Highland Body Shoppe 160 Edinburgh Way...

[Hilandr451]

I come home from work, sittin' at a stinkin' computer all day - change into my jeans & a t-shirt, open the garage door, turn on the fans and the compressor, slap on a dust mask strap on the pneumatic power tools and go at it for four hours. A strange mix of Skynyrd, Hatchet, and Bag Pipes bellows out of the stereo setting an energetic pace for the work to be done.



Sweat, blood and sheer love pours out of my soul in ample quantities as I watch 40 years of dirt, grease & rust fall off of the 18 guage cold rolled steel that made America great in the sixties. 40 years of grime representing 40 years of faithful service from a machine hand crafted by proud WWII & Korea vets that cared about what they put their hands to. It's not just a truck, its a living breathing monument to what made America THE super-power of the world.




At 9:00 PM the bell goes off telling me it's time to put the tools down, blow off the days progress from my clothes & what's left of my hair. And as I reach for the light I admire my handy-work there sitting silent in the shadows I feel sad that I can't keep working on to midnight. But even before the light leaves the shop I am already looking forward to coming home from work the next day to start all over again.



Later as I'm nursing my wounds over a cool glass of whiskey, I feel priveleged to carry on the work of my fore-fathers and honor them by restoring one of their masterpieces from Detroit. This is my world here at the Highland Body Shoppe on Edinburgh Way - my wife calls it our garage, but it's a body shop to me at least for now...... Made in Texas from Highland blood.

I finished coating the inner fenders, the core support - which I pilfered from pick-n-pull this last saturday on a pristine 1960 C-10 stepside. I also found a clean header panel off that same truck and POR15'ed the entire back side of the piece.

The back side of both inner door panels have been coated with POR15. They've been stripped and are ready for primer on the "show" side.

I started on the passenger door last night. I have had a huge dent in that door for 12 years. It took me 20 minutes to pull it out. 20 minutes - I could have fixed it years ago - but NO - I chose to drive around with a dent in my door for 12 years. I am such an idiot sometimes - just ask my wife!

I also found what appears to be a divit from a bullet on the upper part of the door above the window. Hmmm.... I don't remember that one...

[krue]

That brought a tear to my eye. Very nice progress. I seem to be too busy working on my property to get anything done on my truck.

[Hilandr451]

Originally Posted by krue

That brought a tear to my eye.

mine too - oh wait - that's just bondo dust

It's saturday - I'm off to the paint store before they close. I've decided to go with the original color: paint code 540 - "Crystal Turquoise" two tone with "Cameo White".

I thought long & hard about the color and originally I was going to go with the '66 gold color with the white top like my dad's '63. My favorite color is red, but let's face it, everybody's got a red truck.

The '66 has been a faithful work horse to me for 12 years and I 'm thinking that restoring the original paint code would be the right thing to do. Besides, once I finally sanded down to the original paint, it don't look half bad!

[Hilandr451]

Well, one door down to metal. A little hammer time, some welding and grinding then it's bondo city and primer!!!

[62 short step]

Thats awesome. Can't wait to start mine this winter!!

[Chevy Fleetside]

That is how it looked yesterday when I was there.. Didn't you do anything to it yet?

[Hilandr451]

I'm sorry for the lack of progress in the last 12 hours Johnny.

Due to circumstances completely out of my control, the Highland Body Shoppe will be closed today Sunday 03 Sept. 2006. Under protest, I have been forced into being at the beach all day. We'll be resuming normal operations on Monday...




Did you get that Suburban cut up yet??

[Chevy Fleetside]

I didn't get it cut up yet. David came by and took the rearend and some other stuff I had laying around.

[Hilandr451]

Progress report: Monday 04 Sept. no more holes, no more dents - outer skin's ready for primer. (No more bullet hole either!!)







Here's where these trucks always cancer out. notice to the right, the rust that was behind the seam filler? The other probably more frequent place where cancer starts is just above the pinch weld where there's about a 1/4" space between the inner & outer skin. Dirt usually builds up here inside the door (especially on the outboard corner) and causes rust from within. this place will get special attention on my truck.

[Hilandr451]

[Hilandr451]

Friday night at the shop:



That black thing on the table is a restored header panel that's been completely coated on the entire back side with POR15 rust preventative paint. After the paint sets up, then I'll strip, fill & primer the "show" side.

The mission for Saturday: coat the inside of the passenger side door with POR15 and start stripping the paint off the hood. Sunday we go to primer on the door.

[leftcoast66]

when you coat the inside of the doors, are you stripping it down to do it? or are you just throwing the por 15 on over the crap that was already in there...
awesome work, wish I could get my truck stripped down that far, I'm hoping to start doing that on my truck as well...

[Hilandr451]

Originally Posted by leftcoast66

when you coat the inside of the doors, are you stripping it down to do it? or are you just throwing the por 15 on over the crap that was already in there...
awesome work, wish I could get my truck stripped down that far, I'm hoping to start doing that on my truck as well...

The doors pose a particular challenge because there is limited access inside the cavity. (huh huh he thaid 'cavity' huh-huh) What I'm doing there is I'm scraping away any of the under coating I can reach that will come off. Then I 'm hand sanding with 60 grit any of the surface rust I can.

Then after I thoroughly clean out the inside with a shop vac, I'll coat the whole inside with POR15's "Metal Ready". It's a phosphoric acid solution that desolves surface rust and leaves a protective coating of zinc phosphate behind. That should take care of any areas I couldn't reach with tools. I let it soak for an hour or so then hose it all off with my pressure washer.

Using a propane torch to heat up the metal, I remove any residual water from cracks & crevices (huh huh he thaid 'crack' huh-huh) and apply the rust preventative paint. I've applied POR15 over old stuborn under coating on other parts like the inner fenders & the header panel with great success, so I'm confident it will work on the stuff I can't remove from the inside of the doors.

A lot of guys don't get to the restoration phase because 1. They don't have the money to do it all at once. 2. The need to use their truck for work or they don't want to leave it torn down for the duration of time it would take to do a complete restoration.

I may have forgot to mention that I'm still driving my truck almost every day while I'm doing this. I started by collecting spare parts. From 'donor' trucks, junkyards and deals I've found over the years, I've been able to collect a cab in very good condition, a set of crappy doors, a rusted hood, some rust-free inner fenders, a pristine core support & header panel, a heater box, half a dozen instrument clusters, trim, a crappy seat, all the misc. tin & hardware under the hood and a prisine dash panel with the factory AM radio cut-outs still intact.

I just swapped the crappy doors, hood & seat with the originals from my truck so I could restor them all off the truck while having the benefit of bing able to haul stuff around. I have two of almost every body panel on the truck I bought new re-pop fenders and I'm upgrading the front end to an 89 'burb with disc brakes & a hydraulic steerring box. I have another engine on my engine stand waiting to mate up with a 700r4. The idea is that when I've gone as far as I can with everything off the truck, I'll pull my truck in the shop, strip it down to the frame, clean & POR15 the frame then start bolting on all the new parts. And when I'm done the first thing I'll haul is all the extra parts to the swapmeet!

[leftcoast66]

That's a great idea. I'm having the dilema that the truck my dad wants moveable in the garage so we can pull it out because we're also restoring a '64 ford Galaxie as well, and 2 cars being fixed up in a 3 car garage w/ a car in each stall is freakin hard. I'm about to take the hood and inner fenders out because it has 5 lug disc brakes up front and I'm building a new inner fender setup so that the tires are still driveable when the airride is laid out. It was my daily driver, but I bought a little 4 cylinder so I can work on the truck more and since I'm 5 hours from home at college...

[Hilandr451]

Finished the door, POR15'ed the inside of the whole thing and finished stripping the header panel.



There's just one little ding on the header panel I need to fix and we're shooting primer on both tomorrow.

[Frizzle Fry]

Gettin down in cow-town Keep it up!

[Hilandr451]

Progress report 9-11-06:





Passenger door ready for paint, Header panel ready for paint. Tomorrow we start on the driver's side door and the hood.