November
- January 2001
There wasn't really a lot of body work that needed to
be done to Maych. For a thirty year old truck, he
was in amazingly good shape, body wise. I think the lack of rust
is most attributed to the fact that the original owner lived on a
ranch in Wyoming - he didn't have to drive on salted city streets and
Wyoming has very low rainfall and humidity.
The only sheet metal that was
rusted to the point of needing
replace- ment were the cab corner and rocker panel on the passenger
side. Alan cut out the rusted sheet metal and welded in new
patch panels.
A little grinding, plastic filler,
and primer and the cab corner
and rocker panel were as good as new.
The only other sheet metal that had
to be replaced was the
middle stake pocket on the passenger side of the bed. Somehow,
the original stake pocket had been ripped off. It's a mystery to
me how you could rip off a stake pocket and not damage the surrounding
sheet metal, but somehow the previous owner had managed this
feat.
My first thought was to try and
get a replacement stake pocket at a junk yard
but I decided I would first try the 67-72 parts board on the The 1967-1972 Chevrolet & GMC Pickups Message Board
and see if any
of the board members had one they would sell me. Within just a few hours one
of the board members (Kenny Nestor) posted that he knew where he could
get one if I didn't mind waiting until the weekend. He also said I could
have it for the cost of shipping. I told him at that price he
could take as long as he wanted. The next week he emailed me
with the cost of the postage and I sent him a check. Within a few days
I got the stake pocket in the mail. I was curious what the
piece would look like. I had envisioned him cutting out a chuck of
the bed with the stake pocket attached but when I opened the package,
the stake pocket looked as if it was NOS, except for the ugly green
paint. I was so pleased, I sent Kenny a little extra money, just
for his trouble.
The next weekend I took the stake
pocket down to Alan's shop and
after a little grinding to remove what remained of the old stake
pocket, he welded on the new one. After it was painted, you
would never be able to tell it wasn't original.
The only dent of any size was in
the lower front corner on the
outside of the bed on the driver's side, but even this dent was pretty
minor. To repair this area, Alan pulled the dent and applied
plastic filler. As you can see in the photo, the entire bed was
taken down to bare metal.
The other areas needing attention
would more properly be
called dings than dents. The worst of the dings where in the
sheet metal at the front of the bed and on the top of the
tailgate. The dings in the top of the tailgate were repaired in
the usual manner and smoothed with plastic filler. The dings in
the front of the bed were not as easy to repair.
The front of
the bed consists of a large flat piece of sheet metal. Because
of this large expanse, it's difficult to work the metal and get it perfectly smooth and flat. Alan, being a perfectionist, wasn't
satisfied with the way it turned out (it looked great to me), so I
told him I was planning to install an under-the-rail bedliner and it
wouldn't show anyway. He agreed that was probably the best
solution, so we called the body work on the bed complete.
That's about it for the body
work. In the next episode I'll chronicle the work done in
preparation for painting.
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