Crossing things off the list

On the truck I envisioned what most would consider a "shaved" style, very little accents, and seamless. When I think of a shaved style vehicle I envision the vehicle in motion. Seeing a vehicle in motion you don't see the small detail, you see one mass moving. With the truck, I don't know if I am going for the 'vehicle in motion' look - where as I am going more for a clean look. I don't want any one accent standing out; I want the time and attention to detail to stand out. In order to achieve this look it makes more work.

We are here welding tacks along the body seam in the cab - trying to reinforce it. The thinking behind that is once the body filler is applied and dried we anticipate the possibility of the filler cracking. We wanted to lessen the movement - thus welding part of seam. I really like how it is coming out.

Things are really starting to take shape. I say that because in the last blog you could see from the pictures that the body was mostly sanded and almost complete. Well, while on vacation, Rich finished the sanding! He also got the truck completely sprayed with a sealant to prevent oils getting onto the bare metal and wreaking havoc later. As you can see it is black - with a matte finish.

I like the way it looks black, anything is better than yellow! Before Rich sealed the truck, he went around and did some minor body work. He pulled some dents, and filled some of the larger areas. At this point he is really setting a good foundation for future body work that will need to be done. It is really exciting seeing some progress!

I don't recall if I had mentioned anything about our braking system in the past. At the beginning of the build, while lying out all of my ideas, front disk brakes were a must. The stopping power of disk brakes, compared to drums is drastic. By some estimates you will get twice the stopping power and half and the weight savings by switching from drum to disk is quite substantial as well. So, it was the obvious choice. It wasn't the friendliest to the budget, however. The drum to disk conversion was six to seven hundred dollars. A few months later when the spindles were due to arrive, we received an email stating that "the manufacturer of the spindles is no longer making them and there isn't anyone else making them at this time." So, short of doing an entire front-end swap (which I would love to do minus the several thousand dollar price tag) we're going to have to stick with drum brakes, for now.

So we decided to rebuild and replace the entire braking system to ensure that the brakes are in the best working order possible. That starts with a new brake booster, and a new master cylinder. After hooking running all of the lines, we needed to replace the old springs and pads in the drum. This was my first drum brake job, it wasn't as difficult, and with a color picture; it's even easier!

Now that the exterior has been sanded down, and some body work done - and sealed, it's time to get into the interior work. Sanding needed to be done first, and foremost. Once that was complete we could prime and paint. There was more that went into it, such as, taking off the chrome accent pieces, disassembling the glove box and prepping it for paint. A lot of little things lead up to painting. The interior is painted now and looking fantastic. We went with a black semi-gloss. I think the small details of chrome, and the gauge cluster will really stand out against the black. It's time to start moving forward toward completion! And that means putting things back onto the truck!

I started the interior work with insulation. There are many products on the market to achieve heat distribution and sound deadener. Most have heard of dynomat. Dynomat is a product that has a sticky tar like adhesive on one side and on the other a foil backing. All of the reviews I have read are that the product works as advertised. The only problem, dynomat is priced well outside of my budget, so I had to find an alternative solution with similar results.

I found a product that is called FatMat. It is on amazon and it is priced competitively with other adhesive sound deadener, but much, much less than dynomat. Thus far I am extremely happy with the product. I put the fatmat everywhere I could. In the doors, on any flat surface I could. The roof had a lot of surface area to cover, and I could instantly tell the difference in sound.

I worked my way all around the interior, putting the fatmat everywhere. At this point I think the truck is going to closely compare to the 'quietness' of a modern car - which really excites me because I am installing a decent stereo system, so I want it to sound as good as I can.

Until next time -