So its been a while. Ive been taking the truck apart and starting to try and get some parts repaired and cleaned while I can.
These updates may not be in any great order as all the pictures are a bit shuffled.
Firstly the bumper and valance got removed, along with the indicators.
In the process of this my socket set got filled with dirt
Wow that makes it look like I don't do much in a month...
As I looked in the valance to find it full of about 2-3 inches of dirt. Australian outback or just buried?
Here she is, still with the valance, blinded
Old school hakosuka race car look? Maybe? No? Ok then...
Also invested in some Autosol and got going with the elbow grease. Actually made a rather big difference to the headlight retainers, shame you wont see them.
Then the backing plates for the indicators.
Here they are after a little bath in rust remover
Quickly sanded and painted back up again, got some over spray of silver paint so they look rather metallic now. Again wont see them though.
Then the indicators themselves, no before pictures, but I can promise you they were a total mess, just brown and crusty all over!
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Then came this years hottest new modification... see through bonnet and wings!
Okay so its some plastic sheet and duct tape... might catch on though, kids do anything these days.
So now lets talk about paint and the general body work. Its pretty shoddy, the whole truck is covered in filler, up to 5-8mm in places and sometimes covering up holes, which I really hate.
Take this shot
The off whit is filler, the purple is filler and the grey is primer. Those two coats of filler are all over it.
A big issue with it, is that the filler has hundreds of little holes in it, like a honey comb almost, so the metal underneath becomes covered in little dots of rust everywhere. Which you can vaguely see here on the door
The roof also had this texture, I was worried the metal was just very rough, but nope lots of (very sun tanned) filler there too
And quite an uneven roof under it, the area of bare metal has a big dimple in it.
Heres the bonnet trying to hide its filler secrets
But the worst part of it all? This horrible lump
So the wing had a 50p sized hole in the top... and that fell out the front! so now the front and top have big old holes in them.
Hello hole!
So the Icarus plan, I went to the body shop and they said they're happy to reshape the chrome (every grille piece is dented) and can repair the wings, Ive just got to get the to bare metal. Which they now are! Just need sanding, I did think I had pictures of this but cant find any... Oh well picture a DeLorean, as a pickup, now take off the wings, hey presto thats what Ive got!
Oh and another great aussie farmer repair, the struts under the bonnet arnt
really attached, it looked like the welds along it had broken loose
Nope those blobs are all foam... I really think someone tried to glue the bonnet back together with expanding foam.
Also the front edge of the bonnet appears to be a water trap and has started to rot
So heres what I want to do, and please tell me if this sounds crazy, looking for actual advice, I want to cut the bonnet on the dotted lines, clean the metal underneath then weld it back together. Is this the dumbest way I could do this? As the metal under the struts is very heavily rusted and needs treating.
But the saving grace, the best part of a pickup is carrying your own storage!
And the best piece of ebay tat Ive ever found, 99p direct from China, they covered everything. For these Gold plastic CROWN dust caps... The ugliest dust cap Ive seen and I had to have them