[McMurphy]

Originally Posted by coulter

amazing work man thats gonna be sweet!!!! your skills keep progessing with everything you do!!! keep it up man

Originally Posted by piratexpress1369a

can't wait to see this part finished

Originally Posted by matt_l

Wow, McMurphy, that tailgate came out amazing. I have been following your build for a while now, and your ingenuity never ceases!

Thanks guys !!
As I get closer all I can say is I only have a few more tricks up my sleeve for this build, but hopefully you will find them worth your while.

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I cannot believe it has been almost 2 weeks since my last entry.... I must apologize for that.
Too many things that are in the works right now that would seem chaotic if I posted daily what I had worked on.

That being said, you know I hate to do things twice.
I REALLY hate having to fix something that was "perfect" because I goofed it up (and yes goofed usually comes out of my mouth with the F as the first letter) which is what happened to my tailgate.
I actually let it fall and the nicely done in side panel with the inverted CHEVROLET lettering got all scratched and gouged to ........ heck.

It was bad enough for me to stomp around my garage for a full 3 minutes exersizing ever curse word I ever learned.
I think my Drill Sergents would have been proud of that littany....

So I had to fix that, just finished it today actually.
I also filled the red CHEVROLET letters with clear silicon along all the edges and that was a chore to clean up and make look nice.
But more on that later...

I finally got all the body work done on the fenders, and cut in my Cadillac side marker/turn signals.


These are normallly mounted vertically, but like my tail lights, I emplaced them horizontally. I think they are looking pretty spiffy:


I also got the fenders, and the fender spaces on my bed sides herculinered; and today I threw down some paint:


I made some custom and extended bed rail caps, as well as getting my tail gate retainers/striker latches welded in place.


The cut out CHEVROLET was looking pretty good, but the clear silicon made a mess, and I did not approach it very well from the start. It was indeed a trial and error working.
After masking off the panel to shoot some Night Shades red in the letter wells for the benefit of the caulking, I ended up with some leakage from the masking tape job my wife did for me.
It played havoc with my metallic grey paint and one spot you can see between the E and the T really took a disliking to it all. A lot of my raised letter edges suffered as well, so instead of spending gobs and gobs of time masking off the letter wells, I masked off the panel edges, and filled the letters with water.
So that is what you are seeing here, 9 water filled letters, and fresh paint all around:


Other than that blemish under the arm of the T, I am quite pleased with the results so far.
I suspect the paint on top of the water will solidify enough for me to lift it out, and then I will sponge out the remaining water.

This also confirmed that I have a good seal around each letter, so no initial worrys about gunk getting inside my tail gate....

Thanks for sitting through this long winded post.
I am going to go shoot one more coat of the grey and call it a night.

Thanks for looking !!!