Ugly Truck

Both door had about the same problems and we cut away the lower third both inside and out. then welded in the repair panels, did the body work and painted the inside.

Then crimped the edges and fit the new sections.

Not to shabby, its hard to see where we did the work.

Nice and clean on the outside as well.

Skipping ahead a bit, the cab was reblasted and shot here in an acid etch primer.

Just another view of the acid etch. Now the high build primer for a working surface and rust protection.

Now the jam work.

Copper is the color of choice for this truck.

The door panels were done at the same time and the copper was carried into the interior to complete the theme.

As this truck is an on and off project I do like to drive it to the car shows when I can so we did put it back together. It also allows us to get the gaps set and line everything up.

I also painted the interior and installed a seat from a 2003 Chev truck. The new seat has the seat belts mounted on the seat, that saves me from having to drill holes all over the cab.

The rear fenders were another issue, showing their age they both rotted where they bolt to the bed. So I made a template and carefully copied the original shape to a nice piece of thicker metal.

The edge is a double layer and I was able to save some of the lower layer.

Here is the one piece replacement cut out and ready to install.

Tacked into place you can see how it follows the original.

The lower corner was rotted pretty bad so I patched that as well.

Here is a decent view of the final product. I have about 3 hours invested into each side, when you consider the cost of the replacement panels this was a good way to go.

The box sides where the fenders bolt up had rusted quite a bit, so we cut out the bad areas and made a patch panel to go back in.

With the fender mounting holes pre drilled and test fitted we welded it in place.

The inside will be more important then the outside in this case so with some very careful welding this is how it turned out.

Next we will mud it and smooth it out,

Well finally the cab got some paint. We did retouch some areas we were not happy with or were scratched a bit in the last fitting session.