'55 Ford F100 Body Mockup & Paint Prep - Truck Tech S3, E2

it came to us in boxes nearly two years ago but by the end of the day Jeremy and lt will have our F 102nd per paint today on truck tech it's the reassembly of a classic with custom fab you can use on your own projects today we're gonna make some progress on our 55 Ford f100 that's been kicking around the shop for quite a while but unfortunately like some of your projects at home this thing's been pushed to the side it's been worked on here and there but today will be the first time this truck will be completely assembled since it's been here in the shop since we're tired of seeing this thing sit around the shop we're gonna see if we can't get it mocked up ready for paint well let's just move a couple wires and let's start by getting the cab mounted to the frames the post-world War two f-series made its debut in 1948 and quickly became America's workhorse and decades later became the best-selling vehicle of all time it was a favorite among farmers contractors and do-it-yourselfers and today it's crime canvas for rebuilds they all gather here at the f100 Supernationals to swap stories and show off their labors of love to fellow enthusiasts ours was rescued from one of those enthusiasts who for one reason or another lost interest in bringing his 55 second gin back from the dead it's been here in our shop for quite a while haven't been picked up as an abandoned project which isn't uncommon for every finished truck you see on the road there are probably five or ten unfinished sitting in someone's barn or garage to freak open in our case it will be a great way to showcase all of the aftermarket goodies available for the f100 platform considerable effort went into chopping the top and assembling a variety of parts that were relatively straight and rust free and just as every house has to be built upon a strong foundation our Ford was no different we ditched the stock frame in favor of a JW rod garage frame for the Mustang two front suspension and a rear four link motivation is thanks to the sport performance twin-turbo 3.5 v6 which now sits in front of a Tremec five-speed manual transmission so despite the name project basket casing our overall theme is for a clean show-stopping truck that's also reliable as a daily driver that can also clean up on the autocross horse when called upon we want it to stand out from the crowd and with parts we hand-picked it should do just that but until we get this thing closer to where and some new paint it's just another piece of unfinished business one two three because the bodywork stage is so time-consuming go back a little bit we called in some reinforcements today we have Larry Harville and Bret Stevens from sticks rod shop they're here to help us catch up by the end of the day we hope to have the truck assemble antium primer spacious place the first step is to mock up the entire truck now we're having a little bit of a clearance issue with our upper coil over mount hitting the bottom of this wood so we made eight of these temporary spacers that will go back and make villain or something like that just to raise the bed up where we need it we're going to completely assemble the cab bed fenders grille and hood there are several reasons we need to do this we need to make sure all the gaps are set so we don't have any serious metal surgery to do after the primer secondly we need to take inventory of all the parts and make sure nothing is missing and we need to make clearance for our upper control arm here with our JW rod garage frame and our stock style inter fenders we just need to make a little cut be sure we have enough clearance for suspension travel [Music] [Applause] yes if we get it in there if the bolt doesn't go in get a bigger impact that's what you need to do we're making pretty good progress getting the body mocked up on the truck got the fenders on and the next step would have been to mount the hood but we've got a slight problem there's just no holes to mount the hinges to we're guessing somewhere along the way someone decided to run a one-piece tilt front end so they just welded the hole shut and got rid of them well we're not going to be doing that we want to run a conventional style hood so we've got to relocate those holes drill them out so we can mount the hinges and speaking of hinges we're gonna be using these Eddie motorsports billet aluminum pieces and they're pretty trick they've got roller bearings for pivots and they're gonna make mocking up the hood a hundred times easier than those old stock hinges luckily for us we can see the marks on the backside of this flange where the hood hinge mounting holes used to be I'm going to drill the holes from the backside and mount the hinge to the cab being sure to Center the bolts in the adjustment slots then I can mark exactly where the rear two handed mounts need to be and drill them out for the 5/16 bolt after Jeremy does the same thing on the other side we can test fit put this thing on since our original was rotted out we went to LMC truck and picked up an OE style hood they ripped them down just a little bit yep perfect now fitment probably isn't going to happen right off the first try it does take a little time and practice to get your gaps just right and get the hood exactly where you want it make a really good gap out of that next it's on to the prep booth for a bodywork mega thrashing we're back on truck tech lining up the body panels of our 55 Ford restomod all in all it took about a half hour to get the hood gaps right where we wanted them the bed side fenders create a different problem back in the day these gaps were filled with fender welt which collected moisture and caused rust guest body man Larry Harvey will close these gaps by moving some metal once we get it in the prep booth we're going to try to hammer and dolly this out worst case we'll have to cut it right in here and do a little well with the reassembly complete and our panels lined up we can move over to the prep booth and begin bodywork [Music] the fenders and hood comes shipped directly from lMC in this eco and for most of you guys at home it's ready to scuff and shoot but when you're building a full-on custom truck like we are we're gonna go ahead strip this stuff off and rough up our bare metal enough to get some good adhesion we're using angle grinders and orbital mud Buster's both with 36 grit again just to prep the metal to allow good adhesion for our filler material since these bed side panels are brand new they also need to be roughed up for the epoxy primer to stick once we get it in the boot 180 grit on a DA does the trick and our filler of choice is ever coat rage gold I like it because it's durable shrinkage is minimal and it sends very easily for every golf ball-sized a filler you need a piece size of hardener and the way I like to mix it is not to stir it in I pallet it in this helps prevent air bubbles when applying filler we're trying to pull a smooth tight even coat over the surface most of this will be sanded off so we're not gonna lay it on too heavy just a skim coat we couldn't get this truck in a primer this week without the help of Larry Harville and Bret Stevens Larry own sticks rod shop Savannah Tennessee where they specialize in restoration custom paint and complete fabrication of high-end rods like this unbelievable 55 Pontiac safari in Dupont Wedgwood green I worked with Larry for two years these guys work fast and efficiently here Larry will show us how to stretch the spinner gap without filler well the first thing we had to do is make a cut and that cut allows us to create a gap and then we'll go back and we tack it all back together and we do our grinding the reason we do this on an edge like that it's not a good thing to use any type of filler that might later crack through moving or chip off we try to do close up all the gaps the best we can with the steel itself when we came in and seeing what we were going to be working on we're excited we like doing redstone mods we really enjoy them do a lot of them at our shop when I seen the quality of what jeremy has done I was impressed and we've enjoyed doing what we've done we want to make it nice since we're here and working on somehow I talk mr. engineer LT into slinging some filler I think he's a little more comfortable with a timing light in his hair if you're looking to get into bodywork I have one suggestion stay away from it run as far as you can unless you really like punishing yourself which I don't dear Madhu I gonna let this tack up a little bit longer yeah give it just a little bit long for what it's ready but [Music] you know the one thing I can relate to is the crosshatch pattern just like what you want to achieve when you're holding a cylinder next what's blown apart goes back together again with the major pieces bodyworked Larry and Brett will disassemble the bed and get the sides and cake ready for primer by first decreasing the entire surface removing any oil and dirt then scuff it with 180 grit before the pieces get a few coats of primer [Music] there's a few different variables when it comes to primers so do a little research and definitely read the back of your cancel you know what you have because some primers aren't direct to metal like what we're gonna use here this is a high build polyester primer and it requires an epoxy so we'll lay down a coat of this stuff first give us that he's you we need with the bedsides rear fenders and hood in the booth and prepped we can mix up some epoxy primer this is PPG's DP 50 that mixes two to one with an activator all it takes is one wet coat to get everything covered and it will give us remarkable adhesion after about a twenty minute flash time we can mix up our ever Coach slicks and polyester surfaces it mixes one activator tube per quart I like to lay down three medium to wet coats of this primer each coat gives us anywhere from two to four mils of thickness spring with a two O tip at about 35 psi so after those few coats you have plenty of material on the panel to block them laser straight now we went ahead and rolled the truck back into the shot to give us room in the prep booth we've got about half of the parts Prime and we're gonna go ahead and get the rest in there and see if we can finish up right now we're gonna lay some guide coat down on these panels to start dr locking there's two different types of guide coat you have your your wet guy coat which is an aerosol can or you have your drag-out coat which is in a like a powder form it's all a preference on how you want to do it my preference is the air so can it all works the same you block it down till you see your filler or your metal if you still have your low place yet come back and smear it with a little putty again the grille from our 55 f100 came from the factory in several different pieces with a bunch of chrome trim attached to it now that really doesn't match the look that we're going for we want something that's nice and smooth and low-key there's not going to be a bit of chrome on this entire truck what that means for us is we've got to fill each and every one of the holes that the chrome trim attached to we're also gonna weld shut all these ugly gaps they're just not gonna work for us well then get it off to bodywork and in a primer in order to fill the trim holes in this grille I'm just gonna use a MIG welder set on a really low heat setting and just weld the hole shut when I'm starting to fill a hole I start at the edge and I make really small beads now the reason for this is because it's so easy to melt through and then when you burn through an edge you just are chasing it farther and farther and farther back so again I start with very little beads at a time now once I've established the first bead on the edge of the hole I can start building up a little bit more heat and it weld a little bit longer this way you can almost melt the filler together and make a smoother finished product now comes the fun part we've got to shape those welds that we just laid down to hold this whole piece together and just like any dentist has a whole tray full of different tools a good body man will have the same things I've got an angle grinder here with a really thin cutoff disc that'll help me get into those really fine areas I've got a couple different die grinders with different shaped bits that will help me make a little bit of a radius and lastly I've got a pair of air-powered grinders with 36 grit paper on them to make everything nice and smooth and remember the point is to make everything as good as you possibly can so all you need is a skim coat of filler just to take care of the little imperfections [Music] now with everything in primer we can start reassembly and recheck all of our fitment a project like this on the show black truck tech I think it's going to get people to understand it don't take a lifetime to learn to do this but it should be a lifetime goal to be able to do this so in what four days the bodywork to bed all the fenders the hood braid will get them in primer it's a big job and mocked it up before we got going us it's quite an accomplishment to do in four days well I get ready to go home obviously see my little girl still had a flush mount custom taillights when truck tech continues now this is a roll pan we picked up for our 55 f100 from lMC Truck we're gonna go ahead and weld this thing in but before we do that we've got these flush mount LEDs we want to add that's been laying around the shop for a while I felt like you to give it a good custom touch first we'll start off by finding the center of our taillight lens itself after that we'll find the center of the roll pan between the license plate box and the end of the roll pin then we know we've got the to center we'll find a nice location we like from the top and measure down once we do that we'll take our template and trace out the line we will lay out a couple of tape lines so we know we get good accurate cuts [Music] then we'll test fit our lens to make sure we have a good tight fit now these channels come in one late and they're a little bit too long for what we need so we're gonna head over to the bandsaw and cut them down a little bit we need to drill a couple of holes in our channel for our tooth bolts and with a good fit we're ready to attack our bolts in once we know we've got it all where we want it we'll pull the channel back off and burn the bolts in for good now we can put it all together [Music] now these taillights it's starting to look really good with just a little bit of work now there are a lot of different options we could have went with with taillights but we thought this gave us the cleanest look and we opted for these clear lenses because when we paint the truck we're gonna use a transparent paint that kind of hides them completely but when the taillights or brake lights come on that we just as bright as anything else on the road it's starting to look really good it'll be awesome now that I've got the grille welded up and ground pretty smooth I'm gonna apply a quick layer of this direct metal aluminum reinforced filler to the seams that I've welded just to take care of any last pinholes that might be remaining I'm not gonna try to build up any amount of thickness here again this is just a small thin coat just like in your garage we've got parts in this shop that need to be cleaned - and they Scott heavy-duty shop towels they hold together longer and they absorb more than your average towel in fact there are three times stronger when wet than their originals we soak the Scott heavy-duty shop towel and a generic brand shop towel with brake cleaner how well do they both support this 10 pound wheel hub well you be the judge plus you can rinse out the Scott heavy-duty and reuse it again they're available at most automotive retailers ever wish you had more than just a one or five gallon can of gas around the shop at the same time well Summit Racing has the solution to that problem with the fuel chief line of steel and poly gas caddies they're polyethylene fuel cart is DOD approved gravity-fed and designed for storing and transferring fuel to boats generators four-wheelers and of course lawn equipment this 25 gallon steel unit is ul listed and OSHA approved and is perfect for small auto repair shops making fuel transfer safe and easy with this top mounted pump both are available at summitracing.com I've got the roll pan all welded in and it's looking really good along with the taillights but I think we'll change these amber LEDs out to some red ones now we've accomplished a lot in a short amount of time by getting this truck all mocked up and inner primer I'd like to give a special thanks to Larry and Brett from Styx rod shop their help and skill was invaluable getting the truck to where it is today we've also installed the grill on the truck and I think we could just barely see the finishing line you know it's kind of off in the distance yeah and the next time you guys see this truck we'll get the turbos all mocked up along with hopefully getting it into paint like a body guy to you yet I just don't think that's possible how man you're doing really good no thanks I guess it's gonna be a good-looking truck it will

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 643,822

Rating: 4.6942811 out of 5

Keywords: Automotive;, Cars;, Vehicles;, How-To;, Auto, News;, Howto;, How, To;, DIY;, Car, Tips, ford, f100

Id: eZVKPlu48E4

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2019