Bed time

Near the end of the day we had about an hour or so that we could devote to some small job. While this El Camino project is no small job, it is composed of many small jobs. One of those jobs is to prepare the inside of the bed for priming.

The first photo shows the bed as it was when we started. The new floor, installed by Murphy Rod & Custom, looks great, but the walls and wheel arches … not so much.

We spent a few minutes trying to pull a dent out of a wheel arch but the metal there is thick and tough. It didn’t me very long to realize that trying to pull the dents was an exercise in futility, so we just filled them. There were only a couple of dents that I would have liked to have pulled before filling, the others were to small to worry with, but even the big dents were within the size that can be repaired with body filler.

As tough as the metal is, and as big and deep as some of the dents were, a previous owner must have been chucking boulders or something into the back of this thing. Yeesh. Still, no problem that a little body filler can’t solve as you can see in picture two.

The last picture shows Chris sanding away on the filler. Because this is the inside of the bed we won’t have to make it as nice as the outside. Oh sure, we are going to smooth it up as best we can, but because the inside of the bed is little more than curves and angles, it will look great without the laser straight perfection required on the outside.

I had big plans for this car this week, but alas, circumstances didn’t cooperate. Next week, though … next week.