1969 highboy boxwood green

[hfdco4]

Just an awesome truck. Love the six cylinder too!

[zmonster72]

Very nice truck and awesome restore. This is what I am doing to my truck, just fix whats broke and make it look good. No show truck here.Great job!

[Bullitt74]

Fantastic job! A1!

[Lone Ranger]

Thanks guys! Today was a bit chilly so I was just puttering around. Pulled the headliner out and lightly sanded all the paint off it. Also used a small brass brush and it got all the paint out of the dimples. I was kinda careful not to sand to hard and make all the fibers stick straight out of the board. Then shot it with an almond color rattle can. It's the same color as the door panels and rims as you can see here.

The headliner trim is fairly rusty so I need to clean and polish that back up. Then I need to pull the seat and the floor so I can weld in new floor pans and bottom door pillars( kinda nervous about that) Also seen a little puddle under my transfer case. Anybody know of a good seal kit for a Dana 24?

[Ranchero50]

Looks really good. On my trim I gave it a brushed appearance with a sanding drum and satin clear paint. been a couple years and it still looks great.

http://fordification.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15#p676166

[Lone Ranger]

Hey that trim looks sweet! I'm gonna try to polish the rust off but if it proves to difficult I'm going to do what you did. Thanks for the idea!

[Lone Ranger]

Today I pulled the seat and floor mat to get a look at the floor pans. Somebody before me had screwed in floor pans for a 73-79 truck; pans are from Taiwan; that's all I know about them. They were in almost new condition so I'll be putting them back in.

My heart sank a little bit when I got a look at the floor. The door pillar is bad too.


I started cutting and cleaning not really sure how far to go with rust removal. 100% fixed would be to cut out the whole floor pan, lower door pillar, cab mount and piece above cab mount...on both sides. Not sure how hard all that would be with not taking the cab right off the frame. Another issue is that I don't have a welder, hoping I can borrow one. Has anyone done all these things to a cab while it's still on the frame?

[Ranchero50]

You can flash an acetylene torch across the metal and the weakened rusty sections will flash away. It works remarkably well and will give you a clean edge to weld to. I welded mine inside and out with a slight overlap. You're not supposed to but I didn't feel like fighting the fit to get butt welds all the way around.

[Lone Ranger]

You can flash an acetylene torch across the metal and the weakened rusty sections will flash away. It works remarkably well and will give you a clean edge to weld to. I welded mine inside and out with a slight overlap. You're not supposed to but I didn't feel like fighting the fit to get butt welds all the way around.

The rust slag will just pop off?!! Can I just use a map gas torch? That would make it so easy. Thinking I'll weld up the holes then put some roofing tar or mat down and then put the new floor pans in for extra stability and sound deadening like you did on your truck with the tar.

[Jacksdad]

The rustiest metal will "melt" away if you heat the metal sufficiently. What you're doing is simulating the welding process to find out which metal is strong enough to weld to. It can turn a rusty panel that seems solid into something that looks like a piece of lace - that's the kind of metal that will cause you all kinds of problems later, so it's better to find it now and cut it out. You don't need the panel glowing red hot and sparking, but you need something that will stress the thin rotten metal sufficiently like an oxyacetylene torch. Running an angle grinder over it and putting a light behind the panel will give you some idea of the condition too.
However you decide what metal is good and what isn't, the goal is to prevent edges that are so thin that they recede or burn through when you finally start to weld in your new panel. That leaves you with no choice but to start adding lots of little repair patches, and that gets messy and time consuming. Better to have a few larger pieces welded to sound metal from the beginning. Hope that makes sense - it's something that's easier to understand when you see crappy metal burning through instead of taking a weld.
Purists often like to butt weld panels together, but an overlap as Ranchero described makes for a very strong bond - lap joints are always better than butt joints when you're repairing something structural. They're not as pretty, but perfectly acceptable in a floorpan. Welding above and below reinforces it even more if you have access. Hammer the gaps nice and tight, seal it with whatever undercoat/sealer takes your fancy, and you're good to go.
The key is to cut back until you're sure you've eradicated any rust that would compromise the welded joint, and subsequently the repair. Cutting it all out now means you don't have to go back in a few years down the road and added additional patches. Obviously you're limited with the cab still on the truck, but this is where you want to be as aggressive as possible so you get all the rot first time. Cardboard templates cut and taped into the shape you need are easy to make if you have additional rust damage, and can be tossed and remade at no expense before you commit to metal. Cereal boxes and the like are great for template material - I don't personally like corrugated cardboard because it's too thick and only likes to bend one way.
Hope this helps

[Ranchero50]

Yeah, I guess I should do a video of the process. It's really neat because the rust just seems to melt or vanish away and the good metal will stand the heat for a couple seconds before it'll color and melt through.

[Lone Ranger]

Thank you Jacksdad and Ranchero! All of that makes sense. I'll probably put the heat to all the metal I dare then wire wheel everything to clean it up good. Then I'll lap joint all the metal in. I'm kind of nervous of the door pillar, don't know if you could see from the pictures. I'm hoping I can patch a few pieces in instead of cutting the whole corner out. I guess the torch will be the judge of what stays and what goes. Thanks guys!

[Jacksdad]

No problem

[Lone Ranger]

I've got my floors all hacked up now and still no welder. I might have to just pick up a cheap harbor freight one quick and upgrade later. Decided I would try cleaning up the headliner trim. Used some never dull a soft wire brush and some elbow grease and it cleaned up pretty well.

[Lone Ranger]

Nothing picture worthy lately. Everytime I mess with the truck it's dead. I'll jump it and let it run for a while but if I pull the lights on it dies soon after and I need to jump it again. Messed with this awhile but I'm hoping it's just the battery never getting a good charge. Tried hooking up a CD player in today but nothing would work well, even tried a different CD player. Found out the speakers are just junk so that'll be an easy fix.