removing the glass you can mask and paint. How good are you with an air brush? Since you have epoxy base you will not rust, but the 2nd level primer will fade with out a top coat. Since some interiors colors are different from the exterior color I like to fit a piece of cardboard in from the inside when painting the outside and vice versa. Your way ahead of me. I don't have a garage I can paint in any more. So I have to wait for warmer weather.

 

For the interior, firewall, and bottom of cab I'm using a Nason single stage acrylic paint that is the same color as the Nason BC/CC system I will be painting the rest of the truck with in the Spring. I saw no need to mess with the BC/CC system for these areas and if the color match is little off from the BC/CC it won't be noticeable in these locations. This single stage paint looks great and has a real nice glossy finish after two coats. I'm using a 2007 Ford Dark Forest metallic Green color for the whole truck, but I'm going to add the "Explorer" stripe theme in a different color like it originally came from the factory. My truck was originally Dark Brown metallic with light tan Explorer stripes that sort of matched my "Saddle" interior components (Dash, Head liner, door panels, carpet & Seats). I'm staying with the Saddle colored interior components, so I'm thinking of using tan for the accent stripes to tie it all in with my interior color scheme. When I first settled on the dark forest green paint I was toying with the idea of silver accent stripes, but I later thought I should go with the tan for the reason I stated above. What do you folks think about my game plan?

 

Sound like a good plan. Tan on green should look good.

 

cujo, it sounds like you made the install of the rear glass way too hard. If you put the gasket around the glass, wrap a small rope or cord around the gasket twice, then have some one hold the glass up to the back of the cab, and from the inside pull the cord, rolling the edge of the gasket inside the cab as you go. The second pass of the cord will pull any thing you missed inside. Start to finish is about a 5 minute job.

 

The problem was that I did not paint around the window channels far enough and when I installed the window/gasket the gasket extended past where I painted, so I removed the rear window so that I could paint around the windows again. I repainted last Saturday and I'm planning on reinstalling the glass this weekend. I used the rope method to install the rear window and it seemed to work well enough. The hardest area to pull the rope around was the corners, but we got the window installed completely and it looked good, but I had to take it out to repaint. I thinking it will be a little easier this time now that I've done before:-)