Digging into the new cab

Got the new cab tilted on it’s back, and started digging into the underside.

The outer rockers have been replaced already, but whoever did it didn’t actually fix the rust under them, just covered it with new rockers. I knew about this, so I’ll have to cut the new outer rockers off to properly fix the stuff behind them(inner rockers and lower front pillars).

 

 

Also found rust in all four cab braces, floors in front outer corners, cowl vents, & cowl panels below vents.

 

 

Annoyingly, I found out the cab corners *were* replaced, but done very badly and covered with bondo. Those are coming out too, to be done right

 

 

As bad as this all looks, It is still better than my other cab. I have everything to fix it except 1 cab brace & the lower front pillars. I’m going to form the patches for the cowl vents as those are invisible under the fenders.

 

 

I’ve decided that the cab is a low priority, I’m going to get all the rust *on* the truck delt with, then swap the cab over. However I wanted to mess with the cab a bit, so I decided to knock something easy out first.

This cab was from a deluxe trim truck (like the other ’64 I had), so I need to weld up the 4 sail panel screw holes, and the 4 larger side trim holes. I may put the side trim on this truck later, but if I do I’m going to used double sided trim tape.

 

 

For the small sail trim holes I just removed the paint and filled the holes with the welder & ground them smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

For the bigger trim holes I’m making small circular filler pieces and welding those in. A skim coat of filler and these should be perfect.

 

Bedside Grind

Sunday I decided I wanted to do something that would make the truck look better, and not just make the parts in the garage look better. So I broke out the D/A and angle grinder and stripped the passenger bedside. The truck has been repainted once, and the top coat of fawn came off with no effort, the newer primer and original paint/primer put up more of a fight though. I did manage to get it all stripped in one day.

I did find filler behind the wheel and one spot higher up in front of the wheel, but the filler was in good shape and looking at the backs of the panel it appears to be smoothing small imperfections and not massive dents, so I left it in place rather than grinding it out only to have to re-do it.

The paint did not want to come off the bedside cap for anything so I left it for now. I’ll have to re-grind this whole area when I install the ’50 Pontiac lights, so I’ll worry about it then.

 

 

 

There was two spots of rot in the wheelwell, which I knew about. I  also found some pinhole rust in the bottom of the bedside cap. Nothing dire though.

Once it was stripped, I coated it in Masterseries anti-rust paint as we have thunderstorms predicted for this week. I’ll just grind back the Masterseries when I get to he rust repair & bodywork.