Tag Archives: 1964

Tool Boxing Day

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One thing the truck is sorely lacking is storage space. Putting stuff under the seat is a recipe for being smacked in the ankles under emergency braking. I had an old crate in the bed to hold various ratchet straps, bungee cords, tarps, etc. The problem was it would slide around when driving, and everything got soaking wet in the rain.

I bought this tool box at the flea market for all of $5, I liked its design, and the somewhat battered look suits the look of the truck quite well. I knew it would stop the getting wet problem, but I needed it to both not slide around, and to make it a little harder for someone to steal it.

 

I bought two wing screws(like wingnuts, but screws, I didn’t know this existed before I found them) and some nut inserts for wood. Then I figured out where I wanted the tool box to be(making sure to position it so the lid could open), and drilled two holes through the bottom of the and through the wood of the truck bed.

 

From below I hammered in the nut inserts, I went from below so they wouldn’t just get yanked out if someone tried to pull the tool box up. Turns out I didn’t get the holes completely straight which made getting the inserts to stay properly was a pain.

 

Finally the wing screws were installed. Now the tool box won’t be sliding around, but if I need to remove it, it should only take a moment to remove the wing screws and lift the whole thing out.

The start of rocker repair on the truck

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When I bought the ’64 Chevy I knew the worst rot on the truck was in the driver’s rocker area, the whole area was rotted badly enough you couldn’t step there without the whole thing crunching and feeling like it would collapse at any second.

Part of my plan with this truck is to fabricate metal repairs wherever possible, so I could practice metal fabrication, and save money. With the rocker I decided to buy a replacement outer rocker, but fabricate the inner stuff myself.

 

I started by pulling off the sill plate(which was a ruin in and of itself), and made a pass with my Harbor Freight sandblaster to find all the rust holes.

 

 

 

I was left with very little good metal. It quickly became clear that the decorative sill plate had become structural, and was stronger than the remaining rocker.

 

 

So first I cut back to solid metal, getting rid of all the marginal stuff so I knew I had a solid base to start from.

 

 

 

Then came the first of four patches. I formed the right angle bends with the help of a brake, but the rest was hammer formed using whatever around the garage had the shape I needed.

 

 

Then it(and the second filler patch) was welded in and ground smooth.

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Then the second patch, before and after.

 

 

 

 

 

And the third. This patch only got tack welded in before I ran out of light.

 

 

 

 

 

Then between Hurricane Sandy & selling the wagon I haven’t gotten back to it. But the floor is already noticeably more solid with just this much completed.

And the wagon goes away

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I sold the wagon this weekend. It had been sitting since we bought the house, and I had no enthusiasm to work on it any more. I finally got tired enough of it taking up a garage space for no reason. So it went up on Craigslist and the first person who actually came out to look at it bought it.

He owns a small gas station and is thinking of getting it logoed up like and old service car. Whatever he does with it, it’ll be getting used instead of just sitting taking up space I don’t really have.

 

I will miss the wagon, it looked really cool, and on the few occasions when I could drive it it was a lot of fun. But those times were too far and few between and I simply don’t have the money it needed to be made more reliable nor the space to store it until I had that money.

 

I lost money on it, but then I always lose money on cars I own. I did get enough back out of it to not feel like I got completely screwed. And I’ve already used some of the money to buy things I need for the truck. I’ve got some patch panels, new mirrors and a few other things being shipped to me right now. This past weekend I went to a flea market and found some custom tail lights and a few other pieces.

Also I’ve now got a garage space to put the truck in, so I can work on it without worrying as much about the weather, and our driveway is less cramped. So in the end it was a good thing, but I’m still going to be a bit sad that it is gone.

A new addition to the fleet

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Well, the fleet here just got bigger by one.

I bough her home yesterday, but the story starts last week. I saw an ad for this 1964 Chevy C10 on Craigslist. It listed it as running & driving well and all original. However it was 2.5 hours away, and there was no way to cram a 5+ hour round trip into my schedule that week. So I sent the guy an email saying I was interested in looking at it the next week, and tried to put it out of my mind, figuring if it was as advertised it would be gone by the time I could see it.

I loaded up the newly upgraded Wee Trailer(more on that in another post) and went away to PiCon(a scifi con) for the weekend. I returned home late on Sunday, and monday morning gave him a call only to discover the truck was still available.

This caused me to leave work on monday, pick up the ever patient girlfriend, and drive to New Hampshire.

Upon arrival I was greeted by the most basic truck I have ever encountered. Inline six, three speed on the column, no radio, no power steering, no A/C, no power brakes, no passenger mirror, no passenger sunvisor, no center mirror, no passenger key lock. This thing is the platonic ideal of truck. Only the things you need in a truck, and nothing more.

However when he turned the key the engine instantly sprang to life, and ran well. And the transmission shifted well once I figured out the quirks of the column-shifted three speed. And everything on it worked like it was supposed to. And inspection of the body revealed rust on several locations, but nothing terminal or structural, meaning it could be repaired at my own pace. The only big issue was the ancient bias-ply tires.

After a test drive and some negotiations I put down a deposit and headed back home, planning to return Thursday to pay it off and take it home.

Thursday after work found me once again trucking up to New Hampshire, and once arriving I paid him, got a bill of sale and the key in return and headed home. Once I stopped trying to shift quickly and got into the rhythm of the column shift(and thereby stopped getting the linkage jammed up) the drive was pretty uneventful. The truck ran well, and I drove home, though I did curse the terrible tires much of the way as they inspired zero confidence what so ever between the shaking, squealing on turns & tracking of every minor groove in the road.

The only minor issue that came up was when playing with the high beam switch(on the floor) I managed to make the low beams stop working, so I drove home on the high beams which no one seemed to notice as I didn’t get anyone flashing their lights at me.

Once we returned home I re-arranged the cars and was able to get most of the truck into the driveway(though the last foot or so spent the night on the sidewalk). This morning I drove it to work without the slightest problem or issue.

I’ll have another post in the next few days with more pics and a more detailed breakdown of it, but for now I’m just glad to have a classic vehicle that I can actually use and enjoy.

Of windshields and vandals.

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The windshield of the wagon has been leaking since I got the car, I’d attempted to seal it temporarily with some caulking, however that made no measurable difference. I decided to finally replace the seal so that I could start repairs on the floor without the water getting in and ruining them again. Once again Falconparts.com came to my rescue with a reproduction window seal.

First order of business was to get the old seal out. Since it was a wreck and I was replacing it I just removed the inside trim and rear view mirror. Then cut the lip of the seal where it overlapped on the inside.

 

With the seal cut it was pretty simple to push on the windshield to pop it out of the opening.  My big fear at this stage was cracking the windshield getting it loose, but it came loose without any struggle. In this car the trim around the windshield sits in another groove on the seal and comes in and out with the glass.

 

Once the glass was out, I pried off the old seal, pulled loose the trim and tossed the old rubber. Then it was a simple bit of work to scrape off the bits of caulking from my failed attempts and the windshield was ready for its new seal. The opening however needed a bit more work.

 

There was minor rust spots in a few places on the seat of the seal, and the inside has surface rust due to the roof leaks. All the rust was ground down, then painted with a few coats of Masterseries.

 

 

The inside was given a coat of Masterseries a ways back, both to stop the rust and to just make the area look better.

 

 

 

Once the metal was dealt with it was time to re-install the glass. The new seal was wrapped around the glass, then the trim was installed. It has an L-shaped bracket that fits into a groove in the seal and once the glass is installed it is locked in place. Next a cord was pressed into the groove that sits on the metal lip of the body.

 

Then the glass was laid in the window opening, and while applying pressure to the glass the cord was pulled out. The cord pulls the lip of the seal over the metal lip of the body and that locks the glass into place. It went surprisingly easily, I only had to take two tries because I accidentally put the start of the cords at the top instead of the bottom(starting at the bottom allows you to use the weight of the glass to help hold the seal in place while you are starting out).

It thought this was going to be the end of this post, but someone decided it wasn’t. About a month later we’d bought the house and I’d moved the wagon over there to make more room in the driveway at our apartment building. Well one day I came over to the house to work on it and found this.

Less the tape obviously

Some vandal(s) decided to welcome us to the neighborhood by throwing bricks through the Wagon’s windshield and four windows of the house. They threw them hard enough to punch through and cover the dashboard in glass. I was able to find a replacement windshield for $50 and re-use the seal so it didn’t cost me much, but it pissed me right the hell off.

This may be the last straw. I’ve been bothered by how the wagon isn’t really usable, and I had been wanting something I could drive and enjoy. So I’m seriously considering sell it and getting something else. Possibly an old truck which would also be useful around the house.

Project Creep timeline

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I made an effort during the front-end project to try and get a picture from the same approximate angle at each major step in this process. Some didn’t come out or I was so busy I forgot, but it still make a pretty good timeline of the whole thing, so here you go.

Before I started, the wagon with it’s worn out front suspension & rusty wheels. The original plan had been to simply replace the front suspension, cleaning up and painting the parts & mounting points as needed.

This is that point, when the suspension was pulled apart. At this point I decided to clean up & repaint the insides of the fenderwells since it was easier to get in there with the suspension gone. As soon as I started I realized it would be easier without the pesky fenders in the way, which required removal of the bumper & grille…

So all those parts were pulled. At this point since I had them off I figured I might as well redo this whole area, since I could get at it all.

To this end the headlights, the hood latch, fender shields & all remaining brackets were pulled off.

Next up everything was powerwashed. I have a cheap little electric power washer, it is surprisingly useful and does an amazing job of removing grime that would take forever to scrub off. I should have a picture here of everything ground down and ready for paint, but I forgot that overall shot.

Next was Masterseries paint on all the rusty areas, Right after I put the first coat on it began to drizzle, thus the shot after I’d thrown the tent over it in a panic.

There was another coat of Masterseries the next day, then the primer went on over everything.

Lastly was two coats of semi-gloss black, and one coat of truck bed liner in the wheelwells.

With the painting done the re-assembly could begin. The new suspension went in first, followed by the smaller brackets, etc, then the headlights, valance panel & one fender.

Then the other fender & grille. In these pics the brakes are still wrapped in a plastic bag, this was because I couldn’t find my grease gun, so I couldn’t  repack the wheel bearings & finish up assembly. I tracked it down the next day and got all that put together.

Then the bumper & headlight trim rings. The car say more or less like this for a week while I located replacement for some defective tie-rods. Once those arrived I was able to wrap everything up.

The freshly painted wheel went on and the car was finally back on its “feet” for the first time in three weeks. It is amazing how much all the work doesn’t show, while at the same time how much the painted wheels chance the look of the car.

Lastly the hubcaps went on and I could finally call the project done. She’ll need an alignment but tracks straight enough for right now that that isn’t a huge priority, she’ll get it once I can carve the funds out of my budget.

 

Project Creep 4, I love it when a car comes together.

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Those are all the replacement parts for the front suspension. Everything is being replaced except the spindle, strut rod & spring(all of which don’t have any wear parts). So once I’m done, The wagon will essentially have a brand new front end.

I forgot to take pictures of the installation, probably because I was too busy trying to convince the spring to seat properly. Despite cutting one coil off the springs(to lower the car) they were still a tight fit to get in place with new stiff bushing on all the parts. It turned out the tie rods they sent me as part of the kit were wrong, I had four inner tie rods and no outer tie rods. When I call them they said they’d just found out there supplier had screwed up a whole batch, and they had no correct inner tie rods. I ended up having to order them from another company, which delayed the whole project by an extra week.

Once I’d gotten as far as I could with the suspension, I started putting the sheet metal on. It took surprisingly little time, even with all the fiddling to get things to line up as straight as possible. With as many pieces as there was to put together, I made a few mistakes. I initially had the grille brackets upside down, but fortunately that was an easy fix.

One of the things with doing all of this work was that the area visible through the grille was going to look better, more consistently dark instead of a mishmash of black, rust and the pieces that were white from the factory. It is a little thing, but I always prefer cars where the area behind the grille is all dark, it just looks cleaner and more finished.

The only part of this project I wish I’d been able to do more with was the bumper. I don’t even want perfectly new looking chromed ones, but the level of rust on the current one bugs me. I did grind the rust off the brackets, and shoot them with some paint. However I didn’t bother to take them apart, as I didn’t want to risk stripping out the holes in the bumper.

Altogether I’m really happy with how all this turns out. Under the fenders it looks like a brand new car. Being able to look at something that looked like this, and make it look like this it immensely satisfying.

As soon as the new Tie rods arrived. I was finally able to put the last bits together and get the wagon back on the ground. Even I am amused at how little the three weeks of work show once the car is all together again. But now the steering wheel will actually have a more direct influence on where the car goes.

Project Creep 3, paint and more paint!

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If you aren’t sick of seeing parts of a Falcon with paint on them, you will be soon, almost as sick as I was of painting them.

After two coats of Masterseries it was time for primer. I’m using various Rustoleum paints for this, as they are cheap and pretty durable. It may not be professional level restoration quality, but since that isn’t what this car is, it suits me just fine. So several cans of Rusty Metal Primer later and everything was consistently dark orange.

Since there was a lot of waiting for paint to dry, I was jumping somewhat randomly between lots of different parts of the car. So for instance I might find myself painting Masterseries on the inside of the fenders, then putting a coat of primer on front suspension parts. I had an elaborate (and likely baffling to anyone else) system as to where things got placed on the driveway so that I could keep parts from the left & right sides of the car apart so I didn’t cross anything important up.

One thing I learned on a previous project, and utterly failed to remember to photograph here was how I kept all the nuts & bolts organized. as things came off the car, all the relevant hardware would go into a simple ziploc style sandwich bag, and have “Right Fender” or whatever written on it. Then later I’d sort & count what was in that bag and add a list of the contents. I had gotten a Harbor Freight Vibrator Tumbler(which is less exciting than it sounds) for my birthday, so all the hardware got a run through that, which while it didn’t come out looking brand new, definitely cleaned it up significantly. Then it all got a quick coat of spray paint, just to keep it from rusting right back up and making my new paint look a mess.

After primer came the top coat. Everything got two coats of semi-gloss black, then any part that was going to be inside the wheelwell got a coat of truck bed liner to help protect it from stuff kicked up by the tires. I continued on painting the various suspension bits so that everything that was going back on the car would look like new.

One thing I needed to replace was the rubber seal that went between the inner fender & the fender itself to keep the tire from flinging stuff where it would collect and help form more rust. The originals were dry & cracked and basically fell apart when I removed them. I had planned to find some other material to make replacements out of, make patterns and cut new ones. I was even going to do a separate blog post about it. Then I discovered a full set of reproduction pieces was all of $24, so I bought those. Sorry. I ended up using sheet metal screws with extra-wide heads to install them. They were originally stapled on from the factory, but I don’t own any tools capable of punching a staple through 18 ga sheet metal.

Next up, stuff goes back together.

Headlight Bucket Restoration

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As I missed a few updates, I figured I’d give you some short bonus entries to make up for it. So here is the first, the restoration of the headlamp buckets.

Each of these buckets were covered in surface rust, full of dirt and each had it’s own long empty hornets’ nest.

First everything had to come apart. Everything on these was intact, and like the car had no rot. The wiring & connectors were all still good and the wiring was still flexible.

 

 

Everything got a very thorough wire brushing to remove the surface rust, then two coats of primer, followed by two coats of semi-gloss black.

The back of the bucket got a coat of truck bed liner like the inner fender, then the wiring was scrubbed clean and everything was re-installed.

 

Little side projects like this are really great when working on a larger overall project, they give a sense of accomplishment and completion that helps keep the momentum going when the larger project is taking longer than expected.

Project Creep part 2, in which a rotted mess fails to materialize

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In my last post (two weeks ago, sorry about that) I’d started out replacing the front suspension ,and ended up stripping the front end completely off. The new plan was to check over, derust & repaint all the inner structure, while leaving the exterior looking just as ratty as before. I’m sure some of you are wondering why I don’t just paint over all the worn out paint & surface rust, but I both rather like the patina on the car, and would prefer consistently ratty to a mismatch of ratty & repainted.

First up was assessing what I found. And I was surprised to find just how good everything was. There was surface rust in several places, like the edges of the cowl, the torque boxes, the bottoms of the fenders & inner fenders & under the battery tray. However there was absolutely zero rot anywhere. Not one rot hole to be found. When I pulled apart the “better” of the two ’62 Comets I had, it had been a very different story.

This was all the more surprising considering the piles of pine needles & mulch hidden at the bottom of both fenders and packed into the cowl drains. I can only guess that that stuff dated from the last few years(and in particular the eight months the car sat in the woods before I bought it), rather than the previous decades it sat in a barn. So the moist plant matter didn’t have time to really encourage rot.

The next step (after I spent 45 minutes with a pressure washer removing a garden’s worth of plant debris from inside the cowl) Was to start grinding down all of the rust in preparation for paint. It may not look it in shots like this, but every spot of rust has been diligently gone over with a wire wheel and/or angle grinder. Ford used a rust-colored primer though, so exposing that ended up making the car look more rusty, not less.

I also ground off what I initially though was a layer of undercoating, but eventually realized was actually a sort of clay-heavy dirt that was caked onto every surface of the wheelwell and had been there so long it had taken on the appearance of being part of the original car. I eventually was able to get everything looking as shiny new as I could, and was able to start putting paint on, instead of grinding it off.

Lets hear it for Masterseries paint, This is my absolute favorite rust-sealing paint, and I’ve been through at least 3-4 quarts so far on various projects (and have two more I just bought sitting in the garage for later on this car). I put a nice thorough coat onto everywhere I’d found rust, making sure to get it into and gaps or cracks where rust might fester. As much as I wanted to just coat everything, I had to prioritize as I was low at the time and didn’t have time to wait for more to be delivered. So stuff ended up looking a bit odd, with seemingly random silver painted bits over the worn old paint. And, of course, because the universe likes to mess with me, it started to drizzle the moment I was done paints, necessitating an emergency solution.

Next up, painting and more painting.