Not a lot of posts in the 2nd half of 2016 but I did get a lot of work done during the summer. Garage time tends to curtail once football season starts but this is just a hobby for now so that is to be expected. I decided to start on the body work of the truck. It may not be the correct item to work on next but it is the part of the process I am the most interested in right now. I thought I was starting small by picking the fenders to work first. I quickly realized I was probably wrong. There was a lot of damage hidden under the paint on these fenders as you will see in the pictures. One had at least a quarter inch of body filler to poorly fix a previous wreck.
I used the same process as detailed in my post where I painted the hood on my son’s car. The only real difference is that I took the fenders all the way to bare metal while the e-coating on the hood was mostly left intact. This required an additional step for protecting the metal using a self-etching primer. And since this is for my treasured truck project I spent a lot more time on the metal work to make sure I get the best results possible.
I spent over forty hours on each fender and they are not in final color yet. Not really much else to say so I will just post a bunch of pictures as proof that I am actually working on this thing.
This doesn’t look too bad, just some old ugly brown paint.
The only visible damage. Nothing a little welding can’t fix. This metal is thin so flux mig welding will not work. A great excuse to upgrade to a gas mig welder.
That’s a lot of body filler.
What have I gotten my self into. Hours of dolly and hammer ahead.
One tear repaired.
Body work complete. A lot less body filler required this time around.
3 coats of Self Etching Primer applied.
3 coats of primer. Sand with 180 grit. 3 more coats of primer. Sand with 240 grit.
3 more coats of primer. Sand with 400 grit.
Wet sand with 600 grit. Hard to tell from the picture but the wet part gives you a good idea how smooth the final coat could be.
The second fender after wet sanding. I tried to sand without water but I found the water sped up the process quite a bit. It prevented the sandpaper from clogging.
I have since corrected a few spots and have the parts ready for color. I decided to wait and paint all the parts all at once. I need to decide which part to prep next. Maybe something more flat like the hood or front fenders but that will have to wait until the spring when temperatures are constantly warming. Maybe I will tear down the engine and get it ready for the machine shop this winter. I cant promise that I will post more next year but I will keep working on it.