Sunday, July 24, 2011

Starting to See Progress

Today was a very productive day, thanks to Mike & the Mechanics at Discovery Garage. I don't think I've been there a single day when I didn't get comments from the passing traffic. Thursday the fire truck was screaming for me as they rode on by (thanks to Joe & Louis). Today a guy who looked like Santa Claus stopped to say hello. I was hoping he had a new grill in his sled for me - instead he carried war stories of his 48 GMC. I asked him what condition his was when he got it and he looked at mine, then back at me and said "not this bad." HA thanks for the vote of confidence dude! To sum up all I've done so far:
- stripped the interior, removed all forensic evidence, bones, rodents & seats
- scraped all layers of paint (red, blue, green, brown & primer black) from both doors, hood & front fenders
- sanded rust from both doors, hood & front fenders (have I mentioned how much I hate rust???)
- removed all wiring, needing to be replaced
- removed both doors, hood & front fenders
- ooh and that big ole dent right in the front fender of the cover shot has been removed :) My first real auto body work.
Looks like I'll be able to salvage a good portion of it. As far as the guts go, I'll probably hold onto it all until I'm sure the donor Chevy has everything I need, then I'll part it out at swap meets. As I was sitting on the front lawn surrounded by a graveyard of rusted parts, my Mom calls and has to add her two cents in to tell me that Kenny from up the block said I should only work on one panel at a time, so I don't get overwhelmed. I'm pretty sure I was already overwhelmed the day I brought this hooptie home. Unfortunately Knox Farm has a no return policy.

1 comment:

Gregg said...

Looking good. Keep up the good work. I can't offer help as far as labor right now, but I can offer resources. I can source pretty much any part you may need as well as how to's and examples of other builds. Here are a few ideas so far:

Wiring on something this old can be annoying to troubleshoot and repair on something so old. It may be more worth it to spend a little money and get a complete replacement harness from this place:

http://www.painlesswiring.com/

Also, it will be inevitable that you'll need some welding work done on the cab and bed to fix holes and what not. This stuff is supposed to be just as good as conventional welding only without the tools and experience needed to weld properly.

http://3mcollision.com/products/adhesive-products

This project shows an example of a guy switching the roof on his build using only bonding adhesive. It also eliminates the chance of heat warping.

http://www.honda-tech.com/showpost.php?p=37051534&postcount=732