January 2001 - June 2002
After the body work was completed, Alan spent the next several months preparing Maych for painting.  Of course, Alan wasn't working on Maych full time during these months.  When I made the deal with Alan it was with the understanding that he could take as much time as he needed to do the work.  Alan has a full time job and does this work on the side and he has other jobs that come in from time to time that require a quicker turn around than does the work on Maych.  Also, shortly after Alan began work on Maych, the sheriff in the county were Alan lives retired after serving as sheriff for many years, and Alan decided to run for his office.  Between working full time, moon-lighting as a paint and body man, and campaigning for office, Alan had a pretty full schedule.

The slow work pace on Maych also worked in my favor.  I made up my mine to retire in January 2003.  In anticipation of this retirement, my wife and I put our house up on the market in March of 2002, anticipating it could take 6 to 10 months to sell.  Well, as luck would have it (good luck, actually), our house sold within 30 days and we had to be moved out by June 10.  Having Maych safely tucked away at Alan's, meant that was just one less thing I had to worry about.  Hopefully, by the time Maych was ready to come home, we would be in our new house in Grand Island, Nebraska and I would have a nice cozy garage ready for him. 

Alan began the paint prep by removing all of the old paint and primer from the fenders, hood, doors, and bed.  Some was removed by sanding and some with a comb- ination of sanding and paint stripper.  In the above photo,  one of the guys helping Alan is using paint stripper to remove the paint and primer from the doors.

Alan sandblasted the inside of the bed to remove the paint.  Any other method would have been too time consuming, given the large area and the corru- gated bed floor.  

 

 

 

   

 

The cab was not completely taken down to bare metal.  Alan felt that the existing paint, being well adhered and free of rust,  would provide an excellent base for the new paint.

When everything was sanded, stripped, or sandblasted, everything was primed and wet sanded.  I don't have all the details yet on the type of primer, sanding techniques, etc., but I'll post them later after I get a change to talk to Alan at length.

In the next episode, I'll chronicle the painting process.

 

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