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CK5
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How the truck sat the day I bought it.
The day I brought it into the garage. I had my work cut out for me at this point.
Removed the doors, fenders, and hood. Lifted the carpet and observed the full extent of the rust. The rockers were completely shot as were the quarter panel arches. The driver and passenger floor pans where they meet with the kick panels had also seen better days. The areas by the seatbelt retractor on the floor were also in bad shape.
Cut out as much of the rot in the floor pans as I felt comfortable with and cut out the rockers entirely as well as the area of the quarter panels that was unsalvageable in preparation for welding the patches. I left as much of the inner quarter panels as possible to retain some of the support that they provide. I used an air needle scaler on the tough stuff and hit the area with rust reformer. I did my best to give myself plenty of good metal to weld new metal to.
Cut, fit, and welded sheet metal in the floor pan for the areas that needed replaced. Filled in the gaps and refined the welds after these pics were taken. This was my first time ever welding (especially sheet metal). I used a Harbor Freight flux core welder, so the welds are seriously ugly but feel solid.
I cut a set of replacement rockers I had to fit in the areas that I had removed. I ordered the extended wheel arches from LMC Truck and cut these to fit in the areas I had removed on the quarters. The rocker replacement went surprisingly well, I used the measure twice cut once philosophy. There was quite a bit of guesswork involved with this part, but I found that taking off small bits of material at a time helped a lot.
The quarters were a different story. I took off too much material on the driver side patch and ended up having to weld in an extra strip all the way across the top. Had quite a bit of warping but got it in the end.
Ground the welds in prep for body filler and paint.
The quarters were a different story. I took off too much material on the driver side patch and ended up having to weld in an extra strip all the way across the top. Had quite a bit of warping but got it in the end.
Ground the welds in prep for body filler and paint.
Next, I added filler in the areas that needed it, sanded the body, and masked everything in preparation for paint. Sprayed the body with primer (no pictures, sorry) and laid down the first layer of blue for the two-tone.
I did this the night before I left town for a 6-week work trip and did a slapdash job of it as you can tell from the pictures. I had plenty of time to re-evaluate while I was out of town and decided to fix the mess I made on the quarters and re-do the first layer of paint when I got home.
I did this the night before I left town for a 6-week work trip and did a slapdash job of it as you can tell from the pictures. I had plenty of time to re-evaluate while I was out of town and decided to fix the mess I made on the quarters and re-do the first layer of paint when I got home.
Here are some pics from after the body filler re-do and how it sat before the final coats of paint plus the last-minute patch on the tailgate.
Pics after finishing the paint on the body. I used Rustoleum Harbor Blue and Pure White for the two tone here. I know paint sprayers are super cheap these days, but my compressor isn't up to the task, and I didn't want to buy a bigger one just for this. I used rattle cans and a clip-on trigger handle which actually worked a treat. The durability of this paint job is still to be determined but I was just happy to be making progress.
Here I've got the truck mostly assembled and the hard top removed for installation of the Softopper soft top. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the painting process on the doors, fenders, and hood. I used the spares I received in the purchase of the truck as they were in much better shape than the original stuff.
Installed the soft top, lights, bumpers, and interior to make the truck drivable. Here are some pics from her first trip out of the garage in 7 months.
At this point life got busy: weddings, vaction, etc. The truck sat for about a month and a half before I added the finishing touches. After nearly 8 months the spray paint I ordered to re-finish the wheels showed up which gave me the energy to finally finish her. Prepped and sprayed the wheels with Krylon Dull Aluminum and installed the molding.
And here is how she sits today. There are still two rust areas on the rear corners of the bed that need to be addressed but I plan to tackle that in the winter or spring as I need to remove the interior to install the sound deadening material anyways. I've wheeled this truck a few times over the years, but I have plans to make it more capable than it is now so up next is mechanical maintenance and upgrades. Thanks for checking out my build! Comments and criticism are welcome.
Great work, I saw your post on FB Amercian k5
Coming onboard strong! Nice work. It looks killer.
I like it! Also saw your post on Facebook as I was going to suggest checking out ck5 lol.
Thanks Wes!
Appreciate it @ZooMad75, happy to be here!
Good to see you here @78SWB that’s a sweet rig you’ve got man
