Project Part 1 + pics & a question

[Jay]

--Project 1967 F250 C/S Ranger--

Well, with two days of elbow grease and extreme pressure washing, I've gone from this:

to this:

Pretty good change I would say!

Now I'm having a bit of a debate, that hopefully you'll have some opinion on. The carpet was moldy and nasty, so I took the seats/belts/everything out and ripped it off. Some rust had developed under the wet parts of course, so I scrapped all that off and got a coat of rust-oleum on there, so it looks like this now:

The debate is what to do now? The options I can think of are doing a finish coat of some strong black paint, or attempting to cut my own carpet, or save up and buy a '67 carpet out of a catelogue.

More pics here

[flyboy2610]

Carpets aren't as expensive as most people think. I jsut got a molded carpet for my '68 from LMC and it was $139. Shipping would run you $22.25.
If that's out of your budget for now I would paint it black ang get some heavy rubber floor mats.

[morganater]

Be VERY VERY thankful it didn't cause your floor to rust through!!!

[FORDification]

You should probably know that the thin coat of Rustoleum you have on there really isn't going to do anything. As long as that rust is there, it will continue to rust. To stop it you have to remove it...either by sanding down to bare metal, sandblasting, etc....or you could coat it with a couple good coats of POR-15 (a quart should be more than enough). That stuff chemically bonds with the rust to neutralize it, it actually does work well, and it will be permanent.

....or you could just rough it up really good with 180-grit sandpaper and coat it with some roll-on bedliner....then you can just hose it out after tracking the mud in!

Regardless of what plan you choose, you could save up your money in the meantime for the new carpeting.

[FORDification]

hmmm....now that actually doesn't look too bad. I think that might at least get you through for a while. Definitely looks better than what you started out with, huh?

You'll probably be OK as long as your cab doesn't leak too badly. Try having someone else go around the cab and along the fireall inside the engine bay and spray it with the hose while you sit inside and watch for leaks.

[Jay]

I'll do that pretty soon, thankfully it's been one of the dryest months in years over here, so it hasn't been too bad yet.