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

Good luck with being a stay at home. I cannot do it for more than two days.

Ill be praying for tunawife.

mazdeuce wrote: In reply to tuna55: It'll be fine. Hang out, build a garage, stay at home dad stuff.

Well, I only have a week, and $0 budget, but yeah, I expect to not have a ton of interruption on the Tunatruck. I did have to skip out again tonight, though, to get Tunawife a supply of nausea preventing ginger ale, which brings me home at ten or thereabouts.

Michael, thanks for the prayers. I am sure she'll be back on her feet quickly. I will have no issues with the kids. I tell all of my friends at work, being at home is infinitely better. I'd rather be home each and every day, but it's WAY harder. DRAMATICALLY harder. More than that, I'm also going to be homeschool Dad. Hard enough as it is, but I also have to learn how Tunawife is doing things, and continue it relatively seamlessly.

Sounds like fun!

No such thing as downtime in the life of Tuna. Time away from the truck is filled with family, very rare time away from family is filled with truck.

True!!

I only got a brief time in the garage tonight, between prepping for the big day tomorrow, walking with the tunakids, making an easy breakfast for the sitter to feed the kids tomorrow and such.

Here is what I have figured out, and it is not pretty. I took a look at the passenger side of the truck. The doorgaps are not good, although a bit easier to fix than the drivers side.

Too tight along the bottom

About right at the training edge

Huge at the training edge of the window frame

SUPER tight at the top

A pillar is all sorts of messed up

Now you're saying to yourself, "What's the deal, Tuna? Just get out there and work till the wee hours to get that bad boy figured out!"

Sure. But here is the space I was in to take those pictures.

Now, I could work on the fuel line, too, but that will also go along the passenger side of the truck, and into the engine compartment, another place where I have no room. For size reference, the camera phone as pressed pretty much against the wall to take those shots.

Tunawife is going to be a mess tomorrow night. I guess I'll be trying to rotate the truck around Tuesday night. Any locals want to come and lend a hand? It's uphill into the garage, and it can be a bad feeling to have when you realize that you cant push it over the edge of the garage floor by yourself, and it's eleven.

Anyone?

Oh, and here was what I came up with for breakfast

you have ugly hands bro.

Need some help this weekend to turn her around? or is she not able to roll?

I can come this weekend as well. Sat mid afternoon shindig at tunas house?

Not local enough to help with the shuffle. Sorry.

As for the fix, I think if you sectioned ~1/4" out of the rear of the window frame and then pull it down to re-join, you fix several birds with one stone. The top gap will open up, the wonky tapered A-pillar gap will get parallel, the rear gap will close a little (probably not enough), and you can then lift the door a little at the hinge to make the top and bottom gap both match at ~3/16". I'm sure it won't fix everything, but I bet it fixes a lot.

Dave thanks for the Gap advice!!

To the rest, I really want to get this done tomorrow. I have a bud helping. Plus, tunawife will still be recovering on Saturday so the tunakids will make that day a no go. If you all want to come take a look casually you're more than welcome to do so though! I really do appreciate the offers!

It's facing the other way again!

My pushing buddy was pretty impressed with the rear suspension.

Now to make the door frame happy, and then the fuel line. It's MUCH easier to get to with the passenger side facing out this way.

Here is the finished product (of the rotation, not the restoration!)

And here is what I am doing today

And this

(He's trying to wake her up, and she's pretending to be sleeping)

And I can do this despite being up for three hours with Tunakid #2 last night and a recovering-from-surgery Tunawife because of:

(I do not like coffee AT ALL, and this is super strong loose leaf tea since I hot-rodded my tea pot)

I'm not entirely sure you can SAHD without massive amounts of caffeine. You need to chemically bring yourself up to there level in order to compete.

mazdeuce wrote: I'm not entirely sure you can SAHD without massive amounts of caffeine. You need to chemically bring yourself up to there level in order to compete.

If not for the three hour gap of sleep last night, and the fact that it meant non of the other tunakids slept much, in addition to trying to keep up with homeschool... I would go without. I am tired today!

What a mess this side is I had to smash and cut my way through most of the drip rail shaving. Why?

So I skipped some explanation.

The body line is about 1/8" off. The door needs to be angled upwards more. Can't do that without pulling the fender and hood hinge off.

And adjusting the striker plate

And still it wouldn't go.

It turns out the shaved rail in this side got messy so most of it has to go and be redone.

Nearly aligned right now, and then I can re weld the drip rail, alight the door, cut the b pillar, reattach the fender, hood, radiator support, you know. Easy.

Ugh.

I M going back out in the garage now for a bit. Adios.

Buenas surete

on your lip into the garage, I hit the same issue some years ago. I didn't have room in the driveway for a push vehicle to shove the car into the garage, so I drilled a 1/2" hole 2" deep into the concrete and slid a 4" x 1/2" bolt into it. You can use that as the anchor for a come-along with a fender washer above the eyelet to keep it from sliding off. Not pretty, but it worked. If I had to do it again, I think I would concrete anchor a D-ring to the floor right at the wall.

What a week. Between being up all night with tunakid #2, the surgery, being up all night with tunaife (not that way), late night trip to the MD360 clinic with tunakid #1, and a return of the XJ from hell, I literally haven't even had time to update my thread with the reasons for not updating it.

No matter, though. I braved the 30 degree weather and fixed most of the passenger side. It's still a mess, but less so than before.

I have to smooth it out and then attack the B pillar side.

After solving a "whuppa whuppa whuppa" on the minivan (heat shield), I did this, and although it doesn't look like much, a few feet of MIG wire (for pulling, not welding), many homebrew slide hammers, many hammer/punch combos, many leverage combinations resulted in this mess:

I hope I can close up that gap. It makes the other side look like a paper cut.

this E36 M3 makes drywall look easy...

Tape and mud man...

Mad_Ratel wrote: this E36 M3 makes drywall look easy... Tape and mud man...

Truth.

Tell me more about hot-rod tea pot. I get tired of coffee.

You mean you can't tape and mud that?

almost wonder if getting a piece of plate that's say 1/16th thinner than the gap and welding it in wouldnt be easier than building weld for the entire 2' long gap. Just worried that the large amount of welding spots instead of metal will fatigue about 2 miles after painting it. (I really hope this is not the case.)

I rebuilt a rusty a-pillar on the elky with welding wire. Its more solid than the other side by the smack it with a hammer test.

I wouldn't worry about either option.

Looking great tuna. Hows tunawife doing after surgery?