Ground Up Restoration "Stormin Norman Tank"

Always spread the het around, don’t stick to one spot longer than 1/2 3-4 of an inch, and tacks lots of tacks, every vehicle has a skiff of bondo, expect some warpage, but spreading the heat around will reduce that, especially if you let the area cool to touch before coming back to it, after each weld peen the weld to get the finished or desired contour your looking for with a auto body hammer and dolly, placing the dolly in behind to absorb the energy and force the material to move in the way you want it to.

 

Shop cleanup tomorrow, get it spun around so the passenger side can be hacked and slashed, maybe start that tomorrow, we will see

 

Definitely did Bucket! I didn’t like how it was done before, you Definitely Do Not Need as many spot welds as I put on this project, at this point I could likely jack off the cab corner

 

You know you always got to have a few bucks put away for those deals. You know those deals that look to good to be real? You look, and then come back and keep looking at it and say fuck it and pull pin on it. I was on my local FB Marketplace and I found one of those, dude on there had no story just this brand new GM licensed stamped CHEVROLET tailgate, it was up there for 300$ CDN (220$ USD), I couldn’t believe I saw it on there for two weeks, contact this dude apparently, he bought from LMC for 545$ CDN (389$ USD) and didn’t ensure what he was buying as it was for not his build of a 73 GEN 1 Blazer, he saw the stamp and pulled pin on it and it showed up and said FFS. Anyways check it out !
Managed to pick it up for only 275$CDN (205$ USD)

 

Well and a cup of Timmies 1/1

 

Good morning, late start but here we go again!

 

Alrighty... remember “Big Parts Win Hearts” - meaning it looks like a lot but you’ll learn some valuable lessons cutting the first side apart slowly, that first side took me 4 or five weekends to cut cautiously apart. Once you do right, then you can visualize where to cut and not end up cutting into cross members and supports all this took me two hours to cut out today.

 

Lay out pieces over your planned replacement panel area, mark it out and don’t be too too concerned about perfect, after doing the first side - nothings going be perfect, you want to build a show have at er, but end of the day I want it last look like 7 or 8 out 10.

Even the NASA Hubble telescope wasn’t perfect, and it took nearly 2 years to repair and still wasn’t perfect ( likely because they turned it on and found aliens - umm - I mean, because it wasn’t perfect )

Anyways, cut and stay about a 1” away from your initial marks, “it’s a lot easier to be lookin at it, then for it” meaning you can always trim little bits.

 

Once you gain access to the inner paneling things get a little more interest, learn to have finesse with a the grinder cutoff wheel, let the grinder do the work for you , don’t press down to hard. If you can do this it will reduce your time, locate the spot welds and lightly cut into them with a 6 or 8 point cross. Then slowly work a flat screw driver in between the sandwiched panels and peel it up an out.

 

Be prepared, your going to forget some things as you go, so be ok doing butt welds to fix your mistakes.

Again not a show vehicle, just a guy who knows enough to get himself into a 5 year project that takes 10!

 

I’ll write more about but this is where I am at currently and I want to continue to get things cut apart.

 

Think I’m going to have to do a little investigation as to where this water is coming in, Dad had converted this 1979 C30 into a 1981-87 but had to drill and cut upper portions of the cowling for the hinges, but as much as I want to believe that it could be from the broken seals and lenses on the upper clearance lights.

 

Been an eventful evening! Got some final cuts setup, found way more rust than I wanted though unfortunately. Slowly peeling the panels back to gain access to the old spot welds and then cut them off with a zip cut wheel on a grinder.

 

So much rust! Jaysus!!!