Slick 60's

Last fall I picked up a 64 short bed and a 64 long bed. After a lot of back-and-forth thinking finally decided what to do in terms of restoration and got started.

Here's the short bed before


Here's the long bed before


The front clip from the short bed was not from a 64 while the cab from the long bed is in better shape. Decision made to restore short bed but use front clip and cap from long bed.

Front clip pulled and sold


rest of short bed disassembled



IMG]http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee3 ... on/4-1.jpg[/IMG]

Short bed frame after power washing, soda blasting and POR15







Shortbed










Steel rims pulled, sanded and powder coated with a set of new Cooper white wall tires



Am pulling the front clip off the long bed in order to get ready for paint. Am fast tracking the project, looking to have ready by middle of August.

Frame looks great

Made some progress on the truck. More work on the bed restoration, swapped out new shoes and drums on the rear brakes, shocks, pulled motor. Determined the axle with the short bed frame was bent and pulled the axle out of the long bed parts truck and swapped over into the short bed frame. Here are some pictures of the work on the bed. Will update with more pictures later.

Here's a couple after the bedliner.

Looking good man.

Is that diamond plate heavy?


Keep up the good work.




J

Looking good! +2 more info on the diamond plate please!

Have Fun!
Marty

Nice work! I was planning on diamond plate in my bed as well...what gauge did you use?

The diamond plate was 3/16 and yes it was heavy.

The truck is going to be painted in my kids high school colors and they'll take it to the high school football games (well home games anyway). I went with the diamond plate and Rust-Oleum bedliner to reduce skidding/slippage.

More pictures on the rebuild.

Upgraded rear brakes with new drums and shoes:









Pulled cab an dropped onto a quickly made dolly. Thinking the dolly is going to need some reinforcing, I'll deal with than later. Atleast for now I can roll the cab out of the way.



Determined the front axle with the short bed frame was either damaged or someone thought a "V" shaped axle would be better:



Fortunately having the second truck allowed for a replacement:



Kind of like this picture, I call it "Dualing Axles":



Pulled the 223 out of the long bed, gave it a quick cleaning and dropped into the short bed frame. It's blue and I'll lilkely paint the block black and valve cover red later. Old drive shaft slid right in.



More to come.

looking good man.

The 60s Water Boy!!!

I did the same floor, but I had the metal company make it all in one piece and notched out for the wheel wells. It was a pain to get in, and it took two of us to install it. but it will outlive me. Yours came out nice. I'm glad someone else did the same thing. I was kind of ashamed that I did it, cause it seemed like the easy way out. You can buy an entire bed floor for a chebby, but only patch panels for the Ford and I sure as heck wasn't gonna try and line up a bunch of offshore patch panels with my original bed floor. Besides, if your was like mine, it had dips between the bed supports. I went with 1/8" instead of 3/16" though. Still quite heavy.

sully5 wrote:I did the same floor, but I had the metal company make it all in one piece and notched out for the wheel wells. It was a pain to get in, and it took two of us to install it. but it will outlive me. Yours came out nice. I'm glad someone else did the same thing. I was kind of ashamed that I did it, cause it seemed like the easy way out. You can buy an entire bed floor for a chebby, but only patch panels for the Ford and I sure as heck wasn't gonna try and line up a bunch of offshore patch panels with my original bed floor. Besides, if your was like mine, it had dips between the bed supports. I went with 1/8" instead of 3/16" though. Still quite heavy.

I definately went this route to save time and so as to avoid having to using multiple pieces. Enjoyed your build thread and used your idea of filling the rear extensions so as to have smooth bed. Here's the last update I have of that work

A little teaser on the color of the truck.

Here's the hood - holes repaired, no emblems. The color is custom (I say tongue-in-cheek), more to come on the painting project later.

like the red.

Great progress. Love the store front shop.
Tell us more about the custom color

If I'm not being too nosey, how much did the diamond plate cost you? I'm looking at adding diamond plate to my wooden floored car hauler.

unibody madness wrote:Great progress. Love the store front shop.
Tell us more about the custom color

The "custom color" I meant jokingly. Was going to hold off and do a thread on the paint as I decided to try the Rust-Oleum roller project. There are numerous articles on the web as to painting a car with Rust-Oleum for $50.

Have been using the hood as the guinea pig and am at the final steps of 1000 sanding, clear and buffing. Unforturnately last week was too dang hot to mess with it.

My bed is almost ready for paint so will try this technique on it as well. Will likely setup another thread on the paint portion of this project.

Back to the custom color - wanted to paint the truck orange as the kids are using for school. Found Rust-Oleum in spray can for Orange but was told by both Home Depot and Lowes I had to order by quart in whatever quatities they ship. Not comfortable this project would work, I did not want to order 4 or 8 cans. So I merely bought a can of red & yellow and proceeded to mix together.

So far so good, it is a lot of work but seems doable. I am tracking all the steps and keeping receipts.

If anyone out there is interested in this project as a seperate thread, let me know. If enough interest, I'll post with steps, costs and my thoughts on the process.

Gritsngumbo wrote:If I'm not being too nosey, how much did the diamond plate cost you? I'm looking at adding diamond plate to my wooden floored car hauler.

No problem - around $190 for a 4x8 3/16 inch sheet

We have a local hardware store that sells ValSpar paint. They can color match. I took one of the the inside door panels off and they matched the light blue that my truck was originally painted. I did my bed with the roll on method a couple of years ago and it has been sitting behind the garage since. Washed a spot on it the other day and it shined right backup!

Marty

Hood looks really nice, how many coats of the Rustoleum did you use? BTW I was looking at you rear brakes and noticed the shoes are on backwards, the short ones go in front (primary) and longer ones trail (secondary). Just an FYI
Russ