Hi all,
I've been reading so much great information on this forum. Thank you to all that take the time to impart their wisdom. In my reading it became apparent that I needed a plan before I start painting this beast so I thought I'd lay it out here so you all can tell me what I'm missing and where my plan could be better.
The truck is running and driving and I'm going to miss cruising around in it, but she's loud inside the cab and the rest of the family doesn't love it so much! The plan is to put together a driver that I can still throw crap into the back of with out having a coronary. I want it to look nice, but not that nice, and make it comfortable for the family to ride around in.
Here's how she stands:
Can we get some long bed love?! It's a truck - more is more!
What I know I need to do:
+ remove the really crappy paint that is chalking off. My plan is to sand with 80 grit on the DA. Do I really need to go to bare metal or can I get away with leaving whatever is good from the original paint?
+ cab corners, rockers, inside roof on passenger side by windshield, and the driver's bed side all need to be replaced
Not a good fix!
Even more reason to replace the left bed side
+ Something has to be done around my drip rails in places. Is there a "pretty good" fix for this or am I in for a big job?
+ Giant dent in the passenger door from the hinge stop failing
+ Lots of holes in the floor and dash from various farm type "add ons" to be patched
+ Pretty big ding on the roof that needs to be pulled out.
I'm planning to work piece by piece starting with the hood which is in pretty good shape and move towards the parts that need more work once I have some sea legs. I'll disassemble, sand it down, do the body work and epoxy primer it. Then on to the fenders, doors, bed, and cab. I'll also get some paint on the frame while it's apart - what's a good choice for that?
Once all the pieces are ready I'm planning to reassemble and fit everything. Then I'll move it in the garage with the bed pulled back a bit and hit it with a couple of coats of high fill primer, block it, and paint it with BC/CC(or SS? seems to be some debate here over which is better for someone with VERY little painting experience) in a non-metallic light gray. Originally I was thinking of using some really cheap paint and I could probably still be talked back into that, but after much reading it seems like the general wisdom is to use something along the lines of PPG Omni. I am still very tempted by the reasonable pricing of Summit's paints though. Input please!
I guess that's about the size of it. What am I missing? I'd like to get this done in a reasonable time frame (duh) but not rush it and seeing how we're going to be at home a bit more now here in California I'm thinking I could get a fair amount done in the next couple of months.