Build thread for the 72 GMC, finally. Thanks John!

Random orbital for wetsanding (but id do by hand)

Da for paint removal and rough in

And id go electric, as thats what i use due to compressor capacity 

Bought that snap-on DA from ebay. Let's see!

I'm now in the market for an electric DA sander. 

My 5hp 2-stage Ingersol Rand compressor can keep up with my pressure-pot sandblaster, but not, apparently, my air drill.

It does struggle with constant use of the air sanders.

But I get better than a minute!

SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:

My 5hp 2-stage Ingersol Rand compressor can keep up with my pressure-pot sandblaster, but not, apparently, my air drill.

It does struggle with constant use of the air sanders.

But I get better than a minute!

The Bosch dual mode sander is on the way, because my electric service doesn't run out as quickly as my air does. Want to buy the Snap-on?

Apologies for the terrible camerawork here. The cameraman is a fool, and was trying to handle the big sander and the dust hose while filming. I hope you could see the hood moving, which I purposefully aggravated at the end.

I bought some new pads for the hood, but they are not in yet. This hood, unlike many I have worked with, has the hood supports separated from the hood by a good bit, as much as an inch. A big foamy pad is stuck under there. It's old, and I have new ones to use. The deal is that the hood and supports really should be painted before you put the pads in, and since it's basically just smooshed into place, I don't know how many times I can get it in there before it's not useful. As such, the hood is super weak. Then again, there isn't a hood support through the center anyway, so perhaps it's just going to move and I need to accept that. I am concerned that I won't be able to get this as flat as it needs without help.

Why not cut a piece of 1x3 furring strip up to wedge in and acrmt as a support while working it?

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Why not cut a piece of 1x3 furring strip up to wedge in and acrmt as a support while working it?

Yeah something like that, as well as maybe a dropcloth shoved on top of the air cleaner.

The sander is great though. It will handily replace my dead (actually twice dead) wood orbital sander as well. It's dual mode, so it can be DA or orbital.

I am ready to buy primer, but I am not going to do that until at least June. Finances have dictated that I hang tight for a bit.

The last time I said something like that, about eight years ago, you guys pitched in to buy me leaf springs. Do not do that now. If you have any inkling of doing that, send it to Bill for Ukrainian refugees instead. We had a nice staycation, enjoyed a few good meals, paid the school cost for a few kids, and paid incredible high amounts of taxes. I'll sand for a bit. No big deal.

I've spent over $2500CDN in epoxy primer alone.  It gets expensive, but absolutely everything has been coated.

The inside and outside of the doors, fenders, and hood need to be primed and painted. Which is better, to remove all of them, do epoxy primer in and out and then reassemble to do final filler and sanding work and then disassemble again for 2K primer and paint and then reassemble, or does it make more sense to spray them with epoxy primer in situ and then remove them for the inside primer? I'm basically thinking that it's easier to use the truck as a fixture than to create one for all of those.

Use the truck as a fixture.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Use the truck as a fixture.

Now, is there a clever trick to separating the bed from the cab as to allow painting between them? I think I'm going to have to put the bed in my cart. It's heavy. 

That is a good question. 

I always did the bed separate for final paint. 

And with the using the truck as a fixture method, theres going to be some thicker edges to feather in here and there where panels meet. Just fyi. Not a big deal, but something to know of.

Another question. The rear wheel wells stay attached to the bed. They get primer, but what top coating? Likewise the front inner fenders get primer, but they get removed. I think body color on top, what on the bottom?

If it is exposed to road debris, I use black rockerguard. 

I did 2K Raptor bedliner on the undersides and backsides of all my fenders. And cab.

tuna55 said:

So the last few nights have included many night terrors from Tunakid #2 I spent most of one night on the floor downstairs with him, maybe getting 2-3 hours of spotty sleep each night and being granted a Tunakid #2 who wakes up in the morning SUPER cranky, but having no idea of what the night saw. Last night was the first night of sleep.

Anyway, I got back out there tonight and took all of the crap off of the cab floor. I wore coveralls for the first time on this job. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle it, so I didn't wear pants. I hope you all enjoy that imagery. In addition to that, here is a picture of me naked. Yes, for real.

That's some of the crap that you can see that's stuck to my giant Dumboesque ears. The rest is inside. I even had crap stuck in my hair. If you've ever seen my "hair", you'd understand why that's amazing.

I pulled out from under the truck (with no pants on) a few times, thinking "Nah, I'll finish this tomorrow". I'd do something fiddly, like change the radio station, sweep, pull the fuel lines out of the cab, admire my figure in the full length mirror (not really), but eventually, I'd go back under there, so that you, my adoring fans, could read about how I was triumphant, despite (or indeed due to) not having any pants on.

So tomorrow I will either slap some Chassis Saver on there or work OT to pay for more welding gas. Not sure yet.

I have been sanding the truck with a DA for the past few days and nights. I removed the rear window intact, and I am planning a "pick up the bed and put it on the rolling workbench" party. It's all very boring and not picturesque. I wanted to find Pete's paint recipe, so I just started at page 1. I got this far. I have laughed, cried, and I figured you all would appreciate this particular memory from page 28.

tuna55 said:

Tonight I got my tabs. If you recall, the bracket for the leaf springs is moving upwards, and thus moving the upper holes beyond the frame rail. I plan to weld these tabs to the frame to move the bolt pattern and then drill the two lower holes to match.

First, I enlarged the holes to 1/2" to match the bigger tab holes, and also for a happy increase in strength over the original rivets. More on them later.

Here the brackets are, all mocked up and ready to go.

No problem here. When I put the bracket up on the frame it became evident that the little bracket which mounts the bed to the frame in that same area conflicted with the new tab. Now, I could just hack it together, but I want it to be 'right'. I decided, rather unfortunately, to remove that bracket.

A few 4x4s propped up the bed floor, and I drilled out the rivets and ground off the heads and whacked as hard as I could, and... ... ... Nothing. There just wasn't enough clearance to get a good whack. The bed floor had to go. I knew it would be a pain, but the underside of the bed floor had to be cleaned and painted anyway, and that is the right way to do it. Plus, I convinced myself, I was going to have an easier time of mounting the tank this way.

All of the bolts were already removed. I just fished out the wiring harness and slid it off the back of the truck towards the front of the Leaf.

No problem. I stood up the bed floor and its weight amazed me. I have no idea how GM managed to make something simultaneously so heavy and so weak. I am not an expert, but I estimate its weight at roughly 64,800 lb. It had the strength of a giant el dente lasagna noodle. It wavered and wobbled, stretching out quite a bit beyond my head. I wasn't quite sure what to do. I couldn't just lift it, it was too heavy. I couldn't slide it, it had too much stuff digging into the concrete. So I stood there.

A gust of wind must have been present, because for a while there my feet were essentially off the ground as the bed floor wiggled and bobbled it's way over to the hood of the Leaf. I sort of leaned, as much as you can while your feet are off the ground, and closed my eyes. When my feet returned to earth, I leaned it over a bit more in the reverse direction and said a little 'thanks!' prayer. Roughly 35 hours had elapsed since the bed floor had cleared. I had just been standing in the driveway. I can't lean it on anything, I can't move it, I can't walk away. I had to pee, and my feet were frozen to the ground. My tears had frozen on my cheeks hours ago.

Rotating it on its side was about the only thing I could do, so I did that. While I was rotating the 32 ton hunk of noodle-esque corrugated steel, literally (I am not making this up) a gallon of dust, grit, mud, and who knows what else fell onto the driveway. Happily, this reduced the friction beneath the gargantuan piece.

I looked down at my toes. Mostly because I couldn't feel them, and wanted to make sure they was still there (recall that it was about -143 Fahrenheit that night). They were indeed dutifully sitting there at the bottom of my ankles, attached to my feet, where they belonged. Wearing black boots from a previous job. Black steel toed boots.

In the immortal words of Asneese:

Feat of strength?

Au contraire!

....

What we have is a great strength of feet!

Propped up on the steel toe (rated, of course, for 32 ton service), the bed floor, aided by the 42 years of friction-reduction material, slid along rather well. I eventually slid it into place next to the truck.

Despite being 11:30, I had to complete this stage of the task. It's also extremely useful to beat the living E36 M3 out of something after going through an issue like that. The rivets eventually gave way. I examined them and they were engraved: "Experimental, unobtanium and cantgetium alloy, not for production", which explains why they hung in there so amazingly. Tonight, if I can get over my shame, I'll get the brackets bolted in to the frame and the tabs welded on.

Just another gem for the earger readers

Dusterbd13-michael said:

That is a good question. 

I always did the bed separate for final paint. 

 

And with the using the truck as a fixture method, theres going to be some thicker edges to feather in here and there where panels meet. Just fyi. Not a big deal, but something to know of.

This makes sense. It should always be in places that doesn't matter too much. I expect that it's best to use SS paint under hood, inner fenders, inner doors and interior of cab,a nd usae BC/CC for the entire outer. Is it going to be hard to match color between the two chemistries?

I think I epoxy everything, then filler and any bodywork I haven't figured out. Then epoxy again any bare spots, some 2K primer, then disassemble the truck. 2K primer the inner part of the fenders, the inner part of the doors, and the cab. SS paint those I just mentioned, then reassemble the truck and BC/CC the truck as a whole.

One more. The white of the cab will be white. The inner part of the cab will be body color, right?

In reply to tuna55 :

I think this is a workable plan. 

The cab roof and doors are all stripped. The bed is loose and ready to pull.

Not much to put into pictures, but we're moving forward.

Bed lifting party scheduled for Friday evening. 

I prepared the workbench today and cleaned up the garage a bit. Just to make sure I could if needed, I just put the battery in temporarily and fired it up. It's a great feeling to be able to do that just on a whim.