Where the wild things are ...

Finally primed the engine compartment this week. I made a quick sweep with bondo to smooth the rough spots then shot two coats of epoxy primer followed by four coats of polyester primer-surfacer. It made a gigantic visual difference! The exterior was being final primed today when I left, but I just dig how smooth this looks so I thought I'd post it. Truck will be all silver with blue glass, sit low with big tires, and the wild thing under the hood will be a Ford 4.6L, 4 valve V8. All we get to see is the body for now. The owner did almost all of the metal work in the engine bay, I only welded up one square hole. I'm really getting ahead of myself here because I need to catch up on the metal work posts, I did some bizzare patches for the lower rear cab corner areas. Watch for those.

Right door gap fix

Heres what the area in this post would look like on an unmodified 1962 F-100:

Our customer wants the panel gaps on this truck to appear to be laser-cut. On an old Ford pickup with shaved drip rails and rounded door corners, thats a tall order. When I recieved the body, heres what it looked like with the drip rail shaved and the top front corner of the door and door opening rounded:

See how far the door sticks out past the roof? Thats the first thing I'll tackle here.

I made a patch to weld over the roof edge and make up the roof width. Before welding, I coated the backside of the patch and the roof edge with self etching primer to prevent rust between the two pieces.

Here it is, tack welded to the roof:

After welding and grinding, you can still see the seam but there will be plenty of bodyfiller applied to the area and that seam will be buried.

Now I had a better top gap. But underneath what I just did had to be filled in with long skinny patches. Here are those, all welded up:

Then theres the rounded front corner that still needed to be boxed in. Heres the fitted patch, and then again after welding then grinding:

Then I addressed the rounded corner of the door itself. More patching, these pics show what I did:

OK so heres how the gap looks at this point:

After some epoxy primer to cover all that bare metal:

Now for the bondo and sanding:

Then polyester primer:

Looks nice, but not perfect. Still wide at the back. The hard part isn't so much the gap but having the panels sit flush across the face of the gap. So more blocking to fine tune that:

Heres the solution for that wide gap at the rear. Just some 1/8" steel rod that I will bend to fit and weld to the door edge, like I'm holding it in the pic.

Here it is after welding. Uh-oh, look at how wide the gap still is in the middle.

So I welded on another piece of the wire:

OK, now theres enough there to grind out the shape I need. I welded both rods from both sides, so it took a lot of grinding with a 5" grinder and 36 grit discs. But I got what I wanted. Still needs that final skim coat of bondo, lol.

Here it is right now, in polyester again, being prepped for final primer coats. Sorry about the angle. Gap looks nice!

Interior and under the hood

It occurred to me that in my first picture post, I showed only the vehicle exterior. So let's have a break from all that bondo and look a little further.

Heres the inside on that first day. Notice that some dash holes have been smoothed and altered, and that a big steel center console has been fabricated. These old trucks have a removable transmission access plate bolted into the floor which is kinda cool. Theres going to be a large tachometer mounted atop the dash, angled at the driver.

This is a stocker for comparison:

Here- I'll clean it up and open the door so you can see:

Floor looks pretty nice, all cleaned up. You can see where parts of it have been replaced, and the fabbed console bracket/driveshaft tunnel at the rear.

There was a long patch installed along the entire width of the cab, at the very bottom rear of the bulkhead. Must have been rusted out there, see the seam? Like the bedside patches, it was very nicely done. There will be another pic of it from the outside later.

Alright, now lets go around front and look under the hood: 

The hood is a mess, it will have it's own picture post. But heres the engine compartment. Most noticeable is the indent on one wheelhouse to fit the new air filter location, and additional hood rests built onto the core support. Dig the fancy hood hinges!

Watch for another post about these areas after they have been tended to, they haven't yet but the interior has been primed with epoxy and I didn't get a pic of that but I will. Just wanted to fill in some of what I haven't shown so far. Same thing underneath the floor. You haven't seen the underside of the cab yet, and its kind of a mess. I did quite a bit of work under there and y'all will see eventually.

To wrap up, well lets stick our heads under the front end and look under the truck with the hood shut:

 

Driver's door

Heres what a stock truck looks like in the window area:

Heres the only shot I have of shaving the door handle on this side, I'll go more in depth on the passenger side:

This one shows a fit problem between the door and bed:

Heres how I solved the misfit, a little slice and splice!

After grinding, and a coat of etching primer to keep rust away:

Now I had another issue to deal with. The door hits the jamb above the striker, here:

I made a line with a Sharpie and sliced it there then welded it back together, allowing clearance. Didn't get an after pic, but I may add one later. It was easy since it was on a corner and it came out smooth.

There was a lot of work on the roof area, and there will be a post covering that but for now, this door fits the to the roof pretty well after that work. I did finish up the rounded top front door corner, and that will be covered on the passenger door post. These pics show some of the bondo work on the door, and the gaps around the window frame during that process.

First application of polyester primer:

Of course it needed some more mud on the roof to make it match up right-

I whooped it though. I used etch primer to help me see if I had nailed the gap:

Heres another (fast forward) pic of it in polyester after that, from a distance. Only one I've got. But man, look at those cool lines!