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

[mjh1965]

Thanks for you help today helping to make the inner repair section for the door

Rian cutting my old fender to make a repair plate



Rian then shaped the plate to match the inner shape



Then the plates were all welded in





Once again team work pays off

[flashed]

Very bright in there .

[Ta2Don]

Teamwork and Bright lights!!!

As for the cutouts...

[markeb01]

It certainly is nice to have a friend with welding skills!

[bj383ss]

Looking good fellas.

[McMurphy]

Nicely done !
I like doing projects with someone, it tends to shorten the decision making process.
I spend too much time pondering if I can do something, how I should do it, how can I make it better than I first imagined it....bleh. LoL

You guys rocked that panel though, congrats !!

[Paul Y]

Grizz,

Really good to meet you today, thanks for the guided tour and the trims! Now just need my truck to arrive, going to be a long 2 weeks....

Offer stands, not the best in the world when it gets to the oily bits but been around old Chevys long enough to know which end of the hammer to use if, and when, you want to look at your engine in more detail.

P.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by flashed

Very bright in there .

Never bright enough when doing bodywork indoors.

Made another mobile 5' lamp last night.

Originally Posted by Ta2Don

Teamwork and Bright lights!!!

As for the cutouts...

Spens most of the day at Martin's agin today...... Teamwork??
Hanging gates that started as 4 footers and ended at 6 foot.

Also went and collected the cutouts.
Pipes had been cut on the welds, so I may sell them on.

Originally Posted by markeb01

It certainly is nice to have a friend with welding skills!

Shared skills in this situation certainly works.

Originally Posted by bj383ss

Looking good fellas.

Thanks Bret. Little by little.

Originally Posted by McMurphy

Nicely done !
I like doing projects with someone, it tends to shorten the decision making process.
I spend too much time pondering if I can do something, how I should do it, how can I make it better than I first imagined it....bleh. LoL

You guys rocked that panel though, congrats !!

Thanks MM. It takes real focus not to stop working. But company is always welcome.

Originally Posted by Paul Y

Grizz,

Really good to meet you today, thanks for the guided tour and the trims! Now just need my truck to arrive, going to be a long 2 weeks....

Offer stands, not the best in the world when it gets to the oily bits but been around old Chevys long enough to know which end of the hammer to use if, and when, you want to look at your engine in more detail.

P.

Pleasure was mine.

Happy for you to get the trims,seeing as you will be massaging them back into shape.

Re engine..... May take you up on it some time.

[Grizz1963]

NEED I SAY MORE?

PERFECT ANTI-SOCIAL THUGGERY COMING TO A STREET NEAR YOU SOON.

3' Cutout Valves Tested - YouTube

3" QTP Cutout Valves and Pipes

[clemdaddy]

you and martin are knocking it out. nice paint booth you guys set up and in a short amount of time. i bet this spring you'll be cruising around with a beautiful paint job.

Happy New Year buddy... stay safe.

[markeb01]

You'll be amazed how much fun those are, and how often they get used!

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by clemdaddy

you and martin are knocking it out. nice paint booth you guys set up and in a short amount of time. i bet this spring you'll be cruising around with a beautiful paint job.

Happy New Year buddy... stay safe.

Thanks Clem, same for you and yours.

Maybe Martin will show you what took 5 hrs of our time later in his thread, along with picking up my pipes.

Originally Posted by markeb01

You'll be amazed how much fun those are, and how often they get used!

NO DOUBT MARK !!

[flashed]

Thanks for taking us on that last ride of 2014 and sorry to hear about the windshield and I think you got your moneys worth out of that exhaust system .Im looking forward to seeing what you accomplish next year .
Happy New Year
John

[Palf70Step]

...welll except for the windshield thing. Looking forward to next year's updates!

[Grizz1963]

Thanks guys. 00.45 here, should be sleeping. BUT.....

Door checks, as my doors are creased.

http://persh.org/Pickup/DoorChecks.htm

And

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...+Cherokee+door


Very useful info and guidance.

[Grizz1963]

Another one of those days where I was busy most of the day, but did very little.

Started off with collecting Hannah, Nicola's daughter, guess my step daughter at the station, then over to Maidstone to buy a 1997 Ford Fiesta 1250cc Zetec from friend Woodsie for her, at the price of a cheap bicycle, 42k miles and an elderly owner makes it a perfect cheap car to run for her job as radiographer with a lot of on call work.

Then home on my own, had a coffee, then down to the garage to play for a bit, and take a few pics.

Firstly, some weird but predictable rust on the inner wings.
Usually they rust through to the supporting plate below, taking that away as well, but mine are both great, with only the top metal rotten.

I need some advice on how others have approached this repair.

I have about one and a half inner wings, inherited from Martin as he got a good pair in Florida last year.
So I suspect I will need to cut some pieces out of the donors and make them fit (hopefully)
Is it going to be possible to harvest sections for the tips that narrow down, from hogher up the fenders?





These are my donor pieces from which I need to harvest replacement pieces for the rusty sections.




BACK TO OUR SCHEDULED TRANSMISSION.

There are three sets of these holes down the bed sides, I would assume they point toward some part of its history as a real working truck in California ( I so wish I could find out more about it early history) I wonder if there was a metal carrying rack, like a plumber could have used back in the day.

The repair technique leaves much to be desired, why stick some mesh over the holes and then fill from the outside ???

I will be grinding all this rubbish back and welding the holes up before resealing the inside in underseal and repainting the outside, as the underseal works well for a working truck.




The next small job was to use my almost new Rattle Gun to undo the second fender bolt that was completely rusted away and seized to the flat nut that ha kept it all together. This Impact wrench is a huge help and for the money, despite using it three times so far, and absolute must have for this sort of job.

The bolt was never going to release, so the torque tore it off after about three tries, using a huge spanner to hold the spinning rust lump.




My next little time waster was to remove the mounting plates from my dearly departed rear bumper.

Two angle grinders made it easy going.



Unfortunately, the 9" grinder just did not cut it, but I then attacked from the other side which meant cutting around the welds.



The plan is to use them and some more 1/4 inch angle iron or wide flat bar to make the mounting irons for the new bumper to fit to, and then to also create a new towbar mount with a removable tow ball.

A few minutes with a flap wheel and most of the chrome on it came back with years worth of crud flying off.



Right, time for dinner.

[Grizz1963]

The plan is to use them and some more 1/4 inch angle iron or wide flat bar to make the mounting irons for the new bumper to fit to, and then to also create a new towbar mount with a removable tow ball.

A few minutes with a flap wheel and most of the chrome on it came back with years worth of crud flying off.




Remember this???

Picked up a free Mercedes Benz A Class tow bar today.

May just be right to incorporate into the trucks new tow hitch.

[Ta2Don]

2015… CHEERS MATE!!!

[Grizz1963]

BONDO/BOG/FILLER/PLOD is the friend of every good body worker ehhh??

Took the door parts off today, including the door panels..... first surprise was not being able to unscrew one of the screws on the drivers side, followed by another 5 on the passenger side. Lubricated them, not progress, then went and had a coffee with Martin when he pitched, after which he tried various bodyshop techniques, followed by me and Mr Drill, so I have a repair job ahead before I can get the panels back on.

The lower door kick panels were covered with some thick gauge plastic, covering the 6x9 holes which I had planned on welding up, but then realized they have a swage/ridge which I am not sure I want to repair, unless I make up some panels and weld them in..... more welding.

Inside the door was surprise number one, indicating that a lot more pain awaits me......

Can you tell what it is yet?



Ohhh, and the red you see in the pic, is high density foam flooring, or a camping mat that some clever idiot glued a bunch of inside the doorskin as sound deadening.....

So then between Martin and I we continued to laugh, curse and be amazed at all the cockups as we unbolted bits, with bolts missing from the tailgate, some cross threaded bolts etc....

Rear lights out, tailgate gone and bumper removed.

I STILL WOULD LOVE TO FIND THE SAME BUMPER AGAIN.



Then more coffee and left over Christmas mince pies Nicola had put out for us before returning to start the front end.

This was the moment I have feared the last 18 months, but at least I was in control.

The biggest lump of Plod on my truck that I know of, clearly there will be more surprises forthcoming.

From the drivers fender.



After we had undone a zillion nuts and bolts Martin made me remove the first fender, just to torture me.



While I was at the second fender, Martin was grunting, groaning and sounding like a walrus mating on a rocky beach..... "Where's your bloody rattle gun?" he grunted from below my feet, under the fender.

The bottom fender bolt was not letting up, a bit like some of the others we had already encountered.

Fetched the rattle gun and got on with what I was doing, heard ZZZZZRRT..!! Had Martin's head pop up, kinda like a ground hog.... Burger me !!! This thing works well.

Note the offending items deterioration.



This point saw us get some sandwiches, tea and a catch up on various other tasks, like ordering bits off Ebay and Amazon.



Martin is upgrading the rear of his truck with park/indicator lights so made up a template using pencil, masking tape, which is then transferred to cardboard so he can mark out the rear of his truck before cutting the steel to fit the new lights.



SURPRISE !!!




As you know the truck is being fitted with a 67-72 rear bumper as I have not been able to find out where the bumper fitted originated from.

Any suggestions and help still appreciated if you know or recognize where it is from.

I would still fit one.

It was chromed all the way around.

At this point I will be throwing a 9" angle grinder at it, and removing the fitting brackets, to use to make fitting brackets for the new bumper.




Different angle.



We also removed the load body bolts, and I undid the fuel filler and overflow pipe Jubilee clips in preparation to remove the whole thing one my trolley comes back from under Martins engine and gearbox.

We called it a day quite early as we both had more stuff to do that had nothing to do with trucks.

End of a great day.

Now the work starts.



Thanks for checking in, as always, help and advice appreciated.

[flashed]

Its a shame you are way over across the pond as I have a nice rust free fender for one of those trucks ,the last part of one of those years I have left but it does make a nice wall hanging .

[Ta2Don]

Solid days work...

Will be on those bumper bolts for you mate...

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by flashed

Its a shame you are way over across the pond as I have a nice rust free fender for one of those trucks ,the last part of one of those years I have left but it does make a nice wall hanging .

Thanks for the offer Flashed.

You will be surprised, because we have so very little resources here for our truck and due to the cost of getting stuff imported, we normally just have to swallow the bitter pill of inflated costs.
The cost of importing a Short Fleet to the UK from lets say Houston Texas will be around £2200.00 or $3375.00 on top of the purchase price.

Originally Posted by Ta2Don

Solid days work...

Will be on those bumper bolts for you mate...

Thanks Don.

I will be needing the two rubbers that fit in behind the fenders and a full set of the door panel screws to replace mine. Most were mangled when I got the truck.

Will chat again.

[bj383ss]

Rian

Those can inner fenders can be repaired easily just strip them down. Cutout the rotten clean in out spray with rust inhibitor and weld new pieces in. I did both of mine have pics I can send you

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by bj383ss

Rian

Those can inner fenders can be repaired easily just strip them down. Cutout the rotten clean in out spray with rust inhibitor and weld new pieces in. I did both of mine have pics I can send you

Cool stuff.

Did you post it in your build thread?

[Ta2Don]

Did mine too...
with pieces donated by DaBearsda1