Slick 60's

Planning to take the oem bumper and grill to royal plating in Tucson. They can repair the old stuff, a lost art it seems. Should have it back in a month or so.

Rust repair today. Cut out the old, weld in some patch panels, and fill

Cab is finally block sanded. Ready for round 2 of filler primer and prep for color.

The doors have had quite a life of mirrors. At some point there were at least 5 different types of mirrors, all with their own mounting holes.

A bit of rust at the door lower edges. Cut it out, welded in patch panels, and filled. Seems like it'll be great. Also removed some decades old body filler from one door. Probably a good time to start over with it.

Two thumbs up for Royal plating in Tucson

WOW, does that ever look good!

second round of primer on the cab and bed. I'll sand with 400 grit this time in preparation for final paint. doors are ready for primer.

other door. hood in the background should be the last piece needing body work. finally...!!

little work over Christmas. block sanded the cab and bed for round 2; they're ready for color now. Amazing how well all the repairs and body work came out. The roof was such a terrible mess, really happy with it now. Also epoxy primed all the small stuff (hinges, covers, light buckets, door panels, brackets) and the bottom of the hood.

Took the fam for a quick drive around the neighborhood. My 1 and 4 year olds like it, but my wife isn't so sure about a car with no windshield.

Next task is to prime the doors, fenders, and hood for block sanding. I ordered door hinge pins so I'll document tackling that. We pushed one out to try and it was really easy.

I decided I'm going to have headrests. They don't look as good as none, that is for sure. But, I want to drive this. I'll take the hit to looks for a bit more safety. I had no idea how much of a safety improvement headrests were. Makes sense I guess you wouldn't want your bucket hitting the rear window. I've been rear ended several times, nearly sure it'll happen again. Anyway, I ordered some 2012 Subaru Legacy headrests and the plastic deals that they slide into. I plan to weld some tubes to the back of the seat, and then have them recovered to match my current, non-existant seat cover.

Ready to order seatbelts, planning to use seatbeltplanet.com. Any reviews? They seem to have all the choices I need, 3 point for the sides with retractors and a fixed two point in the center. I measured that I want 140" on the sides and 72" in the center. all three will have 20" fixed ends on the latch side.

Also had to take a day off to go get a new (old) truck! always need another vehicle around, this time it's a 2002 Tacoma that blows out white smoke like a factory.

test drive. Good fun.

primed doors, hood, and tailgate today.

More interesting, made a hardwired remote for my radio. I plan to hide the radio ,a Pioneer MVH-X370BT, inside the glove box. From what I could gather online, it gets the best reviews of any bluetooth head unit. half the size of a normal radio since it doesn't have a CD player, half the cost too! I considered running just an amp and using a phone or iPod as the only radio, but volume control is nice to have. Sooo, the radio came with a plug for a hardwired remote. Got me thinking...a hardwired remote would sure be nice to avoid leaning over and opening the glove box to mess with it. The IR remote it came with is just silly, that would never work. I just made the four controls I think I'd most use: volume up, volume down, track fwd, track back, and source. I will hide the hardwired remote under the seat and shouldn't need to access the radio in the glove box much at all. As for the radio review, when it powers up, it auto pairs to my phone and starts playing via bluetooth automatically. Having the head unit tell my my phone to press play, for whatever reason, is something it seems most radios don't do. I like that feature a lot in my Ford F-150.

To build it was easy, just a series of momentary switches with various resistors to show the correct impedance to the head unit for the remote signals. About 2 hours and $30.

better grill photos. the others were out of focus and i uploaded them way too big straight from my phone. from what I can gather, base trucks had a steel grill and custom cabs had an upgraded aluminum polished grill. True? was there even a chromed grill originally?

is the background behind the ford letters supposed to be black? painted maybe to highlight it?

Dude....that-is-pretty!!

And I think you're right about the black paint. I'm pretty sure there was some around the headlight buckets also. But I'm also pretty sure there was a chrome steel one also.

That grill is gorgeous. How'd the bumper turn out?

The bumper is nice. They straightened it back to like new. I already put it up in the rafters to avoid damage and forgot to take a photo

More sanding today. In the door photo you can see the benefit of high fill primer and block sanding. The blue circles are low spots i couldn't sand out. I filled them and it'll be primed again.

Tailgate is ready for paint. The hood has two more dents we found that need to be filled first....oops.

Getting there....slowly

Looks great. I really like the bumper and grill. I'm running the same wheel combo with my cv front end swap.

paint day, finally!

Looking great! Can you give us an estimate of the cost for re-chroming bumper and grille?
Thanks,
Paul

Toyz wrote:Looking great! Can you give us an estimate of the cost for re-chroming bumper and grille?
Thanks,
Paul

$850 total for the grill, bumper, and light surrounds. I think the light buckets were $100, grill was $450, and the bumper was $300. the bumper was fairly bent and the grill had some dents so those prices included repairs.

Crazy, I have as much into chrome as I have into the entire suspension, drivetrain, brakes, and steering combined.

working on gauges. using the stock 61 fuel gauge with the 08 sender is a little tough. here's the schematic of what's required to make them compatible.

also ordered the Dakota Digital ECD100-1 to run the mech speedo from the CV's VSS. cost more than a new gauge, but I really like the OEM gauge look.

http://www.dakotadigital.com/pdf/ecd-100.pdf