My '95 RCLB C1500

I was pulled away from the truck last Friday by a basement flood and emergency french drain install. So I haven't managed to get a finish coat on the doors yet.

But I did manage to get a few coats of body filler on the bedside. I use different colours of hardener between passes to help differentiate coats.

Also got my tailgate cleaned up and temporarily installed. I'll be sanding and priming the tailgate alongside the box, so most of the hardware has been left out.
This is the first time the truck has had a tailgate in about five years. Feels good!

Also took ten minutes and swapped my cloudy turn signal housings for some new ones. The old ones were well past their expiration date. They're Taiwanese parts, but at least they're nice and clear.

I'm still impressed with how much better the cheap TYC turn signals and taillights make WCJr look. Your truck is already looking good!

Cleaned up the glass and the inner door guts. They were a little gross.


Dyed the existing inner door handles to match the rest of the interior trim, duplicolor black.


Painted the door sills and inner door skin.


Assembled the door and the inner latch. Leaving the outer one off for exterior painting.

Now the dust from all the body work can stay on the outside of the vehicle, instead of mucking up my new seat.

Also figured out when I was monkeying with the steering column a while back, I got mixed up and put my steering wheel back on upside down. Oops. Got that fixed in about ten minutes, so no harm done.

Ran into some issues installing the passenger side inner door card. I couldn't get the window to move!

After I took the motor and regulator apart on the bench, it's easy to see why. Whatever seal was on the motor had failed, the motor had rusted and seized internally.


Also during testing to confirm motor failure I discovered the switch output voltage to the motor was intermittently low, 3.4 volts vs the expected 12. So I got a set of new switches too.
The driver's side is GM brand, the passenger is Rostra. As far as I can tell, they're the same quality.

New AC Delco motor bolted onto the regulator. I ended up switching these nuts out for some low profile nuts designed for furniture assembly. These jamb nuts were too tall and hit the inner door piece so the regulator wouldn't seat correctly. A little dab of weld between the nut and bolt made sure it's not coming apart.

Had to contend with some warping of the bedside. I didn't do a good enough job bracing it when I cut and welded the patch there were some wobbles in the weld line. I used this string line to give me a guide for a smooth side.



The biggest issue I had was one I caused myself. I pulled a dent in the bedside. It was really stubborn, so I used a come-along to really yank on the sucker. Got the dent out wonderfully, but the panel flexed and dimpled in the wheel arch. To fix it, I made a few relief cuts, reshaped the arch, welded the cuts closed and smoothed it out with the body filler.



A quick guide coat out of some paint that Canadian Tire had on sale. A little more sanding and filling evened it out and finally wrapped up the box body work.

Jacked the truck up so I wouldn't have to bend as much to work on the door bottom. Got my patch piece feathered out and looking right.



The truck has been in bondo purgatory for entirely too long. But I've basically wrapped it up now; once a coat of primer goes on I'll see if it needs a little spot putty.

Masking the glass off now, I figure I'll etch prime everywhere there's bare metal and lay down some high-build primer over everything, except where I have already finish coated.

Everything important masked off, final sand done, all wiped down and ready to paint. I have some cut-down pool noodles wedged in the gap between the cab and box so I don't muck up the finish coat in that area.

I know it looks horrible, but I swear it's supposed to be like this. The etch primer has a 0.3mil build, so everything shows through.


The painting ran long, so I had to bust out the work lights again. But no breeze, lower humidity than the daytime. So about as ideal of conditions as you get for painting outside.


After the etch priming on the bare metal, I laid down two coats of some medium build primer surfacer over the whole thing.


Pretty happy with how it turned out. The grey primer did highlight a few dings I still have to hit with some spot putty. All minor stuff, easily fixed.

Joseph's technicolour dream truck is no more!

They joys of an acreage....my neighbor's would have a coronary if I painted mine outside!
And im sure I wouldn't appreciate if they did that either.
Looks like you're making great progress.
What color you going with?
Or is it a surprise?

Drunkcanuk said:

They joys of an acreage....my neighbor's would have a coronary if I painted mine outside!
And im sure I wouldn't appreciate if they did that either.
Looks like you're making great progress.
What color you going with?
Or is it a surprise?

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I could have painted inside the shop, but setting up a temporary booth is too much of a pain. It is nice being out away from everyone else though.
It helps that our neighbours are cool, too. Nobody complains when the compressor kicks in at midnight, or about the noise when you're fabricating tractor parts for them at cost.

I'm going with a basic gloss black, GM paint code 41. "Black onyx"

Canadian Rust Bucket said:

Hello all,
I have some recent pictures of my day spent reinstalling the cab on the project truck after a complete upper and lower cab mount replacement. Turns out I can read a tape measure, 'cause it all lined up. (I'm really happy about that, it was a serious point of concern)

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Here she is painted and on the scaffold waiting to roll back into the garage

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After I rolled it in, and cleaned off the garbage pile I accumulated on the frame. You can see the cab is airborne above the scaffold, held up by the winch on the ceiling.

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Cab and frame reunited, no issues. Gotta love when a plan comes together.

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Side view. Shows my floor pan, rocker, cab corners and cab mount replacements didn't botch the job.

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Waiting to drive out of the shop!

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Your garage is what my garage wants to be when it grows up!

jd33173 said:

Your garage is what my garage wants to be when it grows up!

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Thanks! It's not quite done, but it's getting close. I'll be adding strapping and metal siding to the interior walls (for ease of cleaning) this fall. Also looking into upgrading the tool boxes for about 30 feet of workbench with storage underneath. Right now the benches are a mixed collection of scavenged stuff. A few extra 20 amp circuits for the big power tools... Once I get the truck road-ready I'll be focusing on getting the shop upgrades done.