| Body & Paint |
| This truck had a few rust issues that had to be delt with. I took the "mitigation" approach rather than go to the expense of a proper body and paint job. That will have to wait until another day. The cab rain gutter had some serious rust under the seam seal and both doors were rusted through in both lower corners, inside and out. Here's what I did.... |
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| A "before" door |
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| Doors after repair |
| After getting estimates from $500 to $1600 to just do the steel repair, I took the doors to the low bidder (a mistake) to get the rust repaired and fill the old mirror mounting holes. I bought complete inner lower replacement steel pieces instead of having the corners patched. I instructed the body man (an old aquaintence) to just make the steel repairs and I would do the rest. I think the body guy was really trying to save me a buck because he knew I was on a tight budget. So he did quick wham bang job of it. He actually did a pretty good job but he didn't pay much attention to maintaining the proper shape of the doors. I can't fault him completely because he didn't have the cab there to work to. In hindsight I would have been a little less cheap and gave him the whole truck to work with. Unfortunately I didn't realize the problem until after they were painted and I was trying to install them. Doh! (Note to self: always check body repair fit before painting) Also, part of this excersize was replacing all of the window seals and tracks.And repairing a broken vent window frame. |
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| After repair inside |
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| Corner repair |
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| Painting inside color |
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| Painting outside color edges |
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| Painting outside color |
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| Drivers door fit |
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| Passenger door fit |
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| vent window frame repair, look close to see the repair weld on the lower one. |
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| A "done" door |
| I got the door seal kit from Chevy Duty for a resonable price. I did have a problem with wrong parts because their catalog doesn't have a different "complete" kit for framed or unframed window glass. They fixed the problem but it took forever. It seems like they ship once a week and deal with returns once a month. Most of the parts worked well. Exceptions being the vent window seals, very poor fit. The rivets they supply are a joke but necessary in some places. I used pop rivets where I could. If I did it again, I would by a new division bar instead of relining the old one. For the most part it turned out well, no more rattles or high speed whistling. |
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| Rain gutter rust |
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| The old seam seal came out really easy, because it was only stuck to rust. I was suprised not to find any holes rusted through, just deep pitting. I wire brushed and sanded as much as I could get to, then I used some brush on rust converter called Rust Mort and let it get into all of the crevices. After that I applied some Duramix self leveling seam sealer. That stuff was tricky because it sets up real fast. It flows into the groove and spreads out nice and smooth then sets up into a paintable urethane. Worked great!. I then painted the entire roof and down around the windshield. With that fixed and the new windshield gasket installed by a glass shop, I should not have anymore water dripping on my shoes in the cab when it rains. I had the glass shop install a new back glass and gasket too. It was scratched from scraping off overspray and the gasket was pretty dry. |
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