My F150 project (Page 5 of 5)

I worked on the truck til 3am Sunday night.

For starters, we did more sanding, and found a couple (more) spots where the primer was a little thin, and the 320-grit blew through the paint, as well as a couple spots that were STILL low from the previous day. So, while I worked on hanging some stuff in the spray booth to get it ready for final cleaning and epoxy, Mike took the soft wire wheel to the roof in the low spots and applied the Rage body filler to the exposed surface.

While the filler hardened, I came back over and we worked on pulling the oversized dolly out from under the cab, and modifying it so that it would fit inside the booth. Remember from, like, November, that it was just two 10-foot 4x4s about 3 feet apart, connected by a piece of 2x8 with wheels on it. Well, now, it's much lower-profile - yet still high enough to allow me some access to try to paint the very bottom of the doorsills - and should be easier to paint the roof. That was in theory, of course... I had been standing on the 4x4s to shoot the roof, and therefore was about level with the floorpan. Now, though, I won't have that extra wood sticking out to stand on, so I'll actually be about 5" lower than the cab, which will make painting the roof a lot of fun.

After that was done, my epoxy was done cooking and so I went into the spray booth to inaugurate it with some miscellaneous pieces that were ready to go, hung on wires from a newly-liberated 10' 4x4 set upon two ladders.

The hood latch (and remember, this is still soaking wet with epoxy primer, which flattens out a lot as it dries)

Hood stops:

And oh yeah, the entire core support:

... and the cowl:

... and the filler that goes between the bumper and the core support.

Tim and Greg came out for a while, too, and were the ones who got the front and back ends on the spray booth. We couldn't have gotten the other stuff done without their help.

HEY LOOK EVERYBODY, COLOR!!!1!

This was late Wed. night, after finally calling it "good enough" and laying down three coats of base color, waiting 30 minutes for it to flash, and inspecting the finish for the "dull, satin tone" the paint calls for. Convinced I had it, Mike mixed up the clear and I shot it at around 1am Thursday morning. Let me tell you, clear coat is hard to spray, at least with my crappy gun. I got plenty of runs (which are pretty easy to get sand and polish out with clear) and one single spot where I went too lightly with the color - the base of the d/s A-pillar, inside the door frame - that's gonna have to be sanded and hit again.

Then, last night, Tim and Adam came over, and Mike had a family from church over, so we enlisted Russell's help and carried the cab out of the booth and placed it on the frame.

Now that that was out of the way, Adam and I brought the ladders back into the spray booth to hang stuff, and installed the freshly-rebuilt-by-Mike power steering pump and a couple other other little bits while Tim sandblasted the d/s fender and Mike worked on the p/s fender repair.

The new fender's front bottom corner was in better shape than it looked, once the chalky old paint and light surface rust was blasted off. Definitely a step up from the old one.

You can see why we decided to cut and paste instead of just using the complete fender here. It was cheap enough, and the small dents that need repaired on the original fender will be easier to manage.

It required very few tweaks for Mike to get it on there. A slight bend here, grind down a high spot there, and tack weld and go.

A little more grinding and it was ready for final blasting, and then cleaning and epoxy...

We also pushed the truck back around to the other side of the garage once the sandblasting was finished. We'll push it outside when we're ready to start wet-sanding the clear, but for now it just needs to be inside.

It's easily a 10-footer right now...

And the last thing I did last night before going home was to epoxy both fenders and a couple other small parts. The first fender, the one Mike repaired, came out great, but it was rather warmer (still in the mid-50s outside) when I did it earlier in the evening. The other fender, though, looks like dog shit. I didn't even take a picture of it because it's so runny... I can only assume it was due to the 15-degree drop in temperature, because my gun settings never changed and I used the exact same technique. Sucks, because it's gotta get a huge amount of sanding now and the epoxy is hard stuff that's a pain to sand. But, it'll come out, too.
I don't know what the plan is tonight. The doors aren't ready to go yet, but Mike did repair the broken spot weld on the d/s door. They're as gutted as they need to be (all the glass, handles, trim, rubber, and lock cylinders are out) but they still have to be sanded with heavy paper to get the white paint scuffed enough for high-build primer.

We admitted defeat last night, by the way. It's not going to be done in time, no way, no how. There's still dozens of hours of body work to be done, and only 3 of the 10 boxes of parts I ordered from Rockauto have arrived... and the whole interior still has to be worked on. The steering column needs to be thoroughly cleaned and lubricated, the dash pad needs to be replaced, the door panels need lots of cleaning, the seat cover needs steamed and some stitches resewn, glass has to be cleaned and polished, the rear window frame has to be cleaned and repaired (talking about the aluminum frame around the glass here,) seatbelts have to be replaced, the seat frame needs painted, the wiring harness has to be rebuilt, the ignition system has to be built, and the list goes on and on and on. So, he's getting pictures and a key.

So the reveal was a little different than I had planned...

Since we weren't able to finish the truck (or even to have it ready to put on the trailer to show off in person) I fretted all day Friday about what to do, and then I talked to a couple women about which pics had the most artistic merit, so I could get them printed. And then Mike's wife mentioned that she's had photo books printed at Walgreens in about an hour, and that they looked pretty nice. I checked it out, and sure enough, an 8.5x11, 20-page, hard-bound book with my own photos, text, and layout was just $20, and could be ready in the morning. So after a couple hours of digging through pics in Lightroom and coming up with something to say in the book, I laid it out on their site and submitted it, at 0145 Saturday morning, to a store near the wedding venue in Tampa that had a 24-hour photo lab, and went to bed. I couldn't bring myself to look at it so I just stuck it on the back seat of the truck and went to the rehearsal, and then to the rehearsal lunch/dinner, and brought it inside with me. While we stood in the parking lot, Mike and Tim (the other two groomsmen) checked it out, and declared it "not bad." And we went inside and when I sensed a lull in the action, and I think Tim mentioned to me that it would be a good time, I laid it on the table in front of him. And as he flipped from page to page, speechless, it seemed like it was a pretty moving experience for him... and then he showed it to his little sister, who apparently loved the truck as well, and she burst into tears and threw her arms around me and Mike and told us how awesome it was, which then caused the groom to get a little verklempt. He showed the book off to a ton of people over the rest of the weekend, and even his dad (a fairly gruff, curmudgeonly fellow,) who we figured would think us absolute idiots for doing this, told us what a great job we did and how grateful he was that we were keeping it in the family. Needless to say, I was pretty pleased with the reaction.

And between last Thursday and last night, all 10 of the boxes I was expecting from Rockauto came, as well as the interior trim screws I ordered from eBay, so while we work on the fenders, doors, and hood (and while my bank account take a breather) I'm continuing to research the bedliner product I'm about 95% sure I want to get (Durabak) and when I get more "play" money next week, I'll order a gallon and a half or so so I can do the interior of the cab so we can finally start putting the dash back together.
Also still on the list:
Windshield
Calipers (cheaper from Autozone when you factor in core shipping)
Brake booster and master cylinder (ditto)
Door panels (might try to refurb the ones we have, but I need to make a full assessment first)
Door sill plates (probably from LMC)
Seatbelts (oversight? what oversight? I'm blaming the fumes for this one)
FORD and F150 logos/badges (also LMC)
Front bumper, probably (the '84 that donated its p/s fender has a good one)

Like there aren't enough nuts there already. 

And then tonight:

Durabak 18 came in today, so we brushed it on (we didn't have a 4" roller frame the right diameter to work with their special high-nap/build roller covers) most of the inside of the cab. The amount of noise reduction is tremendous from all the rubber suspended in it. Mike is eagerly awaiting the completion of the body so he can build the stereo system, because as he says, "I've never had so nice a canvas to work with." So that'll be fun.

And yes, I know it's thin on the roof. It's really just there to deaden the noise a little, it's going to be hidden under the headliner. And the runs that you can see in the firewall were sorted right after I took the pictures... not that they'd be seen, either.

We've got the steering installed, brake booster and master installed, clutch master and slave installed, and more of the clearcoat sanded. It's on hold right now as we work to get the NSF Plymouth Reliant K rebuilt for the CMP race coming up in 2 weeks...

"How does a Posi-Trac work in a Plymouth? It just does!" Did u finish that Plymouth and get back to work on Blue?

Well at least we're making some progress! If I can get away from the wife and baby for an hour or two I'll come do some sanding. I knew if anyone would get that "slip up" from the movie you would!

YEAY!!

What ever happened with the truck, Ron? I got to thinking about it and had to dig this up.

I ended up buying a 1970 F250 that is about this same color. I love it.

Wow. Reading the whole thread to realize it was abandoned over a year ago is tough.