Charlotte - A Stock 1970 K10 Build

[IronCanine]

Late to the party. Bad miss on my part. Love the truck. Love the plan. Love me some 70s too. Keep the pics coming.

[Ptjsk]

Incredible build! Congratulations on this truck!

[Love 70 Chevys]

Sorry I have not posted pics in a while. I design medical equipment for a living and ever since Covid started, time on the truck has not nearly been what I would like. Waaay too many hours at work. I did get her running though and she purrs like a kitten even after all these years. Never stopped taking pics, so I hope to share some soon!

[LT7A]

Although covid has kept you busy, hopefully it has been profitable for you and the value of good medical equipment can certainly not be overstated. I'm enjoying your attention to detail and look forward to checking back in when you have the chance to update.

[Love 70 Chevys]

I continue to make steady progress on Charlotte, but have not posted in quite a while! In fact, as I look through my pictures, I don't have the immediate memory to do a good job of step by step, but I will add the pics anyway in the hopes they can help someone else. First topic is the steering column rebuild. I have all the before pics (Which were very important for putting it back together!) but not of when it was all done, painted and pretty. I'll get one on my computer and insert it later to update.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Removing the steering wheel and in cab disassembly. Used the threaded center section from a universal puller and made the rest of it myself out of some scrap bar stock to fit our application.

[Love 70 Chevys]

More disassembly.

[Love 70 Chevys]

More pictures. Some of the things I remember from doing this was that I had a lot of fun making the turn signal switch useable again. It was sticky and yucky, but once I cleaned all the gunk out, filed the contacts and then put in a little conductive grease, it felt like new again! Probably much better than buying a repro. Also, the lever was very dingy, but with some polishing and cleaning, it looked like new again, and much better than a repro. Since I was a newbie at this, the best advice I can give is take TONS of pictures at each disassembly step. I did not include even a fraction of mine. All the parts are cylindrical, and even if you remember the right order, the orientation of each one is not obvious. The rubber gaskets both inside the cab and outside came back to life with some cleaning and tire cleaner black. Looked like new and better than repros. All of my bearings were still good, just cleaned the gunk out of them and added a little grease. Have fun if you do this: I did! Note: One thing I just remembered that might save you some time if you follow the same path as I. I decided my steering wheel was not repairable. (Others may disagree!) Since they do not make a Sandalwood repro, I went with black. I paint all of my black parts semi-gloss, so did the same with the column. When I put the new repro black wheel on, it is very shiny and at least the in-cab portion of the column needs to be painted gloss black to go with the wheel. Mine is already back in the cab, but I will have to do some repainting of the upper portion to make it look better with the steering wheel.

[68bowtie]

Looks great

[chev-obsession]

Very cool truck, and your work is very thorough! Nicely done!

[68Gold/white]

Look’n good in the NY hood!!

[Ol Blue K20]

Doing some nice work and looking good.

[Love 70 Chevys]

Started the seat project by removing the seat tracks. My seat had not been adjustable due to the missing cable between the two tracks that disengages the lock bar. LMC makes a replacement cable and I used that one. Wire wheeled them, soaked in Evaporust, primed and repainted. Added a thin layer of synthetic grease to all moving parts when I reinstalled them at the end. (Bottom photo.)

[Love 70 Chevys]

Before removing the seat cover I took pics of placement of all the hog rigs as I am sure they were strategically placed at the factory. It was cool that there is an obvious "dip" in the attachment bars at the center of the seat on both the top and bottom frame. That helped a lot with alignment. I pulled out the old reinforcement wires in the hems to re-use in the new vinyl. I love finding old date codes as I pull things apart. There was a metal tag on the back of the top frame with a 8-18-69 date, and 5-69 printed in a repeating pattern on the inside of the vinyl. I really liked finding the 8-18-69 date as it really narrowed down the build date of my truck at the Tarrytown NY plant. I have the original bill of sale as it was a '70 model purchased in September of '69 in Rome NY.

[Love 70 Chevys]

After taking the vinyl off, I separated the top from the bottom. There are four big countersunk head bolts that you need a large phillips head bit to remove. Kind of odd, specialized bolts. I didn't have anything to fit, so bought the correct size bit hard mounted in a 1/2" drive socket. Let the bolts soak overnight with some PB blaster and used a breaker bar so I could slowly apply torque without stripping the phillips on the bolt heads. The top foam was still in great shape. I cut a carpet remnant to the correct size and attached it to the frame using zip ties. I encased the foam in clear plastic garbage bags. So glad I found that tip on this forum! Slid on the new vinyl, inserted the old hem wires and used zip ties to secure. Poked a small hole with an awl and fed them through. It was awesome to get them just snug enough to still be able to move things around and still make adjustments before final cinching. No one will ever see the back, but I love how clean the backing of the carpet looks compared to the old burlap that was glued to the foam and falling apart. Last picture was taken before I nipped-off all the excess on the zip ties. Used a pair of channel locks on the long ties as I was cinching them and had plenty of leverage. No wrinkles at all in the vinyl due to the extra volume taken up by the carpet and all seams and edging placed right where they needed to go.

[Love 70 Chevys]

The bottom foam was not as happy as the top. It had some cancer and rot where it had been poking through a rip in the original vinyl. It was fun to fix though. Cut out the cancer and built up some new foam in layers and and glued it in. Then shaped it using a cheese grater. One I bought and one I made from a piece of copper sheet metal punched through with a framing nail. The cheese grater can only be used so much though. Then it starts to shred and pull the fibers of the foam and you lose all shape. Found the best thing to do was first snip with scissors like a hair stylist, then use the cheese grater to get the multi-slope shape and then final shape with a little sanding drum on a Dremel. The special foam adhesive left things feeling very solid and permanent, but just for good measure I reinforced it with some flexible vinyl tape. I left a note on the foam for when someone restores this truck again in the future when I am long gone. I may be a little weird, but I have done the same thing inside the walls of any house I have ever owned where I took down drywall.

[53 292]

Man I really enjoy seeing the progress on this truck. I’m definitely coming back to this thread when it’s time to recover the seat in my 72!