Cleaning Up Shop

Those of you that know me well are probably aware that I sometimes have a hard time getting rid of things. And that would be those of you that just laughed at that statement. But guess what? I am, in fact, getting rid of some things. It's not easy, but I feel like it's become necessary. Due to my recent marriage, I've had incentive an opportunity to work out some of these issues with not only truck parts, but various other piles of junk lying around the house. Though not directly related to truck progress, I thought I would share some of the things I have learned.

1. Just because I've had something for a long time isn't necessarily a good reason to keep it. There has been more than one occasion where I've looked at something and been forced to wonder, "why do I still have this?"

2. I don't like throwing things away that don't necessarily have anything wrong with them except that I don't need them anymore. Fortunately, my wife has no such qualm.

3. You're never going to fix that old vacuum. You just aren't. Why would you, when you already have plenty of perfectly good vacuums lying about? Take it apart, save anything useful, and get rid of it.

4. It's surprising what people will take when you list it on cragislist for free.  And that vacuum power head attachment will do more good being used by someone else than it will collecting dust in your closet.

5. There are some things that, although I didn't really want to get rid of when I was done with them, I don't care about at all anymore and would much rather just be rid of.

Despite all that I still have a lot of stuff lying around, but things are getting a bit better. Last week I made the decision that it's time to get rid of some of these extra pieces lying around. The first item on the chopping block was the rear bumper I bought at the auto swap three years ago. Since the rear bumper on there now has a nicer shape (in my opinion), I plan on repairing that one and have listed this one for sale. A bargain for someone at $35.

1963 "Dealership" Rear Bumper

Oh, and of course that Porshce fender is out, too. I had someone contact me about it over the weekend, which is good- all it's doing is taking up space in my office.

The harder decision was which pair of rear fenders to keep. I came home from the auto swap three years ago with this set that had come with some bed box sides, and another set I picked up because they looked better. This past Friday night I threw both drivers side fenders into my truck and headed to a local "cruise in" in hopes to get some free advice. Most of the people I talked to agreed the brown one was better, but a professional panel beater had a look and declared that the, um, green and pink one was better, for the main reason that it had less interior surface rust and therefore was thicker. And I'm sure if I was any good with a hammer and a dolly I would agree with that. But if the Porche

fender is any indication, tin bashing isn't really one of my skills. While I'm sure I would get better with practice, I'd rather not practice on something I care a lot about, so I chose the less dented brown fender. My welding skills are probably better than my hammering skills, which isn't saying much about either of those.

In the case of the passenger side fender, both would be about an equal amount of work. I chose the brown one again, this time because it had less surface rust on the top.

"Clutch Head" Bolt

Therefore, it was time to separate the fender from the box side it had been attached to since I bought it. Not as easy as I thought- they were bolted together with something called "clutch head" bolts. Evidently these were common fasteners for body panels through the '40s and '50s, but had fallen out of favor by the time my truck was made, which indicates the panels I have may be much older. I briefly considered whether to put the fenders back on with new clutch head bolts, but decided against it, since this truck probably didn't have them originally. I went looking for a driver for this thing, but none of the auto parts stores had one, nor did Harbor Freight. If you ever do run into one of these bolts, you can order the driver bit for them online- I know Classic Industries sells a set- or you can do what I did and use a specialty bolt remover tool. (Around the shop it's usually referred to by its common name, angle grinder.) Once the pieces were separated, the bed of the truck was finally cleaned out, which means throwing more stuff away or piling it on the welding cart. The brown fenders went into the bed, and the others went to the back porch for storage. And I'm not going to hang onto them for years on end this time, I'm going to make an attempt to sell them once I decide on a fair asking price.

Today's progress was mostly cleaning up the garage and the shed. To make a long story short (why start now?), I moved some things from the shed to the garage and some things from the garage to the shed. A little sorting and arranging, a few shelves, and it'll all make sense again.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

The cleaning up of the garage to try to make a viable workspace continues.

I'm sure there's a truck in there, somewhere.

Oh, there it is.

 I started out trying to clean up the shed a bit more, when I had a thought- rather than try to haul these front end panels up to the attic, why not just fit them back on the front of the truck, at least temporarily? It's not as though it would take up that much more garage space, and the shed space can be much more effectively utilized. It took me a while to get the truck out of the mess that had accumulated around it (an important step toward that cleaner garage I've been going on about), but I pulled it out into the driveway for some work space. Literally- I pulled it out by hand while it was in neutral.

The two grille supports

Orange Support- missing metal

Blue support- bent

I hauled all of the front panels around- the fenders, the grille, that piece that goes behind the grille (grille support?), and those cowl things that go above the fenders. I was immediately faced with a decision- which grille support to use? I had picked an orange one up last month with a pile of parts, and I also had the blue one I've had for years. The orange one was straighter, but it had more surface rust underneath and had a piece cut out on the lower right. The blue one had less rust but was bent by a tree branch falling on it in storage many years ago. I decided to use the orange one- it fit up to the truck better, and the blue one didn't really seem to want to bend back into shape. I'll toss the blue one into the attic and maybe someday either attempt to straighten it, or cut a repair section out of it to weld to the orange one.



Once that was settled, it was a relatively easy matter to reassemble the front body panels. Since this is "temporary," I only put the pieces on with a few bolts each, and didn't tighten the bolts very far (except for on the front bumper). I figured out why I had taken them off and left them off for all this time- if the right fender and cowl are installed properly, the passenger door rubs on them and won't close (or open). This is most likely due to some deformity caused by the accident. I'll have to work this out when I redo the cab floor. For now, I just loosely installed them with a few bolts to allow for enough play for the door to operate. I also discovered (or maybe re-discovered?) that the grille is easier to bolt on before the fenders go on, for ease of accessing the bolts.

Front body installed!

Once I had all the panels on, I fired it up. I cleverly put a fan under the passenger side of the truck to blow the exhaust away from the garage and house this time. Fortunately I HAD in fact remembered to disconnect the battery after the last time, but it was still a hard start. I brought out the battery charger and had the engine going after a few tries. A little while later, I pulled it out of the driveway, messed around on the street in front of the house for a while, and then put it away. I'm not sure putting the panels on have helped its looks, frankly.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep the garage cleaning momentum going. There are a few panels sitting out in front of the garage, which I'll have to address pretty soon. If I intend to do a frame-off restoration, then putting things back on could be seen as a step in the wrong direction. Though it is supposedly only temporary.

Back in its spot. It's looking at you.

Planning, and then Changing the Plan.

During this process I found that a squirrel had been
caching acorns behind the siding. Somehow I felt that
what I was doing was very much the same.

So my brilliant idea was this: make a large hole in my house, and then fill it with truck parts. My wife seemed frightened skeptical concerned at first, but I convinced her that I had never collapsed a roof before and the worst case scenario here would be the roof sagging a bit or me falling through the ceiling. Fortunately neither one of these happened.

Once the hole was made, the plan was then to get the pieces out from under the truck and put them up there, get the pieces out of the shed and out those up there, clean out the shed and move the lawn care stuff out there, and use the vacancy in the garage to set up a more permanent workbench.

As it turns out, moving things into the attic is a whole lot of work. Especially heavy or bulky or awkward objects. As I was beginning the cleaning out the shed phase of the operation, I had an idea- I have two pairs of rear fenders, but only need one pair. Rather than haul one pair upstairs for spares, it would make more sense to simply select the best pair and attempt to sell the other pair. (Someone will buy them- after all, I did.) The fenders in the shed got moved to the back porch for a later examination and comparison.

Often, people lie awake at night and think about things. This happened to me one night, and I was thinking about how to go about fixing the truck. Pulling off the hood, inner fenders, and radiator support to work on the engine seemed tempting, as I have some of the parts to do so. It would, unfortunately, result in even more body panels lying about that would have to be stored, a problem I'm trying to alleviate. The engine parts I have are pretty small and safely stored out of the way. Aside from the engine, I really would like to set to work on the cab floor, but I lack the repair panels (and the needed budget) to do so. I could work on the remainder of the cab, but it seems more sensible to repair the floor first. All right, I'll work on the bed then. I've got lots of big pieces for it taking up space, and it should be a relatively straightforward repair, relatively speaking. So that's the direction I'm going to go for now until I amass enough panels to start the cab floor.

Fiberglass Practice- Part II

This is following up my post of June 27, 2009, appropriately named "June 27th, 2009."

The fender in question was from an '83 Porsche 944 and ended up in the bed of my truck as a joke. I worked on it back in '09, and as part of my effort to get things cleaned up, I started messing with it again. The results: okay, it's harder than I thought. It looks kind of OK, but it's still bumpy and wavy, especially when you run your hand over it. I've decided to get rid of it.

Before

After

A New Year of Progress

There have been a few instances where months have gone by and no progress has been written about on the truck. The fact that there were several posts last month only prove that I've been at least thinking about the project again.Before I tell you about any progress, there have been a few things going on not directly related to the truck but still relevant to it.

Drivers Side Door Hinge Pillar

Drivers Side Latch Pillar

I've done some crawling around the thing looking at the floor again. I had thoroughly researched this once before, but had since forgotten. A little time with a flashlight, a camera, and my LMC truck catalog gave me a list of the pieces I'll need. I had asked for (and received) some of the pieces for Christmas, but I decided I needed to make a thorough list. On the drivers side, I was reminded again that there is a lot of metal missing. The door hinge pillar isn't exactly connected to the floor anymore, as shown by this picture. The latch pillar bottom has gone missing too, and I'll probably want to replace the rear cab support as well. It's mostly there, but I think the end has rusted away, and there's a gaping rust hole in the middle.

Moving on to the passenger side, it's not nearly as badly deteriorated as the drivers side, for some reason. There are actually pieces of metal connecting everything together, for the most part.  I'm not sure why there is such a disparity between the two sides, But I may not need to buy as many repair panels. More examination will be needed- I didn't pay as close attention because it was getting late and cold.

Having written that, I decided that there was no time like the present, and went out for some more poking around. and discovered some things. One was an old LMC Truck catalog stuffed under the seat turned to the floor panels page. The passenger side rear corner  had some sand in it. And by some sand I mean buckets and buckets of it, possibly the work of past mud daubers. Most interestingly I found that, compared to the other side, the outer parts of the floor are largely intact. The hinge pillar is still relatively sound, as is the latch pillar. The inner rocker panel, which sits behind the rocker panel seen when the door is open, is still one piece. (On the drivers side it has literally rusted in two longitudinally, and is just hanging on by the proverbial thread.) The floor under the passenger's feet has sunken away from where it matches to the footwell, leaving a sizable gap. Back in the late 90's, this caused passengers to be sprayed whenever I drove through a puddle, so of course I did this as often as possible. Anyway, the long and she short of it that I won't have to buy pillar patch panels for that side of the truck. I wouldn't want to press my luck by re-using anything else in there, though. There are some signs of deformation from the accident. And of course rust.

Having compiled a list of all of the repair panels I need, I've spent the last few evenings scouring the internet for the absolute best prices for them. I have nine different parts suppliers to search from, so it can be a tad time consuming. Once I make a list of that these pieces should cost, I'll know what to pay for them at the Webster Auto Swap Winter Extravaganza, coming up in February. Anything I don't find there (and I expect I'll be lucky to come out of there with anything more than rocker panels), I can then try to convince people to buy for me for my upcoming birthday. I mean, come on, I've already done the hard part of finding the best price, shipping included.

In other news, I've started working on the Porche fender again, which you may remember from body filler practice. It had accumulated a tiny bit of surface rust, which was simply sanded off. I'm going to try to make it somewhat presentable and get rid of it.

Yesterday I crawled around in the attic for a while trying to figure out how to make it into viable storage space for truck parts as they come off (plus the Christmas tree). I'm continuing to attempt to clear things out of the bed of the truck, and off the hood for that matter, but it's slow going at the moment.

I've been thinking again about what order to work on things. I would like to work on the floor, but it may take a while to amass the parts necessary. I could work on the engine, but to best do that, I would want to remove the hood and front fenders, and as of yet, I lack a place to store them. The roof, the upper portion of the cab, and the doors all need work, and those would be pretty good candidates. I wouldn't want to mess with the doors too much, as I'll want them available to use for fitting the cab floor and rocker panel work. The bed would be a good option too, since most of the extra pieces I have lying about are for that. In actuality, the best course of action I could take would be to continue getting the junk out of the truck and cleaning up the garage so it might appear to be a proper workspace. I'll decide where to go from there.

So, now for what you've all been waiting for, what is the latest progress on the truck itself? The fact of the matter is that there's none, really. In fact, it's probably slightly worse now, since I've been bending stuff and scraping off crud to examine some parts. Worse still, since theoretically the rusting process has not been halted. Slowed, yes, stopped, no. Also I think I forgot to disconnect the battery after the last time I ran the engine, so it'll be dead by now.

Here's to 2012- may we see a few months of actual progress this year.