Heirloom - 73 C10 Cheyenne

[Bchain]

I want to recount at this point all the work I had done on this truck cab.

Cleaned out the interior.
Wirebrushed the floor.
Painted the floor.
Installed new jute and carpet.
Bought new headliner, immediately cut hole in it because sunroof.
Shaved trim attachment points.
Also shaved drip rail screw holes.
Installed new rear glass.
Took all glass out.
Flipped cab on back, cleaned, primed and undercoated.
Built dolly and DA'd down to bare metal.
DA'ing the back was the last item on my list...

So of course that is when I found this:

[Bchain]

It was something that was revealed to me in pieces as I sanded things down.

First thing I had noticed was that there was a significant amount of bondo on the back of the cab near the middle. Like "clouds of dust when you hit it with a grinder" kind of significant.

Then I had run into a bit of the same "gold" color metal in a few other places. One place was where old tonneau cover snaps had been filled in on the bed rails. The other place was on the right rear pillar, just above the bottom of the back window. Turns out that this was a "bronze" weld made with a torch. Others will probably know more about this than I do. Old school bodywork.

I don't have a really good picture of it but the back of the cab had been pushed in hard at some point. I can't figure out exactly what happened because the rest of the cab didn't appear to have any significant body damage. What's funny is that even though this thing has been in the family for all but the first couple years of it's life, nobody knew a thing about it.

I was pretty lost at this point.

[Bchain]

Well after much drinking and gnashing of teeth I found a local who had a private chevy truck boneyard (along with some awesome rock crawler projects in his shed).

Actually I had found this guy first a year prior. I missed (by only a few days) getting a perfectly straight, color-matched long bed for the yellow crew cab off of this exact truck. Turns out he still had the cab of the truck.

Upon inspection it was clean and had nothing more wrong with it than the cab corner rot I still needed to deal with anyway. Plus this one didn't have a sunroof cut in it.

My college help and I loaded it on a trailer and brought it home.

As a bonus he also had a damn near perfect right front fender, which I also needed, so that came too.

[Bchain]

These pictures might look somewhat familiar. The work went faster the second time.

Note the cut-out cab corners. Had to fix those while I was at it.

MIG welding sheet metal sucks. Fixing cab corners sucks. MIG welding cab corners sucks.

[Bchain]

Went to work on the rest of the cab. Pretty straight but still had to fill some areas across the back.

Then got to work on the firewall. This was an AC cab and I did not want AC, so I cut the passenger firewall out and welded in the non-AC firewall patch. I made it to where it welded over some of the old firewall and came up to where the seam was at the top of the firewall. Welded up the unnecessary holes while I was at it.

Then with some sparing use of filler (pretty widespread actually but never more than 1/8" thick) I did my best to make a cleaner firewall. I think to do any better I would have had to just cut the entire thing out and start fresh, which I wasn't willing to do.

When it was all said and done I DA'd the old paint, masked the bottom and shot it with epoxy.

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A little bit of hi build filler, some basic blocking, and I had to put some of it back together (mostly because I was running out of room in the garage again).

[Bchain]

It was about at this point that I decided I was going to do something nice for my wife. She's been putting up with me occupying the garage and making a mess out of everything.

I put a remote start in her car a few years back but it is still always parked outside. To add to it the car is a real pile. It is one of the few cars of mine you won't see posted on here. 2006 honda civic. We bought it new and it had not been impressive. It ate tires from day one (factory problem that they refused to fix). It had some kind of casting issue with the block that they extended the warranty for. It was an uncomfortable loud piece of junk. It taught me never to buy new cars and never to buy hondas.

Because of this and the growing family, we had been looking at a "new to us" vehicle. I tried to talk her into a few different ones. Looked at a cadillac CTS that was gorgeous (pics attached, I still want one of these, ideally a -V). I test drove a few dodge chargers (I need an R/T). But the one she really liked was the GMC acadia.

[Bchain]

I wasn't terribly impressed by the acadias. FWD layout. Not sure about the "pedigree" of the motor. And it just seemed like they were overpriced on the used market (I think probably because of the high demand...everybody does seem to like them).

So I started looking for alternatives. Found a late model GMC envoy denali which was priced cheaper, with lower mileage, than any acadias from the same year. What really sold me was the RWD layout, body on frame construction, and 5.3 LS (nice exhaust burble and plenty of power).

Drove it home and surprised her with it after work on her birthday. Always wanted to do that.

[Bchain]

With all the vehicle upheaval you would think we were done with things. And it should have been. But again...coincidences.

We put the Honda up for sale right away. Another car that for some reason people are just very interested in having. I will say that they do hold their resale because I got way more than I was expecting out of it. I delivered it to a gal on a September Monday. Drove my commuter rig home that night.

Now I haven't shown off my commuter on this thread. It is part of how I get away with being able to spend money on my stepside...

Don't laugh. 1995 lincoln town car.

The good part is it rides like a dream and has cost next to nothing over it's life with me. It wears tires like iron. RWD and long wheel base so it is actually a tank in the snow. Just slide sideways everywhere, lots of fun. V8 although it is definitely not fast. Decent MPG too, I see any where from 22 to 25.

Anyway, the morning after I sell the honda I am driving into work just before dawn. I'm doing about 50 on the back roads and pass in front of a hedge and boom, deer on my hood, airbags blown, horn blowing.

It hasn't been 18 hours since I deposited the cash from the honda.

[Bchain]

Well at this point I have to make a choice. I have always had three rigs on the road. Part of that was because a lot of the time two of said rigs were old and liable to break down at any point. Cheap insurance to have a third ready to go. Plus we needed a truck but a truck really wasn't a good commuter.

So...I either had to cut it down to two rigs and start commuting in the powersmoke, or I had to fix the lincoln. Or...God forbid...buy another car. Really didn't want to do that.

Well I had been practicing my body work and needed practice on top coating, so I thought, let's fix the lincoln. After a bit of shopping (turns out I did buy a 400 dollar parts car!) I set up and sprayed some pearl white tri-coat (base/pearl/clear). It turned out pretty good!

[Bchain]

Well I didn't really set out to plaster the squarebody forum with pictures of fords but I guess it was part of the journey.

The point being, by the time I was done swapping cars around and fixing things, I was behind schedule for what I wanted which was top coating the stepside in fall 2015 so I could be re-assembling it over the winter.

I did manage to get back on the fenders and get them worked over, epoxied and filler primered. The front fenders on the 70's chevy's are a difficult piece of work. I hope that is a fact for even an experienced bodyman as I definitely have found it to be so. I almost think that they changed the front fender lines in the 80's specifically to make body repair easier.

I worked my fenders over repeatedly for many weeks. I now have over 4 coats of hi build sanded off of them and they are beginning to show appearances of being straight, but with all the different curves it is difficult to tell for sure.

[Bchain]

With the fenders in halfway decent shape I did something I had been wanting to do since I brought the truck home. I went and bought a cowl hood.

I went with a steel 2" rise with a classic-type single bump cowl. I got it from LHQ. I am close enough to an urban center that I called around and had a sheet metal place just order it in to their stock. What is nice about doing it this way is you let them deal with shipping damage. I had them unbox it in their warehouse before I signed for it. It was perfect.

It was interesting to find out that, even with a cowl, there was still cross bracing underneath at the regular hood height. That meant that I really didn't gain any hood clearance. I had set up the motor with a 1" carb spacer and a 4" filter...it didn't fit. I am in the process of fixing that with a 1/2" spacer and a drop air cleaner base. Oh well, at least maybe I'll get some fresh air induction/cooler underhood temps...or something. Or it will just look cool. Whatever.

[Bchain]

With only a little bit of the year left before real winter weather set in, we did a little side project and taped/mudded/painted the garage. Made for a world of difference as far as light and brightness went.

As a plus we got to clean up the joint like it hadn't been for several years. It was nice to see the bodywork mess go away. And get the new rig inside for the snowy season.

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Which brings us almost to where I am at now. I'll get a few pictures of the latest but mostly it involves making more of a mess of what we already had cleaned up.

I've been re-spraying hi build on each body panel and then blocking 320 and then 400 grit. For those spraying hi build I have found these final coats to go much smoother if you reduce the hi build before spraying it (less orange peel and you can get away with less grit sandpaper...which should lead to less scratches in the bodywork). 400 grit smoothness is supposedly where I need to be just prior to paint. Dammit it feels like I'm getting close.

I have also been trying to finish off some of the engine details. Powdercoating various things including splitting the alternator. Anyway I have to get pics of all of that before I can post them. Probably next weekend before I add more pics.

Any feedback is welcome, I am sure not done yet. And I can probably use any help you guys can give me with regard to top coating.

[Bchain]

I see that I missed adding one vehicle on this thread that shared time with the stepside. This one is more site-appropriate.

My father in law has a 77 k10 shorty that he has always run as a farm truck. This thing is beat to hell but it always runs. I've seen it pull a swather out of mud up to the axles. It has the 454 that was originally in my stepside.

Well a year after we brought the stepside home, he started looking for a newer k10 to replace the old farm truck. He wanted a squarebody for the simplicity and reliability. He wanted a short box 4x4 that hadn't been lifted and wasn't beat up. Yeah right.

And then one came up on the bulletin board at work. It was restored and more money than he wanted to give but we went and looked at it anyway. And home it came. This thing is some of the inspiration for what I'm doing...

I picked it up and kept it in my garage for a few days before taking it over to the farm. Had to get these pictures. One of these days I will get some new ones with the stepside at the farm...

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Got a load back from the powdercoaters. Had them do all of my engine brackets and pulleys, the valve covers, and the split-open alternator case.

Budget on this truck is "controlled". That means it isn't tight, necessarily, but I'm not just going out and buying whatever I want on credit. It is all cash forward and it is definitely limited. I figure I have less going to the truck each month (on average) than I would toward a new economy car payment.

The valve covers turned out very nice, I thought. These are kind of a weird one, M/T branded but with a Chevy part # (must have been a dealer option). They had internal oil drippers that I had to grind off because they were interfering with the roller rockers. They were very oxidized and I didn't have much hope of cleaning them up decently myself.

Of course I need to take them my air cleaner pieces now. One of these days I will clean the dust off of everything, there is a lot of paint/sand dust but none of it is technically sticking (i.e. overspray) so I think it will clean right up as soon as I am willing to hit it with a hose.

[Bchain]

I haven't re-assembled the alternator yet with the new powdercoated pieces. I wanted to do it this weekend but work got in the way of me getting to somewhere where they could put in some new bearings in the case pieces.

I will try to take some pictures when I get to that point. I read a few pieces on here where guys were doing that (powdercoating the alternator case) as opposed to buying a ridiculously expensive chrome piece. I think maybe TXfirefigher gave me the idea. Anyway it wasn't too hard to split but I sure didn't know what I was doing going into it. Hopefully it still puts out juice when I am done.

I didn't re-use the stock alternator and p/s brackets. For those looking into it of course you will have looked at March's catalog. Good grief I don't have 3k to spend on a serpentine bracket/pulley system. Instead I got on Amazon and bought Alan Grove brackets. These are very reasonably priced (like $50 a piece) brackets that are well made. They are unfinished so then you stack some powdercoating on top of that price. I sent in all the original pulleys for powder as well. 17 pieces plus something unrelated for the house cost me $200...pretty cheap compared to March.

[Bchain]

I did also start spraying some top coat this weekend. Been waiting a long time for this.

My system so far has been sandblast (except for cab which was DA'd only), bodywork (hammer/dolley and bondo), PPG omni epoxy (MP170), PPG omni hi build (MP282) within 3 days, then block sand 320, then 400. All of these primer coats used a hvlp gun with a 1.3 tip.

What I did for the first time this weekend was spray PPG DPLV sealer, wait overnight (nib and fix with 400 grit paper), then spray single stage PPG concept triple black.

I started with the underhood pieces because I wanted to screw up on these and hopefully not as much (or as bad) on my body pieces. They came out pretty nice! I am not going to cut/buff these pieces since they are underhood, so I only sprayed one coat. Kind of wish I had gotten two coats on the inner fenders as you can still detect some sanding scratches. May scratch and recoat later. There is minimal orange peel but I am willing to live with it since it is underhood.

Lots of people apparently go back with satin black underhood instead of gloss. I went with gloss, I think it will look pretty nice and frame the motor well (especially with the worked-over firewall). Think I saw others on here who made the same decision...I guess we will see after it is all re-assembled.

[Bchain]

Next step (after maybe scratching and adding a second coat to the inners) is to flip the inners over and undercoat them. Probably tomorrow or later this week.

I have been using Dominion rubber BUF undercoating. They are a good Canadian outfit, I had to call their tech help once and got put through to somebody at his desk who definitely knew what he was talking about.

It takes a shutz gun to spray this stuff, it doesn't require a big compressor. If I remember right it was about $12 per can, guessing I will use 3 cans to get good coverage on both fenderwells.

[Bchain]

Made a little progress on the paint over the last week. I will get some pictures of where I am out there and get them posted.

In the meantime though I am looking at getting headers bought. I have a pair of old rusty long tubes that fit, kind of. They hang lower than I would like, when the lower control arm is laid out the headers are the lowest thing on the truck. I do have the double hump transmission cross member so the long tubes do line up nice for the dual exhaust routing under that.

I am thinking though that I can get more clearance if I go with some shorty headers. Was thinking stainless instead of coated. Anybody have any experience/suggestions about these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/161945020324...witem=&vxp=mtr

Probably not the best stainless but this is a garaged, fair-weather truck so I'm guessing they would be good for a long time? Price is right...

[MTCK]

I'd be a little nervous with the non specific chassis fit. Price is definitely right. I'm going with some Doug Thorley tri-y's but they are about 3.5 times the $$$.

[Bchain]

The reason I was thinking they would fit ok is that they look like somebody is making carbon copies of the Sanderson BB8's:

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/sn...del/c10-pickup

Except that the price is appropriate for shorty headers (unlike the BB8's).

It's ok if the tri-y's are three times the price, they look three times cooler

[ruffrida2005]

Nice little build you have going on. My brother had a 95' Town car. He had 120 spoke Daytons wheels on it.

[MTCK]

Those do look similar. What are you going to run for the rest of the exhaust? Love how the truck is coming together.

[Bchain]

Originally Posted by MTCK

Those do look similar. What are you going to run for the rest of the exhaust? Love how the truck is coming together.

Thanks, it is a lot of hard work. I don't think I would ever advise somebody to try to sandblast/bodywork/paint in their garage.

I really don't know on the exhaust. At first I was thinking I would piece some stainless together myself but connections are an issue. So I was thinking just to take it to a shop and have them weld some aluminized steel up. Buddy of mine said the shop in town doesn't care whether they have to hook up to long tubes or bend up to short tubes.

Haven't really looked at mufflers either. Want to avoid the highway drone, guessing this thing is going to sound nasty enough without anything too loud. Any suggestions are welcome...