Thread: 53 Is back from the Body Shop

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Originally Posted by 53 Chevy5

I think I hit a wall this week, hard to get myself to work on the pickup seat. Right now I am doing a bit of mudding on the seat frame and I hate every minute of body work. I can't say I do a bad job, the panels are straight when I'm done and I can lay paint pretty flat. That being said I think I would rather have a tooth pulled without Novocaine than do body work. Did I mention I hated body work? I tell you how much, I would rather accidentally sew my butt cheeks together than sand body filler.

I know that pain! The body work and the dentist!

And I also dread doing that and going there..

One side mostly done and had to add a bit more filler to the other side and spray some high build primer. I am not going for perfectly flat on this part, mainly just smooth and to get rid of some hammer dents and grinder marks. I don't see the correct emoji to represent how I feel about body work.

That looks darn nice from here!

Objects in primer are more wavy than they appear.

Yeah, what Ryan said.. Darn nice looking, you're doing great work.

I had an engineering problem with the fuel tank and the bed rails, the tank somehow got too high. I found the best fix was to turn the tank around and trim the brace as needed. The fill will be on the pass side now but I can live with that.

I had to add a brace in the back to spread the frame back out a bit so the box holes would line up. Apparently when you box a frame, all the welding shrinks stuff up a bit. It worked out well because it covered up the fuel tank a bit also.

It's easy to buy new stuff all the time but If the original part is realistically usable again, I like to put it back on the pickup. This tale gate hinge was one of those parts, it was previously welded up and cracked again. I ground it out and welded it up again so it has new life again.

I finally swapped out my exhaust manifold that was cracked. I would have replaced it earlier but I waited until I found a good one at a decent price. My engineering on that part worked out good, wasn't too bad of a pain to do now.

Cleaned up the bed strips, not sure if it is a good idea to use the original ones or not. Kinda like a little history put back in the pickup but they do have some character in them. I'm not out a lot if it turns out I want new ones.

The originals might add some rustic oldtime character to the truck while not taking much away worth a side by side photo! Would look stunning against Quarter sawn white oak!

Nice work. The last bed floor I did all the bed floor strips had issues. I just got new ones after spending too much time cutting and repairing the old ones. Yours look nicer than what I had though.

Way nicer than my bed rails. I went with quarter inch diamond plate steel.

“…..I'm not out a lot if it turns out I want new ones……”

You’ll pretty much know for sure which way to go once you set them in on the wood before you get them bolted down on whether you like them or not. Then the fun of getting all the bolts in and tightened begins


At least all your holes are there. My 37 Dodge originally had an all steel bed. Somewhere along the way the steel floor was cut out and when I bought it the floor consisted of a rotted sheet of plywood. I kicked around using a sheet of aluminum diamond plate for the new floor but have pretty much decided on doing a wood floor instead. I’ve found a source for blank (undrilled) bed strips, but will have to drill holes in all the cross braces under the floor and then thru the bed strips to bolt everything together…….really looking forward to that


Anyway really nice progress on the truck


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Did a more blasting today, I think that is all of it now but I'm sure it's not. After I got done with that and everything picked up again I started to sand up the tailgate and when my comperssor kicked in, the motor just hummed and smoked. That was towards the end of the day so it wasn't the end of the world. I had a bearing squealing on the motor on and off for a few years now, but I'm sure it's not related I also found out that I need to move my rear axle back a bit to be in the center of the rear fenders. I am pretty sure I put it where the old one was but when I look at pics of originals, it does look like the wheel favors the front of the fender like mine is. I think as long as I am cutting everything off I am going to put a four link with coil overs on the rear. My budget is just about in the yellow for this thing but now is the time to change if I'm going to.