Time to fix up the truck.

I was always in a tax bracket that only allowed me to buy older used vehicles, and I learned to hate watching what the salt did to them.
I don't live in the rust belt anymore, but I found that one of the lurking dangers from road salt, is it's effect on steel brake lines.
Often before the frame gets holes, the lines will rust through - Especially those hidden ones, on top of the frame.
This will result in a really unpleasant surprise, some day ..........
DAMHIKT
 
When I was working at our now long gone GM dealership, the local chaps with 1973 to 87 full size would come in and order Left and Right doors, frt fenders, and the box sides. About 115 each for the fenders, 150 each for the doors, and 250 per box side. Also sold whole box floors for 700. At the time one couldn’t repair for less. Paint and bolt on and you are done. Shame the supply dried up several years ago.
Pierre
 
Around here (farm country) you'll see older trucks with newer beds. Place down in the city stays busy making and mounting tool box/service bodies in place of the pick up beds. Which when they're doing fleets can pile up. Some of the beds get mounted on older trucks up here. A '68-'71 truck may have a 2000 bed adapted to it. Doesn't look too bad and it works. One of the locals told me he paid $200 or so for one of these beds; including the tailgate.
 
Yeah, there is an outfit northwest of Toronto, that makes service trucks. The pulled beds are available for cheap.
9C286870-9822-452F-8628-6AB2BCD8ABE5.jpeg
 
Thanks for all of the compliments, It does look good if you are far enough away. With me being a perfectionist with no skills I do see every little flaw and chastise myself every time I see them.

The frame looks to be good wherever I can see it. I am also scraping and coating the frame everywhere I can get to. As soon as all the painting is done the truck will just about be getting dipped into Fluid Film. I already bought a 5 gallon kit with all the application guns for getting into the nooks and crannies.

Before I started this repair I did a lot of searching for a rust free box from outside of the rust belt. Everything I found was either crashed or already had cancer because they took off a good box and just laid it on the ground.

I did get some more done yesterday. I finally gritted my teeth and popped out the tail light.

This is what first greeted me as I removed the light.

20230930_130655.jpg

These next two are after a first pass with the needle scaler to knock off the loos chunks. Lots of holes with nothing left.
I will have to cut a lot of that out and fab up some new parts to weld in. As you can see there are holes designed into the OEM parts that you can see straight thru to the contact patch of the rear tire, This means that all of the road salt, gravel and rocks have a direct path to the tail light, and then there are folds in the metal to make sure none of that road stuff can fall out once in there. There is an engineer somewhere that needs to be hung.......

20230930_131719.jpg


20230930_131739.jpg
 
pdentrem said:
When I was working at our now long gone GM dealership, the local chaps with 1973 to 87 full size would come in and order Left and Right doors, frt fenders, and the box sides. About 115 each for the fenders, 150 each for the doors, and 250 per box side. Also sold whole box floors for 700. At the time one couldn’t repair for less. Paint and bolt on and you are done. Shame the supply dried up several years ago.
Pierre
Click to expand...
I lost track of how many rear lower cab corners I did on those trucks....really bad spot on them. Have yet to run across one that doesn't have rotted lower rear quarters. If you buy one these days, plan on doing the cab corners, unless it's already been done recently.....
 
Flyinfool said:
Thanks for all of the compliments, It does look good if you are far enough away. With me being a perfectionist with no skills I do see every little flaw and chastise myself every time I see them.

The frame looks to be good wherever I can see it. I am also scraping and coating the frame everywhere I can get to. As soon as all the painting is done the truck will just about be getting dipped into Fluid Film. I already bought a 5 gallon kit with all the application guns for getting into the nooks and crannies.

Before I started this repair I did a lot of searching for a rust free box from outside of the rust belt. Everything I found was either crashed or already had cancer because they took off a good box and just laid it on the ground.

I did get some more done yesterday. I finally gritted my teeth and popped out the tail light.

This is what first greeted me as I removed the light.

View attachment 461454

These next two are after a first pass with the needle scaler to knock off the loos chunks. Lots of holes with nothing left.
I will have to cut a lot of that out and fab up some new parts to weld in. As you can see there are holes designed into the OEM parts that you can see straight thru to the contact patch of the rear tire, This means that all of the road salt, gravel and rocks have a direct path to the tail light, and then there are folds in the metal to make sure none of that road stuff can fall out once in there. There is an engineer somewhere that needs to be hung.......

View attachment 461455


View attachment 461456
Click to expand...
Give your bodywork and paint a good month before undercoating. It needs to harden up sufficiently that the products in the undercoating don't penetrate the paint and lift it.
 
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