Saturday was kind of a bust, even though I had sunshine and some reasonably warm weather. I’m currently stalled for want of a welder, so I use the morning to knock out some other minor stuff. I got two more lengths of interior U-shaped weatherstripping from Amazon, and applied that to the two passenger doors. While I was doing that I ran the nylon brush around as much of the leftover adhesive stuck to the inside sheet metal as I could reach before my batteries died. Clearly I’m due for some replacements. Then I got the weatherstripping in, which is a good feeling.
The only welder available for rent was at a Home Depot across town in Dundalk, which just happened to be my hometown Canton location. I reserved a Lincoln Weld-Pak for 4 hours and dragged it home to find it was set up for flux-core wire with no gas attachment. Playing a hunch, I spooled some of my leftover wire into the unit to find it wouldn’t advance—exactly the same problem as my Eastwood. So I drove it all the way back and got a refund. But I couldn’t get my 3 hours of sunlight back, which sucked.
So I cleaned up the rest of the interior weatherstripping, ground out and covered some sketchy spots with Rust-Stop, and then drilled holes in the seat box for mounting to the truck. By 6PM it was completely dark so I had to call it, but not before I covered the newly drilled holes with paint.
Sunday morning I got back outside and installed the seat box temporarily. Everything looks great; I just need another warm day to touch up the paint and shoot clear coat over everything. I’m actually wondering if I should shoot it the same gray as the door cards. Then I cleaned up more of the interior sections, using the nylon brush to get rid of all of the leftover adhesive from the upholstery.
As I got around to the rear section, I examined the panel over the barn doors. The previous owners had gone crazy with a 1/4″ drill bit and a hammer to install a bunch of marker lights on the edge of the roof, and what they left looks terrible. So I busted out the spot weld cutter and drilled out all of the welds I could find, and it came out pretty easily. The steel underneath is unpainted and speckled with surface rust. And the panel itself is in rough shape. I pulled the one I removed from the green truck down and compared both; I figure I can use sections of the green panel to fix the red one. It’s probably way too much work to put into a panel that small, but it’ll be a fun winter project I can tackle when the weather is bad.
After hitting Harbor Freight to pick up a full-body Tyvek suit, I covered myself in PPE and scraped all of the insulation glued to the roof. It was pretty easy in most spots but they went overboard with the adhesive in a couple of places. I switched to a wire wheel on the angle grinder and went over the entire roof to clean it down to bare metal.
There’s only one spot where the metal looks a little rough, and it’s right where I would expect: right around the hole drilled for a light above the front seats. It’s not bad enough to worry me, so I’ll slather it in Encapsulator. It’s now ready for a wipe down with acetone, and then I’ll spray the rest of it with Rust Stop. After that, I’ll start installing heat matting.
In the basement I have the bench seat sitting on a small desk waiting for hog rings and pliers; all of the foam and padding is here, so I’m waiting on my brother-in-law, who offered me his leftovers. That’ll be a great Monday Night Football project.