Shaving the Gas Tank Filler Hole

My latest mantra is “progress progress progress”. I am knocking out tasks one by one, getting better at welding, and doing it all faster. The goal is to get the truck done before Brooke graduates from high school – that gives me a little over one more year, it will be close.

The latest task is to cover over the gas tank filler hole in the cab. This 1954 Chevy Truck is going to be “shaved” - it will be one sleek ride with nothing but a smooth body line.

Okay, enough with the visceral explanation, the practical reason is that with the truck being converted to an electric vehicle it does not need gasoline for fuel therefore the gas tank filler is unnecessary and must be removed.

This task has gone about as good as it could go. I must have been possessed by the spirit of Carol Shelby because everything went exactly as it should.

The first step was easy; remove the gas tank filler unit and gasket from the cab body. As you can see we now have a perfect hole in the cab.

Step two was to fabricate a piece of sheet metal to cover the hole. This involved a little metal work since the replacement part must match the curve of the cab. I had to cut out a circular hole and then put a curve on it by rolling it over a pipe, my Hillbilly metal forming equipment.

  

After careful trimming and grinding, the replacement cover plate precisely fits the hole. It is clamped into place with special clamps before the welding begins. For those of you that have read 50 Shades of Gray you might recognize these babies from a different perspective.

  

Step three is to butt weld the cover plate to the cab. The proper technique is to place a series of tack welds around the seam to hold the cover plate in place. The other reason for doing it this way is to control the heat applied to the sheet metal. The extreme heat from the welds will warp the sheet metal so you have to weld slowly and let the heat dissipate before continuing.

 Slowly I added more spot welds, gradually filling in all the gaps. I also used the angle grinder to grind the welds flush with the cab, still being careful to go slow to let the heat dissipate to avoid warping.

 Voila, tu es magnifique! It is all welded in place and smoothed out. The new piece did not match exactly the body curve and I did get a little warp on one side as I am still learning patience and butt welding. However, everything can be fixed with a little body filler and elbow grease.

 This is the first layer of body filler. You basically put it on, sand it down, put more on, sand it down, put more on – you get the picture. Each layer gets you closer and closer to Nirvana, until finally you rub your hand over the cab and it feels perfect and I mean purr-fect.

  

With the body filler sanding finished, the last step is to spray on a coat of primer and baby does that look good. When they say “shaved” this is what I am talking about y’all.

Cab Update

I have great news – the cab is mostly done. Did I trick anyone? Everyone knows that “mostly done” translates to something like – pretend done. The term is only used when the claimant wants to believe that something which is unfinished will be worked on and competed by magical elves that night.

Even with mostly done there is still cause to celebrate. The inside of the cab is completely primed. Yippee-a-mundo. I have successfully removed all the rust or encapsulated it and sprayed epoxy primer on everything inside. That’s right; the cab ceiling, the floor boards, the dashboard and the back of the cab. And baby, baby, baby does it look good.

Currently I am in Dante’s third circle of Hell (Priming the Cab) and have three tasks to complete before I can go to the next level Hell (Butt Welding the Cab Corner).  There are two small areas in the front of the cab which I will get done this weekend and the final test will be removing the rust and goop that is under the cab, followed by spraying on the primer. I am hopeful that it will be a straight forward operation, you know I do believe in the magical elves.

As soon as Virgil and I finish this six-pack of El Diablo IPA, I will get back to work.

Huntsville Times Post

I wrote a story about getting Brooke her first mobile phone.  Enjoy.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/11/it_takes_two_tries_to_get_the.html

Another Lesson

With the outside of the cab progressing quite well - thank you very much, my attention is turned to inside activities. As rust is enemy number one with this restoration I am focused on eliminating it and the long pole in the cab tent is the rust on the top of the cab.

Taking out my trusty wire wheel brushes, I commenced to grind off the rust and old paint. Soon into the campaign I discovered the ceiling was covered with something else along with the rust. After extensive scientific analysis, I determined there was some type of goopy coating on it. I was at a loss as to how it got there, but I figured it had to go.

The wire wheel was effective at taking it off, but needed a couple of passes to get it all off, slowing down my much desired progress. Not to be daunted, I kept my nose to the grindstone and pushed through, even using solvents to break up the sticky spots.

At the start of this task, I heard “the little voice that never shuts up” in the back of my mind. Not wanting to be bothered I pushed it all the way out of my conscious and continued grinding. However, as the task seemed to drag on and on it escaped my banishment and said “Pilgrim, tell me again why you are grinding off this top coating?”. I whine back that I have to get the rust and gook off the metal in order for the primer to bond properly.

“The little voice that never shuts up” then proceeds to point out that I will be putting a beautiful color coordinated cardboard headliner on the top of the cab, which “mister works hard but not smart” (that is what it calls me) will cover up all your hours of useless exertion.  I have learned that it is always hard to argue with good reason – especially when it is right.

Unfortunately I was beyond the point of no return. This is similar to removing wall paper in a home remodeling project. When faced with the decision to either take off the old wall paper or just paint over it, you are completely committed after you pull off the couple of easy sections of wall paper. Once this is done you have to do all the hard work to remove the stubborn sections.

As I was steaming off the last bits of automotive wallpaper I figured out that the gooey coating was heat and sound dampening material and that it was not really rusty after all. It was just dirty and messy, with a rusty color.  Note to “mister works hard but not smart” don’t remove this in your next restoration. If you look up the definition of this task in the dictionary, it is called tuition.

Finding the replacement heat and sound dampening material was not as simple as you would think. I did find the material in several of the classic truck web sites, but it was quite a bit more expensive than I expected. As I started looking for other options, I let “the little voice that won’t shut up” sit at the adult table with me this time. Together we were going to make the correct choice. Out of the blue I receive an email from Eastwood saying they were having a sale on guess what? Heat and sound deadened material.  I liked the price and started reading the detailed description, the installation process and then the reviews.  The first four reviewers thought this stuff was better than sex, which pretty much had me sold. But my partner felt the need to keep reading.  The next two reviews were 1 star out of 5 star ratings and said that a few days after they installed it, black tar goo started oozing down the wall and puddled on the floor. It turns out that the positive reviewers lived in Greenland where the temperature is minus 50 and the negative reviewers were fans of the SEC – translation lived in the hot south.  Eastwood’s product was fine until the temperature got to 95 degrees, at which time it transformed into black gooey ooze.

Not wanting to repeat the removal process again, I have already taken and passed this class, I am getting the heat and sound dampening material rated to 270 degrees.

Making Progress on the Cab

Progress is a wonderful noun, especially when it applies to my truck cab. Of all the parts in this 54 Chevy truck restoration, it is the cab that makes me the most insecure and paralyzes me into inaction. Everything that has to be fixed with the cab is something I have never done before.

The floor was rotted out with rust and while it was tempting, putting a carpet over the holes, would not be acceptable. So, I manned up and cut out the rusted floor, learned how to weld and welded in the replacement floor panels.  The side of the cab had a dent as big and as deep as the Mariana Trench. This, in case you are wondering is 6.8 miles deep. I banged it out and used body filler to make it perfectly smooth.

Even with all this progress, my mechanical clock is ticking and it is runing out of time. This is the manalogy of the woman’s need to get married and have a baby. Who could forget Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny saying “my biological clock is ticking”. According to my clock it is time to deliver this cab.

With the cold of winter about to shut down this Hillbilly Garage I had to get a heated shop in order to keep working through the cold dark months. I was starting to look for a garage to rent when my amazing wife offers to let me move my table saw, other wood working tools and bicycles into the back room of the house so that there would be room in the garage to work on the cab.

I am certain she was under the influence of a hot flash and didn’t know what she was saying, but I quickly agreed and now we have three rooms filled with truck parts and tools.

Once the garage was cleaned out, the next step was to move the cab into the garage. The timing for this operation could not have been worse. Several of the neighbors were out of town and another had hurt his back. That left me – one old guy, my daughter – who is like anti matter when it comes to helping with the truck, and my amazing one armed wife. Don’t worry, she has two arms, but with a recent rotator cuff surgery, one was out of commission – Doctors orders.

With a good three arms between us, we used Egyptian methods to move the cab. I would lift one side of the cab up off the stand and Stephanie would pull it out and put in a smaller one. Repeating this process we soon had the cab on a furniture dolly and were able to roll it into the garage and perform the process in reverse.

Now that I have the cab in a warm well light garage, I have been able to work on it almost every night after work. I have taken off all the paint and rust on the outside and primed the inside floor panels. Two recent warm days gave me time to spray on the primer and Baby it looks good.

Huntsville Times Column

Here is my latest Huntsville Time column about my mothers boozy fruit.  Enjoy.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/10/all_generations_have_their_qui.html

My Rear End is Leaking

The rear end was leaking and demanding attention. This was one of those slow weepy seeping leaks, not big enough to require an immediate repair, but an irritating incessant drip that nags you to action. Pampers were not an option and neither was putting cardboard under the truck to catch the drips.

As you recall my ¾ ton truck is a special needs vehicle and I could not find a replacement gasket to save my life. Finally on one of the truck forums someone mentioned that they had “made” their gasket. This was the solution to the problem.

 The gasket making procedure is fairly simple; you basically use a caulk gun to put down a bead of the gasket material around one side of the part and then bolt the other side to it. As you tighten up the bolts the material squeezes out like the cream filling of a Moon Pie.

Gasket making is as simple as it sounds - once you get through all the mistakes. With this step done, the last thing I had to do was tighten down the bolts to the proper torque. The shop manual said to tighten them to 85 ft/lbs. I got out the torque wrench and started tightening and tightening and tightening. I must point out that the torque wrench will click when you get to the correct torque setting. With all this tightening and no click, I was getting worried because at some point bad things will happen if the bolt is over tightened.

 Well you guessed it, I kept turning until one of the bolts snapped in half. The only good news was that I have been in this position before and knew the authorized extraction procedure. At about step four of the extraction process the bolt remanent came out. As it dropped into the inside of the differential, I heard the delicate ping of the start of another unplanned task.

I expected a metal filing or two to get into the differential and knew this would be okay; however, half of a grade eight bolt in the differential would turn my rear end into a Cuisinart and quickly shred my gears into coleslaw.

 Well once again the good news is that I am now an expert gasket maker. I was able to remove the differential cover, retrieve the bolt, make another gasket and replace the cover.

No leaks so far.

I Am Back

Guess What? The Huntsville Times reinstated my column. I get to finish the year as a Community Columnist.  My columns will be in the first Sunday newspaper, but the digital version will come out earlier. I tried something different with this column and hope you like it, I know I had fun writing it.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/10/linda_stays_cool_when_kitchen.html

Latest HTimes Column

Greetings,

As of now, last weeks column will be my last. The Huntsville Times canceled the Community Columnist section as part of the three days a week publishing format.

Hopy your enjoy it, I certainly did.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/09/doctors_deliver_mixed_message.html

Brimmer

A Butt Weld Success Story – The Second Book Two

In the last episode we had successfully welded both the floor panels to the cab framework. However, there was this three quarter inch gap between the panels that needed to be filled.

The first task was to fabricate the filler piece. I started with a piece of sheet metal and cut it into a strip the correct length and width. Next, I started bending it into the proper shape with my pliers and other pieces of metal. This is Hillbilly fabrication in action.

I clamped it into place and was about to start welding when I remembered the advice from Chuck _inDurham, he wrote a welding primer and said, “he always does some practice welds before he starts on the real welding”. I dutifully spent 15 minutes practicing on an old fender. This allowed me to dial in the voltage and wire feed rate. It turns out the difference between not enough penetration and blowing holes is very small. It also got my grove going on how fast to move the torch.

With the part clamped in place I started with the tack welds, placing them about an inch apart and alternating the welds to avoid any warping. Next I started filling in the gaps, being careful to let the welds cool so as to not warp the panel. In between, I would grind down the welds and repeat the process. I only had one blow out and easily filled it.

The next thing I knew the welding and grinding was done. The last step was to used my two-inch angle grinder with a sanding disk to smooth it all out. I would give myself a C+ on this job, which is a great improvement over the F- on my previous try at Butt welding.

The next thing I did was screw down the transmission cover plate and put in the battery cover plate. Dayum, the cab floor is starting to look real pretty.

Today was one of those days that energize you to come back to the shop again. I can’t wait.

Spot Weld Adventure – Book Two

“You don’t know what you don’t know”. I will attribute this to Confucius since my friend Google does not know who said it first. The floor of the cab is rotted out with fifty years of rust and must be replaced. Earlier I purchased the replacement floor panels, both the right and left side. If I had been a little more observant and not so damn cheap I would have just bought the whole floor replacement panel. I did not find out until I was putting them together that the two half’s are an inch short in the middle, how would one know? My project just got a little more complicated.

I was cutting out the old rusty floor and having trouble as usual when Dale came by and said that Eastwood has a spot weld cutter to make the job easier, how would one know? Thank god for friendly advice, this tool is right up there with the Ronco Veg-o-matic - except it really works. For you English teachers out there, spot welding is similar to using a hot glue gun. Except instead of melting glue to stick two things together you use an electric arc to fuse the two pieces of metal together.

As you would expect it is a mother to take the already welded together panels apart. Enter the spot weld cutter. It surgically cuts a nice little circle off the top piece of metal and Voila, we have separation.

Since my Butt weld technique is a sad story, let’s just say my truck is still wearing Mom jeans to cover up my sorry work, instead of the low rise thong showing jeggins.  Recognizing my limitations, I decided to use the spot weld method to attach the floor panels to the frame.  Never mind that I had never spot welded or even hot glue gunned before, I was convinced it would be better. Did I hear someone say “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

The way you spot weld with a DIY home welder is to drill a hole in the top piece of sheet metal, then clamp the two pieces together, and then fill the hole with the glorious pool of shimmery molten metal. Dutifully I drilled about a hundred small holes in the floor panel, got it properly positioned and did my first spot weld. After I finished the cigarette, I spot welded a few more.  Deciding to test my handiwork, I pulled up on the floor panel to see if it worked. Well, guess what, the panel came up so fast it nearly knocked me unconscious.

Reading the instructions again, I figured out my mistakes. I have to use advanced welder speak to explain the first one; I did not get enough penetration. I think this means I have to give back that cigarette. Now in English, my hole was not big enough – the second mistake, and the weld was not hot enough to get through to the bottom piece of metal.

It turns out I had my welder voltage set to “scared as shit” and the wire feed rate was on “miserly”. Inspired with knowledge I set the voltage to “river of magma” and the wire feed rate to “fill-your-boots”.

To fixed my other problem I went out and bought an Irwin step drill bit to enlarge my tiny holes - careful Jane. I have converted to the Church of Eastwood and their doctrine is that any problem can be fixed with a very specialize and expensive tool, Allahu Akbar.

Well with everything set up, I started spot welding. I am sure there were a few of the 72 virgins dancing on my shimmery pool of molten metal and I successfully filled up every spot weld.

With a little grinding and a coat of primer, it looks as good a new.

August Huntsville Times Column

My August column is out “Everglades trip leaves a lasting, soggy memory”. I think you will enjoy it.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/08/everglades_trip_leaves_a_lasti.html

Welding With Gas

Over the last month I made good progress on the cab and was well into my welding apprenticeship. In fact there is so much to write about, I think I will do a welding post trilogy. We all know that the third post will be the happy ending where I slay all the welding ogres and ride off into the sunset in my truck with Daisy Duke. This post will be the first installment and all the others will be the middle one. I know - more than three you say. Traditional trilogies are three books but many authors now start a trilogy and extend it to four or five books - must be due to inflation.

There are many different types of welders as you would expect. I happened to borrow a MIG welder from an acolyte that was taking an indefinite sabbatical from welding. The G in MIG stands for Gas - like you should use it. However, I had all the confidence of the ignorant and I told my friend that I would pass on the gas, since I was sure one really did not need it.

The first real test came when I put in a patch panel on the cab. The fabrication of the panel went well and the tack welds were excellent, but I hit the wall with the butt welds. As exciting as the term sounds, it is not fun – I was dumb and dumber with a Barbie welder. The truck sheet metal is very thin and when you get it red hot and don’t know what you are doing, you burn a hole through the metal – this is called a blow out. I managed to get a few blow outs the size of Rhode Island.

I was taking one step forward and two steps backwards for most of the afternoon.  At some point I had to stop welding and prime the panel so it would not rust. Well primer shows all the flaws and to my chagrin there were lots of tiny holes in my welds.  Suspecting this was not good, I did a shout-out on the Stovebolt.com forum.

I explained my welding dilemma in a highly technical truckarian manner and got some good advice. At some point an alert reader suggested that we all look at a post on the Ford forum about welding. Now you have to understand that Stovebolt.com is a Chevy forum and it took more than a healthy dose of bipartisanship to cross over to the other side. If Congress started welding they might get a few more laws passed.

It turns out this was the Holy Grail of welding. Chuck_in_Durham had taken on a mission to write a step by step guide on DIY welding. His primer was a godsend and I am frankly inspired to advance my welding skills.

In his first lesson he pointed out that you really do need use the gas.  In simple terms, hot steel is basically a slut and will hook up with any oxygen molecule that saunters by. And, we all know that when iron and oxygen get it on, we have lots of little rust babies. So, the smart guys figured out if you bathed the molten hot iron with an inert gas it would act as a condom and prevent those hot and bothered oxygen molecules from closing the contract.

Once I finished my biology lesson, I immediately went out and purchased my own welder and a man sized cylinder of Argon/CO2 welding gas. With all this knowledge and specialized equipment I was feeling a little evangelical. At a dinner party the other day I was compelled to have all our guests experience welding fist hand.

Everyone loved it especially the women. There is something about suiting up with thick leather gloves and controlling a 100,000 volt electric arc to create a molten pool of red hot steel. I might have to start a religion.

Pinion nut hunt for pickup project more than just a challenge

I wrote about the pinion nut episode in last Sunday's column. Hope you enjoy it.

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

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.