Grizz's Redneck Express 1966 Chevy Short Fleetside RESTO-GO!

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by 60chevyjim

its looking very good , and happy birthday too

Thank you Jim, much appreciated.

[Grizz1963]

Getting up to this point with the reassembly, the last part was to assemble the Steering tie rod ends and their adjustable sleeves and fit it all together with the idler arm etc.....







So..........


When we tried to assemble these parts, it seems I was supplied with 4 Right handed threaded parts. So two screwed straight into the adjusting sleeves, and two refused, till we realised there should be two left hand threads.

Martin and I also came up yo the house to call Paul "NevEno" in Ada, Oklahoma on FaceTime (Don't you love technology) to double check that we were right.

Of course when we removed all the parts from the plastic bags, we did not note which parts and part numbers were associated.

So its it like this....?



Or are they like this?

It's the 350 and 370. L/R units I need to figure out.




One more thing, the thickness of the tapered inserts on the tie rod ends differ, the two that fit the original truck steering parts are 15.5mm thick and those that are wrong threaded are also 16.5mm at max taper.

So now need to figure out which parts I need to order, I think they are the inner tie rod ends with left hand thread and correct inserts.

[Johnny_Lamebridge]

Happy Birthday Rian!

Nice progress on the C10... too bad about the parts delays.

[ibrown50]

It looks like you have 2 sets of inner tie rods.(perhaps whoever boxed up the kit wasn't paying attention) On my truck the inners were much longer, (pictures below) sorry I can't help with part numbers, but think you need a pair of outer tie rod ends.





It they were put into the kit in error, the wrongly threaded ones may not even be for a C10.

[clemdaddy]

it sucks if you have to order parts from the US and they get it wrong… frustrating i know. but fortunately there's lot of different projects to stay busy.

how many weeks from the reorder till you have parts in hand?

just frustrating… hang in there partner. the job looks great so far.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by clemdaddy

it sucks if you have to order parts from the US and they get it wrong… frustrating i know. but fortunately there's lot of different projects to stay busy.

how many weeks from the reorder till you have parts in hand?

just frustrating… hang in there partner. the job looks great so far.

Hi Clem, thank you for the reply.

You are right, it is frustrating, but of course there is always stuff to keep me busy.

It can be up to 4 weeks.

Though the LCA was only 8 days.

Ohhh, and yes.... Hanging in there.


Had a variety of errands to run today, as well as some admin for the job I got made redundant from.

So late afternoon I made it into the garage, probably about 4pm.

The plan was to get the rear end of the truck on axle stands, drop the rear and remove the springs, paint them red and then also do the rest of the chassis black, and leave pair of oil heaters on between the chassis rails overnight to help the paint dry. We had a forecast of -2'C for tonight.

Front end with wheels attached, mainly just as a backup to the axle stands under the front frame horns.



Then to the rear where I removed the wheels, at which point my mobile phone on the shelf started ringing..... I did not want to answer it, after all, who calls me at 4.30 or whatever?

Thankfully I did answer the phone as it was the lady at the agency calling to formally offer me the job I interviewed for last week Thursday.

So I now have a new job, thankfully before the redundancy put me out of work, commencing on the 15th Feb. working in a secondary care specialty job in London again.

So this is where I left the truck as I came in to tell Nicola and text a few friends.........



Tomorrow I will carry on.

Woooot Wooot, real thankful to have a job again.

[NevEno]

VERY AWESOME!! congrats on the new job!!

[flashed]

Congrats on the new job and the truck is looking great .

[chad64chevy]

congrats Rian on the new job! truck is looking good as well!

[65sub]

Great news on the job and I hope you get the steering sorted out.

[clemdaddy]

Great!

[Palf70Step]

Congratulations Rian!

[RockTonka]

Congrats on getting that job, Rian! Happy belated B-day also...take care.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Johnny_Lamebridge

Happy Birthday Rian!

Nice progress on the C10... too bad about the parts delays.

Originally Posted by ibrown50

It looks like you have 2 sets of inner tie rods.(perhaps whoever boxed up the kit wasn't paying attention) On my truck the inners were much longer, (pictures below) sorry I can't help with part numbers, but think you need a pair of outer tie rod ends.

Attachment 1489142

Attachment 1489143

It they were put into the kit in error, the wrongly threaded ones may not even be for a C10.

Thank you Ian, I think you are right.

Will order new parts this week. Then sell on the spares I have.

Originally Posted by NevEno

VERY AWESOME!! congrats on the new job!!

Originally Posted by flashed

Congrats on the new job and the truck is looking great .

Originally Posted by chad64chevy

congrats Rian on the new job! truck is looking good as well!

Originally Posted by 65sub

Great news on the job and I hope you get the steering sorted out.

Originally Posted by clemdaddy

Great!

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

Congratulations Rian!

Originally Posted by RockTonka

Congrats on getting that job, Rian! Happy belated B-day also...take care.

Thank you one and all.

I appreciate all the care and concern on here.

Blessed to have walked straight into a new job and with a raise.

[Grizz1963]

After bailing out early last night, I worked at the day job most of today.

So only got into the garage around 6pm.

It was chilly down there.

So I completed disassembling the rear end.



Removed the springs and shocks.

Followed by washing the shocks and chassis with petrol to get them clean and applying the Vactan rust converter to all surfaces.

I then cleaned the springs with Cif and a Scotch pad. After which I washed them down.

Hound my wash bucket had already frozen over with a 10mm thick plug.



Once washed I brought the inane put them next to my study heater to dry and warm up.



At this point Nicola had not seen what I was up to as she was getting ready to go out with work friends (I prefer to stay at home)

Then once she left....... The mouse got ready to play.



At -2'C outside, it just makes sense to paint indoors and deal with any objections tomorrow.



Hopefully I will get some time tomorrow to paint the chassis and axle.

Little by little

[Grizz1963]

Second coat done this morning.

Looks much better.

Also the milk bottle painted and left outside looks great and is ever so slightly tacky. So I think drying time is delayed but still worth doing.



Today I had to choose a car. None of the tree choices appealed, so I have actually selected from a band lower, which is closer to what I want but also saves £80.00//month in Benefit in Kind taxation.

When I got home, I went and set up two oil heaters that I will start up first thing in the morning, and eventually go down to paint chassis and rear axle.

I also received in the post today, a bunch of very cool plates from Aiken.



There are a few I really like.

[flashed]

No wonder I cant get plates from all 50 states ,you are getting them all ,LOL .I like the Budweiser plate ,never seen one of those and Im a recovering Budweiser collector .

[dwcardfan]

Looking good Rian!!

[Palf70Step]

[markeb01]

Thanks for the follow up letter today Rian. And happy belated birthday! Truck is looking great, will be nicer once the steering parts get sorted out. And the rear springs turned out very nice. Congrats and good luck on the new job. Hopefully it will last longer than the previous version. Regards, Mark.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by flashed

No wonder I cant get plates from all 50 states ,you are getting them all ,LOL .I like the Budweiser plate ,never seen one of those and Im a recovering Budweiser collector .

I feel very pleased, privileged that Ken thought he would send me some of his plates.

What do you mean, you are a recovering Budweiser collector?

Originally Posted by dwcardfan

Looking good Rian!!

Thank you Donny, if my truck come to even being 10% as good as yours, I would be pleased as anything.

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

Thank you Bill, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by markeb01

Thanks for the follow up letter today Rian. And happy belated birthday! Truck is looking great, will be nicer once the steering parts get sorted out. And the rear springs turned out very nice. Congrats and good luck on the new job. Hopefully it will last longer than the previous version. Regards, Mark.

Thank you Mark, always good to hear from you.

Yes, I hope this job lasts longer than the last one.

Best part about this redundancy, is that it has given me some time to play on the truck, I between doing bits I am still expected to do.

[Grizz1963]

Well, the chassis paint is now complete. And I am very pleased as it means I can get on with some other jobs.

One of the things to do is to start preparing the cross baces for the bed strips that I will be making up at some point.

However, my truck has a plywood floor with minimal steel braces. Martin may have one or two for me, or else I will go to the scrap yard and make up something that works.

My loadbed currently looks like this with only one brace ahead of the wheel arches, toward the cab.

There should possibly be two more.



This is a diagram taken from the LMC catalogue, showing all the braces needed.



This is a Short Fleetside bed pulled by DaddyOh in Southern California recently, showing all the braces in place.



So my question is this: Can one live with bed strips, without any of these braces? In case I do not get any from mate Martin.



Last night I pulled out my oil filled garage heaters and set them in place between the chassis rails as I wanted to see if I could push the 0'C temperature down there, up a bit so that I could paint the rest of the chassis and rear axle and prop shaft. I had wanted to do this for a long time.
This morning at 07.00 I went down to the garage to switch them on so that they could start breaking the cold and dry the air out.
When I opened the big door, I realised the heaters had been on all night.
Checking my thermometers ( I have a few of them around) I could see the temperature had gone up to 5'C so I decided to leave them on and come back down by 10.00 to see if it was warmer.
By 10.00 it was up to 6'C, so I decided to mask up the last bits that I did not want to get paint on.

This was what I started painting at 11.00 then.



It took about three hours to complete and by the time I was finished, the garage temperature had gone up to 10'C which is a good temperature for the paint to dry and harden.

Finished, really pleased with the way this has turned out.

I find it really rewarding to see where I came from and where the chassis is now.





And of course tonight........





I also painted the rear brake drums while I was at it. Did the fronts in silver, but decided to go for a light industrial grey instead as the Rallye wheels will cover them anyway. So may repaint the front as well in the grey. Heater up close to help the drying.



After all that I was a bit bored, so I decided to paint up all the rolling wheels in the same red as the springs.

Should look better than the rusted look they had before.



Next up I will remove all the brake lines and mark them up.

Martin has found a guy some distance from where I live who will reproduce all our brake lines at a reasonable rate.
So this is the next little job I never planned.

An then I want to fit a new fuel line from the tank to the front.

Happy tonight.

[flashed]

Wow ,that looks great and the wheel looks good too.

Now to your question about me being a recovering Budweiser collector .I used to collect anything Budweiser except for the beer itself ,not a drinker ,just loved the brand I guess .I have all kinds of steins and other Bud stuff all stored away in boxes with no room to display it so I no longer collect any more of it .I may even sell it all off one day .I also collect Coca Cola stuff and Zippo lighters as well as any kind of transportation toys ,license plates and road signs .
When I get a chance Im going to try to dig out a few plates to send your way .My shop is so cluttered right now I cant seem to find them .

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by flashed

Wow ,that looks great and the wheel looks good too.

Now to your question about me being a recovering Budweiser collector .I used to collect anything Budweiser except for the beer itself ,not a drinker ,just loved the brand I guess .I have all kinds of steins and other Bud stuff all stored away in boxes with no room to display it so I no longer collect any more of it .I may even sell it all off one day .I also collect Coca Cola stuff and Zippo lighters as well as any kind of transportation toys ,license plates and road signs .
When I get a chance Im going to try to dig out a few plates to send your way .My shop is so cluttered right now I cant seem to find them .

Gotcha.

Take a look at Herbs thread here, he has some very cool stuff, including Coca Cola stuff that "does not exist"


Slight change of pace today, no real truck time.

Only checked up the wheels I painted yesterday, as well as the chassis, all good.

Went over to help mate Martin today. ( This redundancy thing has its perks) after work, well, his work, as I am not really doing much at the moment, other than keeping things ticking over for my boss. It will be very different when I start the new job on the 15th Feb.

Collected a rear loadbed cross brace from him that he got off Del's truck last year. My truck is missing some braces.

Anyway, Martin showed me this pic, of myself and Chad on the rear bed of Clem's flatbed truck up in the Ozarks when we were in the USA. I had not seen it before, and seem pretty relaxed and happy there.



It reminded me of just how great this trip was.

All the incredible people we got to meet on the trip and also those we missed out spending time with like Donnie Johnson, or meeting like Steve in Arkansas.

Possibly the best time of my life.........

Maybe time for a "Replay"

[NevEno]

Originally Posted by Grizz1963

Maybe time for a "Replay"

I wonder what that means? Lol!! Clem's for round 2?