Author Topic: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild  (Read 157434 times)

Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #75 on: January 18, 2012, 10:21:15 PM »
I got the passenger side door and fender installed tonight. The door will most likely stay on but the fender needs to come back off now for primer and paint. I just wanted to make sure everything fit properly.
Below is a little video that I took tonight. I've never done a video before so I hope this works!!


Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #76 on: January 18, 2012, 11:11:02 PM »
Well hot dang. It looks like the video worked. A bonus for the evening.

I just wanted to share with you how I went about lining up the fenders to the doors in case someone else is going to do this.
I had started another thread in the body section of our site and got some great tips about how and what to do, and those tips really helped me.
Let me first say I already had the doors adjusted and gapped before I painted them or the cab. After the painting was complete, all I had to do is lift them up in place and knock in the hinge pins. Those went back on very easily.
When I installed the drivers side fender last night I got the gap between the fender and the door pretty good, but that left the front of the fender about 1" low in the front. I really had to torque and flex the fender in the front to get it to line up with the radiator support. I saw no other way.
Then I learned what really needed to happen. I found out I needed to shim up the front of the cab. I would have had no idea to do this unless someone had mentioned it in the other thread I had started. You guys are awesome!!
The only thing that had me concerned is that when I had just the fenders lightly bolted on, it seemed they were sitting different than each other. The drivers side seemed like it was sitting low at the bottom and just the opposite for the passenger side.
Well tonight I found out why and then all of this made sense.
The first thing I did was to totally level the front and rear of the truck. Since my garage has floor drains, the concrete is sloped a bit in places. I just added shim material under the tires until the suspension was earth level. Then I double checked and confirmed the frame was level left to right also.
This is where I found out that my cab was about 5/16" lower on the drivers side than it was on the passenger side. Why? I have no idea. The chassis was perfectly level but the cab was not. I don't know if the problem is in the cab or the frame mounts but it didn't really matter. I had to fix it. I just got some 1/2" ID fender washers and placed them between the body mount and the cab. This now leveled the cab with the frame.
This made perfect sense why my drivers side fender had such a gap at the bottom, but the passenger side did not. When I installed the passenger side fender tonight, it aligned just like clockwork. After I take the drivers side fender off for paint, I'm really convinced when I put it back on, it will line up a whole lot easier now that I've raised that side of the cab.
Anyway, I just thought I'd share this in case someone else runs into this, or wants to install their own fenders, on their truck rebuild.
Having the cab square and level is very important. Knowing what to do if the fender to door gaps aren't correct is just as important.
All these things combined can make installing fenders a whole lot more enjoyable.

Thanks for all the replies to my questions. It's very much appreciated.

Offline johnhood

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #77 on: January 18, 2012, 11:11:45 PM »
truck looks awesome i love the color keep up the great work cant wait to see more progress
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Offline thirsty

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #78 on: January 20, 2012, 08:17:28 AM »
Good idea with the video Firefighter. It came out great and I enjoyed seeing it from all sides and the interior too.
Having all your body lines adjusted the best that they can be will make a huge difference in the finished product. Nice attention to detail and props for forward thinking.
Did you get your hood on yet? I'm sure that won't be any problem for you as good as the rest is coming out.
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Offline bake74

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #79 on: January 20, 2012, 09:40:00 AM »
     Great information firefighter, thanks for the write up, it will help me this summer.  I also liked the video.
#1: The easiest and most obvious solution to any problem is 99% of the time correct.
#2: There is no such thing as impossible, it just takes longer.
  74 k10, 77k10    Tom

Offline Sartobuilt

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #80 on: January 20, 2012, 10:14:11 PM »
Unbelieveable. I was helping you in your other thread, glad to hear your getting everything lined up. Funny thing though I kept skipping over the 2nd rebuild thread until tonite  im glad I did... I just finished my truck the other day.



Keep it up your doing a great job!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #81 on: January 20, 2012, 11:56:15 PM »
Awww Man.... Look at that big bad boy Sartobuilt !!

Nice truck !!

Tell me, how big of lift and how tall of tire?    I'm guessing 6" lift and 35's?

Man that sits nice, and I love the 2 tone color. Thanks for sharing a pic of it.

Offline 87454westernhauler

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #82 on: January 21, 2012, 12:35:19 AM »
i liked the old color beter. but i like the new color even more!!
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Offline Sartobuilt

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #83 on: January 21, 2012, 08:54:52 AM »
Awww Man.... Look at that big bad boy Sartobuilt !!

Nice truck !!

Tell me, how big of lift and how tall of tire?    I'm guessing 6" lift and 35's?

It has about 10" total lift, front is a 8" spring with a 1"ORD Zero rate ,to level it out. Rear is a 6" spring with an ORD shackle flip and a 1" body lift,  with the 37' goodyear military tires, boy do they ride nice. Sorry I didn't mean to hijack your thread.

Man that sits nice, and I love the 2 tone color. Thanks for sharing a pic of it.

Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #84 on: January 21, 2012, 10:29:44 AM »
With 8" of new snow, the shop heated up to 65 degrees and 5# of deer jerky cookin in the dehydrator, it's time to spend the day in the garage.

I hope to get the fenders removed and ready for paint tomorrow, as well as a bunch of little things buttoned up.
It's gonna be a great day.


Offline 79k30guy

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #85 on: January 21, 2012, 10:52:31 AM »
With 8" of new snow, the shop heated up to 65 degrees and 5# of deer jerky cookin in the dehydrator, it's time to spend the day in the garage.

I hope to get the fenders removed and ready for paint tomorrow, as well as a bunch of little things buttoned up.
It's gonna be a great day.


sounds like a perfect day... 
A Chevy straight Axel family.. DAD:'74 K20 (dana 60 up front) TWIN BROTHER: 76 K20 3+3 ME: '79 K30.

Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #86 on: January 22, 2012, 11:20:31 PM »
Well as I hoped, I did get the fenders painted today.
Yesterday I finished prefitting everything front end related before I pulled the fenders back off. The inner fenders fit well and I only had to redrill one hole on each one to line up with the fender. I sprayed the inner fenderwells yesterday with an undercoating and got the fenders ready to spray today.
I have to wait for nicer days to paint since I'm using a squirrel cage fan to exhaust my make shift paint booth, and it pulls in outside air from a separate source. I preheat the shop to 70 degrees and then turn off the furnace while I paint.
Well I've painted enough things on this project now that I was starting to feel a bit more comfortable with spraying the color.
Today I sprayed my first lighter fog coat and let it flash off. I adjusted the settings on my gun and began spraying a wet first coat and it seemed to all be going well but I did notice I was getting more overspray in the air than normal as I painted the back sides of both fenders. I brushed it off and continued by painting the outsides of both fenders. The paint was flowing on nice and smooth as I finished them off.
Then I looked back and noticed trouble. About 5 spots of trouble. A few sags and minor runs !!! What the heck???
A few sags were right on the sides of the fender and the 2 runs were right on the corners of the wheelwell lip. Now the wheelwell lips will be covered by some kind of trim, but the sags were obvious not so much by the shape but by the color. The color of my green was darker as the paint sagged into low spots. It was ugly.  I wasn't sure what to do but I'll tell you what I did.
Now remember, this truck is not a show truck and will be my daily driver, hunting and wood cutting truck. It's not supposed to be a "pretty boy" truck, but I still want it to look nice.
I gained my composure for a few minutes and then took the pointed end of an awl and lightly removed the fat part of the bottom of the run and it somewhat flowed back in and looked fairly well. I did that a few times and it somewhat stabilized. On the sags, I did nothing. My plan was to let it flash off and then give it a "not so wet" second coat to see if I couldn't salvage the day.
I readjusted the paint flow of my gun knowing it must have been putting out way more paint than what I had realized and gave it coat #2 watching it real close and not applying any more paint than necessary to make it wet. It actually turned out better than what I had anticipated. You can see one slight sag but the runs and other visual sag spots flowed out and covered up nicely. Good thing I don't do this for a living!!
Here's a few pics of how they turned out.
I'm pretty happy with how they turned out considering the trouble I had. The second picture shows the reflection in the finished product. No orange peel this time.


Offline bake74

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #87 on: January 23, 2012, 07:43:25 AM »
     It looks great for what you described the truck is going to be used for.
#1: The easiest and most obvious solution to any problem is 99% of the time correct.
#2: There is no such thing as impossible, it just takes longer.
  74 k10, 77k10    Tom

Offline Sartobuilt

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #88 on: January 23, 2012, 09:46:13 AM »
You will do a better job than most bodyshops, Its yours and you care. The front of my truck was painted by my cousin and I. The bed was taken to a bodyshop because of the dents in the bed. There is more dirt and blemishes in the bed. Its amazing that we have WAY less dirt in the paint than a professional body shop. You wouldnt believe all the chipped paint arround the tailgate from him putting it on, looks like he dropped it. I showed him the chips and he was like oh, theres some paint left for touchup. Like he didnt notice them when he did it. He kept telling me how hes been doing bodywork for 40 years. I wanted to say Ive been doing this for about 3 months and you suck.

Keep up the nice work! You would be more upset if you paid someone to do the same thing.

Offline firefighter

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Re: 1976 Chevy Truck 3/4 ton 4x4 - 2nd rebuild
« Reply #89 on: January 23, 2012, 01:59:56 PM »
I really agree with you Sartobuilt.
When you're scrutinizing over the paint job you just did, you're looking closely for flaws and imperfections. Most people look at the vehicle as a whole and don't get nearly as close as we do.
The cheapest total paint job I could find locally was $2000. Any amount of imperfections I'm going to have in the paint job I do myself is way better to me than to spend that kind of money on a vehicle that will be used for what I'm going to use it for.
In all reality, when I get this truck out into the sun, I really think it's going to look pretty good.
It's amazing some "professionals" level of acceptance when doing a hired job. Sometimes it's better to do it yourself if you have the time to do it.

Thank you for the reply and for posting the picture of your truck. You should be proud of yours. It looks great.