Started My Crew Cab Project
 

Well, last week I started sanding paint off the hood of my '76 Crew Cab. My local NAPA store has an annual filter and tool sale which happened to be this past Friday. While I was there I picked up a hammer and dolly set. I got to work on learning how to take out dents today. It's coming along pretty good, I think. I used to weld for a living, so I basically understand how to read the metal.

One thing I have never been too good at is painting. I've helped friends shoot paint, but my painting experience is limited to refinishing toolboxes with rattle-cans. I bought a decent paint rig at Harbor Freight, along with a regulator and water separator and I'm going to paint my cattle trailer first for practice.

My big question for today is: my hood had patchy paint and surface rust where the paint was gone, as does the roof. To get a good finish, do I need to strip them both to bare metal, or just the rusty areas and take the paint down past the dead paint?

This is going to be a driver/hard-working towing rig, not a show queen, but I do want it to look nice when I'm done with it. I'm not stripping it to the frame, though I'm thinking about taking the bed off so I can actually paint between the cab and bed.

I would just strip it down and be done with it. Either a knotted wire wheel, or a ready strip disc on a 4.5" angle grinder will do the trick. Good luck, and post up some pics

I got a fair amount of time in working on the Crew the last two days. Here's what I started with:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...0Cab/005-1.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...%20Cab/006.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...%20Cab/008.jpg

Worked a few dings out around the tail lights. Got them pretty close, but still have just a bit to go.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...20Cab/red7.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...%20Cab/009.jpg

I got the bumper, grille guard, grille, and front fenders off today. The left front had a couple of dings in it. Started working on those this afternoon.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...%20Cab/013.jpg

one thing i hate about this forum..seeing pictures of south texas mesquites,oak trees, and kuh-leech-ee (any idea how thats really spelled?). The crew looks great...as does your progress, keep up the good work.

Knotted wire wheels are so agressive, you will damage the sheet metal. The only good use for those are on your floorpan, driprail, firewall etc., where you have small areas that are heavily crusty.
Ready strip discs are also aggressive, you can warp low crown panels if you get too crazy so limit use to dent repair etc. Stripping to bare metal is not necessary. If you want to go to bare metal, soda blasting is the only way to go.
Flaky paint should sand off easily, just sand down to good paint.
Surface rust can be easily removed with phosphoric acid with some clear plastic wrap layed over to prevent evaporation.

I haven't updated this thread in quite a while. At times it has seemed like I would never get finished with this project. What with the daily work of running a ranch and a side-business, I would sometimes go weeks without getting to do a thing. Then my mother passed in July and I had to move everything from where I was working on it to my place, and I haven't had time to build my shop yet.

Once things got more or less sorted from my mother's passing I buckled down and started working on the Crew as much as possible. The last couple of weeks I've hired one of my nephews to help me. He did body and paint in the Air Force, so that's been a big help.

It isn't perfect, but it's going to be a working ranch truck again (I have to keep reminding myself).

Some of the body work after I got the bed off:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...0Cab/001-1.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...0Cab/004-1.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...0Cab/006-2.jpg

Prep for paint:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting003.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting005.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting006.jpg

WE HAVE PAINT!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting007.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting012.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting014.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting015.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y16...ainting016.jpg

In case anybody is wondering, I didn't paint the bed front panel because I found marking from when the Crew was assembled in Toronto. Maybe silly, but I wanted to preserve those.

I've found out I still have some learning to do on body work, but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt. Besides, almost everything was self-taught or learned from watching You Tube videos.

Hopefully, we should finish the paint Monday and start reassembly.

Looks good! It is nice to see progress.