Our Crazy Cat

If you have a cat you should like this story.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/06/late_night_issues_mean_you_can.html

I Just Needed a Little Advice

An alert reader sent me a message that the three inch deep crease in the cab was most likely caused by the door being opened with such force as to bend the cab sheet metal. Lots of clues corroborated the diagnosis, particularly the tear in the front hinge assembly and one of the door mounting bolts broken off. In order to ding out the dent I cut out the inside kick panel and even cut out a piece of the front cab to put in a patch panel. Don’t worry I didn’t perform surgery just to get at the bolt, the panels needed to be replaced and I took advantage of the opening.

With everything removed I had a clear shot at the broken off bolt and nut. That is the good news. Since the bolt was rusted into the old nut, my plan was to weld a new nut to the inside of the door frame. That was the plan, but there was still some sheet metal around the hinge assembly and I just couldn’t figure out how to weld it in such a tight place.

Some engineer friends came over the next day and were interested in the truck project. I explained the situation about not being able to weld in the nut, when one of them stated that my captured nut had slipped out. That’s funny I had just had my yearly physical and the doctor did not mention that anything looked out of sorts.

Okay I get it, a welded on nut is “captured”. He had a good suggestion about welding a washer to the nut which would give me a way to weld it to the frame. And another guy suggested an airplane Rivnut which is a pretty cool deal. I was afraid to call Boeing and ask for a quote for one Rivnut, so I went to the Stovebolt forum and there were tons of posts on fixing captured nuts and using threaded inserts. The moral here is you just don’t know what you don’t know and it’s good to have knowledgeable friends.

I drilled out the rusted bolt remnant, rethreaded it, pressed it up against the frame and welded it to the sheet metal with a small steel rod. Hallelujah.

One small task finished. This weekend I am going to get the outside panels welded on, sand off all the paint and rust, and prime the left side of the cab. Stay tuned.

The Cab Seat

This part of the project has progressed over a few months, with work squeezed in between the fenders and hood tasks. The original cab seat was intact, although rusty and ratty. Stephanie, bless her heart, volunteered to take off the old vinyl seat upholstery and padding. Her good work exposed the springs which were coated in a layer of rust.

 I took the wire wheel to the edges and places I could reach, taking care not to let the 4,000 revolutions per minute wheel of death hook up with the springs. After my experience with the wire wheel and my polar fleece jacket, I can only imagine what would happen if they engaged. After spraying the springs and seat frame with Rust Converter I was ready to put on the seat covers.

I got on the internet and quickly ordered the bench seat rebuild kit which had the padding and clips. Selecting the seat covers was another story. All the internet parts stores had plenty of vinyl seat covers but I kept hearing the voice of Ricardo Montalban, in a compelling Latin accent saying “you owe yourself – soft Corinthian leather”. I had to settle for fine Beijing Pleather.

Since I have never re-upholstered anything, I read the rebuild kit instructions for hours, all six sentences of them. Step one, put burlap over the springs. Check. Step two, put two layers of the cotton padding over the burlap. Check. Step three, put on the seat covers. Hold the phone Kildare. What about the third type of padding in the rebuild kit? There was two yards of some kind of felty serape thingy blanket and if that wasn’t enough, there was a couple of kilometers of cotton padding left over. I started reading the instructions again.

With no new clues to be found in the instructions I went with the “make it up as you go” method. I cut the padding into bench size strips and put it on the springs until it was gone and then I put on the serape thingy.

Back to Step three, put on the gray pleather seat covers. Once again the instructions were less then helpful. I am not making this up, instruction four says “Determine which upholstery is the backrest and which is the seat bottom; they are not interchangeable.” What they left off was this statement “And just to keep you on your toes, we are not going to put anything on the seat covers to give you any help in determining which one is which.”

Believe me the seat covers look identical. Picking which one is which, is like trying to determine sex of a rattle snake. The snake knows who is who but the only way a human could tell is to put them both in a box and wait for one to start laying eggs.  I really didn’t want wait two months to see what king of eggs pleather seat covers would lay. I took an educated guess andI must have chosen wisely because the cab seats look great. Even Richardo said they were muy bueno.

The last step is to paint the steel frame and cover plates. I had selected gray seat covers, you know - your basic gray.  So off I go to The Home Depot to get the spray paint. As they did not have any cans of Old Chevy Truck gray, I had to get two cans of Martha Stewart’s signature color “Institution Gray”, it is a perfect match with the seat covers.

One night I was working in my Hillbilly garage and hung the seat cover plates from the canopy frame to spray them. I then went to the YMCA to work out. An hour later when I walked out of the gym it was raining. Crikkie, this is not good. When I got home my perfectly painted cover plates were covered with a beautiful layer of water droplets. I used a paper towel to remove the water and left them to dry in the garage, figuring I would have to sand, prime and repaint them. It turns out that while there is a slight texture to the surface no one should notice, so I am going to just use them.

I moved the cab seat into The Parts Display Room and Stephanie and I are going to sit on it and play drive in movie night.

Sunday Column

My May Sunday column is out. I did post some pictures of the dinner on facebook.

enjoy

A lesson learned about exotic fare on a Denver visit

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/05/a_lesson_learned_about_exotic.html

Starting on the Cab

With the hood and front fenders painted, it is on to the cab. The immediate problem is a three foot vertical crease in the cab, just in front of the door. This baby is about two inches deep and I am trying to figure out what could have caused it. My best guess is some type of cowboy equipment - maybe at the rodeo someone backed a horse trailer into it.

With a dent this big I am going to have to perform a kickpanelectomy. This is a complex procedure to remove the inside panel of the cab so I can bump out the dent. With my huge ass air compressor, that is still bigger than my wife, there will be plenty of air to run the cut off tool and nibbler.

Sparks were flying when I started cutting into the metal but I had more protection than a frat boy on date night; safety glasses, respirator, gloves, and ear guards. Four out of five is not bad. I got my air nibbler going and was cleaning up around the opening when I saw an open spot and just started cutting up to the top. Thankfully I stopped before I got to the end as I had cut two inches past the replacement part I had purchased.

With the panel removed I now had access to the dent. I know most of the guys will be able to relate to this. I basically spent about an hour just looking at the dent wondering how I was going to repair it. The next hour was spent hoping it would magically fix itself. And then I was ready, I got out my hammer and dolly and started bumping. Even with the kick panel removed it was still hard to get the hammer in the small space. I hammered, and bumped, and banged on my dolly for 5 hours.

I actually made good progress getting about half of the dent out. WhooHoo. However, the next day I could not move my right hand.  All the banging really stressed my wrist and I really could not pick anything up with it. With my left hand I could comb my hair just fine and brushing my teeth was a little harder. And after a few tries my aim was good enough to hit the toilet. I did clean up the floor and cabinets and as long as my wife doesn’t read this post I should be okay.

Painted Hood and Fender

Three major body parts are ready to be sprayed with the final metallic blue top coat. Dayum.  I called Boojack last Friday and he had time this week to do the deed. On Monday I got a gallon of the good stuff – high test. I borrowed a truck to transport the parts and spent most of the evening carefully wrapping the hood and fender before placing them in the truck bed.

I pulled out my daughter’s Ninja Mutant Turtle Snuggie, my wife’s Navaho rug, two shams and our St. Kitts huge ass beach towels. Nothing was going to scratch my parts. I must have used a mile of rope to tie everything down and since there was a chance of rain on Tuesday I topped it all off with my camouflage tarp.

I am an early riser, so I was up at o’dark-thirty trying to figure out what time Boojack opened shop. The complication was that it was forecasted to rain all day and was drizzling already. I was watching the weather radar in order to time my run between the rain bands. It would be very bad if my parts got wet.

I finally called him at 7am and got a recording that the number had been temporarily disconnected. Nothing is easy, I am ready to go and my painter is out of business. I really hoped this was a cash flow situation and not a shutdown.  All I could do was head out and see what the deal was.

Here I go, driving 30 miles out in the Alabama country in a big pickup truck. My parts are wrapped in Snuggies and Indian blankets, covered up under a camo tarp, and it is raining. If this ain’t Hillbilly I don’t know what is.

This picture shows what I felt like as I was driving down the road. I am just glad a game warden did not pull me over, I am sure he would have fined me for impersonating a redneck.

As I had hoped, Boojack had not paid his phone bill on time and it was disconnected. He acted like it was a common occurrence. The rest was pretty routine. Boojack took the parts and three days later I picked them up, this time with a trailer.  He did a great job and I really like his shop. It makes me feel right at home, he must live in the historic district too.

These parts look so good I am storing them in the house. Since, Stephanie would not let me keep them in the bed room, I converted the dining room into the Parts Display Room and give tours on Wednesday afternoons.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards

In the last episode our auto body metal man had just finished spraying on a beautiful semi-gloss black topcoat over the hood. It was a sight to behold as he rode off into the sunset. Everyone had tears in their eyes.

The reason for painting the hood black was that BooJack, my professional painter suggested putting a black coat over the yellow sanding primer. This way it would not take as many coats of the final metallic blue color coat to cover the yellow. So I did.

A few days later when Dr. Culpepper was making his rounds, you know checking up on his neighborhood automotive patients - I proudly told him what I had accomplished.

He calmly stated in his Dalearian manner that I shouldn’t have done that. Okay Doc, what is the problem, BooJack said to put on black? He explained that the black paint I used was a topcoat and my pretty metallic blue topcoat paint would have a bad reaction if I sprayed it over the black paint.

I did get a second opinion and the guys that sell the paint agreed that my hood would go into anaphylactic shock if I mixed my topcoats. They also stated that having the yellow under the metallic blue base coat would give the final blue color a deeper luster. There is a lesson here, something about knowing what you are doing.

So, back to the beginning once again. It took most of a day to sand off the black paint, spray on the YELLOW sanding primer, and block sand it smooth. I have to admit though, the hood is perfect and will look beautiful with the blue topcoat.

Now the underside of the hood is another story. Plain old black topcoat is a perfectly fine color for the engine compartment. I am getting to be a better painter, but spray painting it the Hillbilly garage has its challenges. I am an expert at pulling bugs out of the wet paint, but water drops leaking from my gun onto the paint was a new experience.

I decided to upgrade my shop and purchased a huge ass air compressor. It is bigger than my wife and is guaranteed to pump out more air than congress. I might have just become a redneck shop.

Can’t wait to see the body parts with the metallic blue final coat.