Jeff gave me a ring early in the week and asked me to send him the existing overs off the seats I have because he’s worried what he has might not fit correctly. So I went out at lunchtime on Tuesday and quickly pulled the covers off the rear bench and front vertical section, wrote where they came from, and boxed them up to be UPS’d up to him. I would like to have spent more time taking pictures of how they were assembled, but I was up against the clock and weather, and wanted to keep the process moving.
Jeff said I’m welcome to come up to his place and he’d show me how they go together when he’s got them completed, and it’s looking more and more like I might take him up on that offer. I’m sure I could figure out a lot of things on my own but I’d rather have an expert show me the right way first before I ruin anything.
The other thing I did on Saturday was to cut and fit two sections of steel to the corners before welding them into place. I have no idea why they would have kept these parts separate, and I figured sturdier is better in any case. A spray can of Rust-Stop helped me reach all the sections the brush missed, and with that the front bench is ready for upholstery. Next I’ve got to clean off the rear.
On the fender I got all of the low spots mudded out and sanded down, then used fill & sanding primer to identify any last trouble spots. When I was satisfied with the way things looked I used some 1000 grit to polish it up and then sprayed on two coats of rattle-can IH Implement Red to cover things. Overall it looks very good, and there’s only a drip around the fuel inlet port I have to smooth out. The next step will be to scrape all the old undercoating off the back, wire wheel any remaining rust, cover it with Encapsulator, and then spray on some undercoating.
I took the driver’s side off and started knocking off all the Bondo I’d applied in the summer as well as the stuff it came to me with; I’m going to take it back down to bare metal and start over again. This time I’m going to cut out the bad metal and riveted patch and try to get it as close to the original as I can while I keep looking for replacements. This one is going to take a lot more time to fix.