Cool McCool's Garage

Whew.  The bodywork is DONE, and the damaged front fender, grill shell, and passenger door are ready for paint.  I spent all day blocking, wet sanding, blocking, and wet sanding some more, I think the parts are perfect.  Again.

The truck is back in the shop with the front fender off, the entire truck is (almost) all masked off, there’s about an hours worth of masking to finish before I can paint.  I’ll have to get a quart of color, there’s lots of clear-coat, so I think I can get it all in color again tomorrow, if the weather cooperates.  If not, it’ll wait until it’s warm enough.

The passenger door will get painted from the green belt line down.  This is an easy way to mask, I won’t have to try to blend the paint, and the little dip in the character line will be a good place to hide the tape break in the clear coat.  It’ll be fine.  This door had some sanding scratches anyway, and I had thought I’d repaint it later this summer anyway.  No time like the present.

Likewise, the back of the cab had a flaw at the lower left corner of the window opening, this was where I’d welded the tab in the cab to hold the back of the seat.  It made  little dimple that looked bad.  Add to that a deep scratch, through the clear down to the primer when I installed the rear glass, and that panel looked bad.  Again, the green belt line is a good place to stop painting.  On the sides, where I stopped sanding, are the joints where the cab sections are joined, these make a natural place to break the paint as well, so again, no blending.

Both of the fender trims for the bumper brackets were damaged when the brackets folded over, these got fixed, and I welded new studs on the right hand one as two of them had broken off when I took the panel off.

I bought a new 02 sensor for the left side, as that side was running rich, and the engine had a weird “stumble”.  That was easy to install,  it runs noticeably better now.  While the right fender was off, it was easy to put a new thermostat in and refill the cooling system as well, a difficult job with the fender on.  I also put the heat shield on one of the new spark plug wires that I’d missed.  Those are almost impossible to access with the fender on, so it was a good time to do that too.

So, a weeks worth of work, and I’m almost back where I started.  I haven’t heard yet from Hagerty, but I’m forging ahead.  Tomorrow I’ll order the new bumper, and get that on the way.  Hopefully be able to put some miles on it in the next couple weeks to make sure all is well, then it’s ROAD TRIP!