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.