Hey, its a truck again

Assembly day here at the shop on the ’52. Kelly Murphy brought the frame by this morning to start assembling the body panels. We started with the cab. New cab mounts and bushing were installed followed by the cab. We then moved to the inner fenders and radiator support. Once those were in the fenders were installed. Then the header panel and lower valence. Moving to the back, the bedsides were bolted in along with the head board then the rear fenders. This is where we stopped. Kelly will be taking the truck back to his place to finish up the plumbing, wiring, and all other finial assembly related operations. The hood and doors were left off to allow for more access and ease of assembly. Once he is ready for these parts we will get the to him for the final touches. After a good long while in fabrication and paint, this truck is turning out to be a real head turner. Especially in this bright red.

Smooth as glass

This is the finished product on the ’52 Ford. We finished up buffing these parts on Friday and put the final polishing on them yesterday. Now that all the parts are painted, its time for reassembly.

Code red

  More progress on code red today. The running boards, lower dash and a fender extension were all painted today. While Paul was spraying these, Chris and I was sanding the fenders and cab in preparation for buffing. We started off by sanding the parts with 1000 grit to remove the slight peel. This is where the looks like glass comes from. After the we sand with 1000, we switch to 2000 and sand it by hand again. Once that was completed we sand it a third time with 3000 grit but on a DA sander. This process makes buffing a little easier and really makes for a nice finished product. We will start buffing these out tomorrow and should get it done and all cleaned and polished up.

Hot Rod ’52

Here we are prepping what think will be the last batch of truck parts to be painted. There are about 8 or 10 items left to be sprayed. We hope to get them all done tomorrow so we can spend several days next week putting the final buff on the larger items. Once that is complete, the frame comes here for the assembly of the body panels. This thing will then start looking like a truck again. I know the owner will be very excited to see that happen. Here we are sanding the running boards and the custom lower dash extension that will hold the A/C vents. Lots of progress on the old hot rod truck this week.

Primed cab

Here are the finished pictures from yesterdays post on priming the cab. Once this sets up for a few days, we will start blocking it out to ensure super smooth and flat panels then a final prime. Then we will be ready for paint.

’52 Cabbie

For the past few days, we have been working on the cab to the ’52 Ford. We have the body work pretty well wrapped up. Here you can see we slid it into the booth for primer. We masked off the dash, we will use a different primer on that area later this week. Once this primer is set up and dried, we will block it out and re-prime the whole cab with our finishing primer. Once that happens, the next step is more RED paint.

52′ Ford

Great progress on the cab to the ’52 this week, The outside body is complete, as well as the left door jamb. Tomorrow we hope to get the right jamb and dash squared away. There has been a panel welded in the center of the dash that needs to finished off as well as a couple of holes that were welded up that are no longer needed. Once those are smooth this cab will get another coat of primer before beautiful red paint gets sprayed on it. This will definitely be a head turner!!

’52 Ford truck cab, still moving along

 We have been having some computer issues over the past week, so I haven’t been posting our work as often as normal. We did work on the the ’52 cab some last week and today as well. The body work is moving along nicely. The outside is pretty close, maybe another day or so, and then a few hours on the dash, and this one is ready for more primer. Here you can see Chris working the firewall. Paul and I worked the back of the cab while Rick worked the left fender mounting panel. A good amount accomplished today.

Parts everywhere

Yesterday we prepped these parts for the ’52 Ford for paint. We blasted these parts a couple of weeks ago, but havent had a chance to paint them yet. We started off by sanding them with 180 grit paper to get a smooth surface. We then cleaned them very well with wax and grease remover. We then hung each part up in the booth so that all sides could be sprayed at the same time. Paul took over here by spraying a coat of PPG’s DPLV epoxy sealer. Once that was dry, it was followed with a couple of coats of eggshell black single stage. Most of these parts you will never see once on the truck but they must all function and look presentable just in case. Once reassembled, these parts will be ready for another 70 years of service.

Back at it

Back on the cab today for Chris and I. Chris started on the roof and got that to a pretty good stopping point then moved on to the rear of the cab. We set it up on a stand to get to the lower areas of the cab. Chris blocked out all of the slick sand with 80 grit on a long block to smooth up the minor waves and ripples. The bigger areas were massaged out with a hammer and dolly before starting the filler steps. You can see here we have our second coat of filler on the back of the cab to smooth out the low and high areas. While we worked on the cab, Paul was putting the sand blaster to good use today. Head light buckets, hood hinges, springs, horn mounts and the front fresh air vent mecanism were all blasted today. We plan to continue the work on the cab and to get these blasted parts in epoxy primer over the next few days.