April 1, 2001

Pulled out the remains of the front cab mount wooden blocks, and removed the bolts. After careful examination, I determined that the right side of the cab sits about 3/8" lower that the left side. The correct height of the blocks should, I believe, be 1-3/4". This is an unfortunate discovery since I had already made two sets of blocks last week and used the right side for the height measurement. That block was the most complete. I'll use the rest of the urethane block Chris sent me to make a correct set for him, and guess I'll laminate another 3/8" onto my pair. A urethane based cement should do the trick. Verified the location and size of the hole.

Finally got to the firewall today. Did some final sanding, primed the bare metal and gave it a coat of OD. Oooh, purdy!

I pulled both the clutch and brake pedal assemblies once again, in preparation of installing the bushings I had ordered from VPW. After pulling the brake assembly, I noticed that it covered the mounting bolts for the forward running board support. OK, so now I've got to pull the running boards if I want to cleanup that area before reinstalling the brake pedal assembly. Boy, it's a lot tougher to get at the nuts on the support brackets when they are on the outside of the frame and tucked inside the bottom of the brackets, as two of them were. Managed to pull them off with a u-joint attachment on my ratchet. I couldn't pull the running boards without pulling the brackets (not enough clearance) and almost couldn't pull the brackets without pulling the running boards (real tough to reach the nuts). When these go back on, all of the nuts will be inboard!

Opened up the battery box and peeked inside for the first time since I first saw it in Colorado last year. The bottom is intact though heavily pitted. May have to replace the hinge, since it's broken in a couple of places and very pitted.

Poor old rig is starting to look naked with all it's parts disappearing!

In the off chance of actually putting parts back together, I pulled out a bunch of replacement nuts, bolts and int/ext lockwashers. Since they were all plated, I dumped them into a bucket of Muriatic acid till it stopped bubbling to strip them. Then I transferred them to a bucket of water with a bit of baking soda added to neutralize the acid, and finally into another bucket of clean water. As I pulled them out of the last bucket I blew them off with compressed air to prevent the infamous flash rust. Everything got a coat of primer once they were completely dry. The steering gear/column also finally got it's primer. And finally everything got a coat of OD.

I brought out the cutting torch and trimmed down a piece of steel that was 3/4" thick by 5" wide by 3' long. I plan on using it as a dolly to straighten out the right side radiator shroud. It needs to be 4" wide to enable it to slide inside the shroud, hence the need to be trimmed.

Another coat of OD on the fasteners and steering gear got the day started, and then I moved on to the right side radiator shroud. It was caved in a bit from being pounded several times by something very small and round. I attempted to use the steel plate I cut last night to pound out the depression, but it didn't seem to be working at all. Instead of several sharp round points in a caved in section, I ended up with a much larger semi smooth dish. The metal seemed to be stretched and would not flatten out. I looked at it and looked at it, that didn't straighten it out so I pulled out a small cold chisel and threatened it with that. Still didn't budge! So I grabbed the hammer and chiseled the two sections apart at the spot welds. Oh it pained me to do that! Once I flattened the flanges back out on both pieces, I gave all my attention to the "dish". Working it slowly, I finally had it fairly smooth, but it was still stretched. It would pop in and out with little pressure. This will never do! OK, so how do I shrink it? A quick search on the internet and I had a basic idea of what to do. All of the sources said heat and hammer carefully. And practice, practice, practice! Well I didn't have anything else to practice on so I decided to have a go at it on the shroud. A waffle faced hammer was one of the requirements for shrinking, so I grabbed a drywall hangers hammer. Yeah yeah, I know, but hey it worked! I heated up the dent and slowly worked it around the edges and on in towards the center as one person suggested. Then I turned off the torch and continued working it till it was fairly flat and smooth. The shrinking method appears to have worked, no more popping in and out, the panel seems very rigid again. It still has a lot of "character", but it's a long way from where it was this morning. Once I prime it I should be able to flatten out the worst of the hammer marks and give it a skim coat of bondo, not the 1/4"+ that would've been required before. Finished the day by grinding the spot welds and an old weld repair smooth.

Took the fuel filter down to Tony at T.G.'s Machine Shop to see about having the fitting threads redone. Since they are tapered pipe threads he was afraid they'd be too big if he recut them with the 1/4" pipe tap. He said the only thing he could do was drill them out and retap them as 3/8" pipe. Then of course I'd have to use bushings to bring them back down to 1/4" pipe. Or, I could just use some Teflon tape and see if they seal up. So I brought it back to my shop applied the tape and screwed the fittings in. Surprisingly they all screwed in and tightened up nicely. Primer and paint finished the fuel filter up.

Applied a couple of coats of paint stripper to the right side radiator shroud pieces and wrapped them up in plastic bags to let the chemicals work over night.

Well wrapping the parts in plastic didn't help the paint stripper at all, it dried out anyway. Back to the tried and true method of slopping it on, waiting a couple of minutes and scraping the softened paint off. Doing this three times got me down to the bare metal. It's interesting that all layers except the original paint and primer come off fairly easily. I won't be stripping the entire truck as a result of this observation, sanding and filling the remaining scratches and nicks will be the route to take on this rig. Got a coat of primer on both pieces of the right side radiator shroud, the piece I flattened out actually looks pretty good.

With a coat of primer on the shroud piece, I could see some rough spots that needed a bit of attention. Once they were smoothed out a bit, I pulled out the gas welder and reassembled the pieces. I would have preferred to spot weld them back together, but I don't have one of them critters. It took much longer to weld back together than I would have liked, the problem was in keeping the main structure hot enough while not blowing out the 16 gauge outer skin. I finally solved the problem by drilling through both pieces at each previous spot weld site. By welding up through the thicker piece first and then quickly moving the the thinner side and finishing the weld before everything cooled down. Once the 20 or so spots were finished and ground smooth it looked pretty decent. Primed the assembly.

Worked on the exterior surface of the right side radiator shroud today. It still showed some hammer marks so I smoothed them out with a bit of body putty. Primed it and set it aside to dry.

Then I pulled out the pieces to the steering gear/column and finished it's assembly. Next item was the fuel filter, it still lacked a cork gasket for the sediment bowl as well as a brass washer for the retaining screw. I cut a new gasket from some 1/8" cork sheet stock and after a fruitless search for a brass washer the correct size, I ended up fabricating one from some 20 gauge brass stock I had in the shop. So the fuel filter is finally finished and stowed on the shelf next to the carburetor awaiting installation.

Checked out the shroud assembly and, after deciding it was in good shape, gave it a coat of OD.