1966 F100 Short Bed Styleside Metal/Body/Paint Work

[theastronaut]

That's some damn fine workmanship going into that truck!

The work you do is just outstanding !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks!!


Does anyone near the upstate South Carolina area have a junk cab with a good roof skin? This one had something fall across the roof and do a lot of damage which I was planning on straightening but after looking over it closer Friday there is rust coming from the inside out near the driprail seam on both sides. A few areas have already rusted all the way through and poking it with a carbide scribe finds more weak spots along the edge, so it will be best to take the skin off and replace it. I have found a cab locally but it's too nice to cut up. PM me if you have a cab/roof or know of one nearby!

Started making a patch for the door bottom.

 

['68 Coronet R/T]

Ouch! That roof skin has taken a beating.

 

[theastronaut]

Yeah its pretty rough. Hoping to find a replacement fairly soon before I need to stick the cab back on the frame.

 

[dhutton01]

Not close but I could go take a look at this for you if you don’t find one.

1966 Ford PU Parts Truck

They have several of similar years.

C.T.C. Auto Ranch Parts Cars Ford Trucks / Vans

Don

 

[theastronaut]

Not close but I could go take a look at this for you if you don’t find one.

1966 Ford PU Parts Truck

They have several of similar years.

C.T.C. Auto Ranch Parts Cars Ford Trucks / Vans

Don

Thanks Don, I appreciate that offer! We're hoping to find one locally, but if we can't a roof from a Texas cab sounds like a good option.

 

[theastronaut]

More door work.

The driver side inner door skin was cracked around the window felt area so I realigned the panel and welded it back together.

To keep it from cracking again I bent shaped a 3/16" rod to fit inside in the corner out of the way of the felt clips. I only welded it to the inner flange so there won't be any "ghosting" of the welds showing through the paint later on.

Corner finished.

 

[theastronaut]

Digging deeper into the roof rust. This is looking from the inside over the door top.

I cut out a section over the door to see inside better...

Not good, so I started cutting the roof off. I trimmed right above the seam across the back of the cab to make easy access to the inner spot welds.

I cut higher up on the sides, this shows the layers as they are when the roof is assembled- nowhere for condensation to escape between the inner and outer layers, and once the seam sealer degrades water comes in and gets between the layers.

After cutting the spot welds loose from the driprail. This wasn't far away from coming through.

The driprail flange was also in rough shape so I drilled out those spot welds and removed the drip rails down the sides.

Driprails removed, ready for blasting and epoxy.

I never liked the crimped on joint cover connecting the front and side pieces, so I cut though it when I separated the side driprails from the front. There was rust under the outer corners of the front driprail so I cut those out too. I'm going to check out a free parts truck tomorrow about 45 min away, hopefully the roof skin is straight enough to use. I'm not too worried about rust in the seams like this one had, it'll be easy to replace the flat sides since they're easy to fab, and it needs to come apart like this one to get at all the inner rust between layers.

 

[crashtech]

Oh, man. That's hard to look at!

 

[chevman]

Your work is very impressive, the details make the difference. I'm wondering how that EZ-Slide Graphite coating is working out on the leaf springs, I noticed that truck in 2013 had it.

 

[theastronaut]

Oh, man. That's hard to look at!

This is one area I wish I only had to look at it on a computer screen lol

Your work is very impressive, the details make the difference. I'm wondering how that EZ-Slide Graphite coating is working out on the leaf springs, I noticed that truck in 2013 had it.

Thanks! The other F100 doesn't get out much, and apart from the initial test drives and delivering it to the owner I really don't have any feedback on the EZ Slide, and no before/after tests or anything like that. I did drive a '65 C10 and the F100 back to back and the Chevy with the original progressive coil springs in the rear was a much more comfortable ride (just throwing that out there for the Ford vs Chevy argument lol).

I do use it on our rotisseries so the tubing slides in and out easily when adjusting the height and it helps a lot there- no sticking or binding. I didn't like it on the slides on my old tool box though, but I might have put it on too thick.

 

[theastronaut]

I posted a wanted ad for a roof or cab last week and had someone contact me about a '66 that they just wanted hauled off. It ended up having a usable roof and was only 45 min away. Got the roof cut off and separated the roof skin and drip rails from the inner bracing yesterday.

We decided to eliminate the seam across the back of the roof for a couple reasons; it's in the middle of the wing shaped body line in the b-pillar and takes away from that shape, and it'll save time compared to separating the flanges on both roofs, blasting, shaping the flanges so they both match up 100%, and then the time of evenly shaping the seam sealer during bodywork. I was able to trim the roof skin along that seam to take the minimal amount off, and I'll do the same on the cab, but that still means the roof skin will either need a filler strip or the roof skin needed to drop down about 3/16". A filler strip would mean double the distortion from warping so that's not a good idea. From cutting the old roof skin off, there was no way to cleanly separate the roof skin from the drip rail by drilling spot welds; there just wasn't enough flange material left after all the drilling and chiseling and prying. So I thought it would be best to trim the flange in the corner of the 90* bend and move up about 3/16" and tip the edge of the roof to make a new flange.

Roof cut off, flange still on the drip rail.

Removing the flange by grinding through the spot welds without disturbing the drip rail underneath.

Drilling the spot welds out, being extra careful to not bend or warp the flange when chiseling the two layers apart. I sacrificed the inner brace by hammering it away from the drip rail flange instead of pulling the flange away from the inner brace. I'm pretty happy with the way these came apart, they'll fit the cab nicely since they're not warped up from the separation process. I struggled to get the old drip rails off so I really took my time with the replacements.

Front section- the first pic is with the spot welds 99% separated so it's sitting there with it's own weight holding it in place- zero distortion on the flange. Again, really happy with these results after the driprails on the first cab didn't separate well at all.

All off, ready for blasting and epoxy.

 

[theastronaut]

I blasted the inner roof rails and drip rails this week, taking care to get the pitted areas really clean. If you've ever blasted rusted metal that has deeper/thick rust pits you'll wonder why POR-15 and similar products are so popular... the really bad rust isn't growing on the surface where you're painting and a "converter" or "paint over rust" product isn't going to help anything at that point.

One big thing that I wanted to address while the roof was apart was to do away with the welded clip that ties the front and side drip rails together. The factory left this area pretty rough with the two sections misaligned.

To start I used the factory line-up slots to position the front drip rail. The factory spot welds were also in identical locations between this cab and the donor cab.

I cut a section out of the old drip rails and used it to lengthen the side rail.

Loosely assembled to mark the front rail for trimming.

The fit at the A pillar wasn't the best from the factory.

I used a pair of end nippers to twist the end of the front drip rail into alignment with the side rail and tacked the two together.

Fully welded and welds smoothed.

I forgot to drill plug weld holes where the factory left out some spot welds, so I used the cut off wheel to grind small channels to plug weld.

I used a rounded over chisel to tighten up the fit of the drip rail to A-pillar fit.

Driver side finished. Having both pieces in-line and one piece now will go a long way in creating a clean and even door gap against the drip rail, and the seam sealer will look much neater with an even gap between the drip rail and the main roof rail.

 

[theastronaut]

I'm still making progress, just been too busy to post lately. We have a good friend who's having to retire and move out of his shop due to health issues that recently popped up. We've been going over to help him sell off his tools/equiptment in the evenings so I've been getting home well after 10pm most nights. Just now getting a chance to upload pics for an update.

The new roof skin needed a flange turned to mount it to the drip rails, so I folded the edge about 3/8" wide.

Vice Grip pads had the right diameter so I used those to hammer against in the front corners.

Didn't take pics, but the roof was blasted where necessary and the outside was stripped by soaking the paint in lacquer thinner covered with plastic, then 95% of the old paint scraped off easily with a razor blade.

After stripping there were some dents to fix. I used wax and grease remover to make the surface reflective, and the overhead light's reflection as an indicator to show the damage for pics. I used a hammer/dolly, shrinking disk, and plexiglass sanding block to find the high/low spots.

After initial straightening- overall shape is correct but was still wavy/choppy from smaller imperfections. Next few pics are from a few rounds of hammer/dolly and shrinking disk work. The shrinking disk really speeds up this process by shrinking down the high spots.

Rotated to check the reflection using the tree limbs outside. Pics don't show this but watching the reflection while moving around the panel will show high/low spots easily.

Waves found using the reflection check method.

High/low spots after blocking to show exactly where to hammer/dolly.

With the roof straightened I moved to fitting the newly shaped flange to the drip rails with the shrinker/stretcher. Quite a bit of difference in the beginning vs end shapes compared to the straight ruler. I also split the corners to allow the sides to conform to the drip rail positions better. Dropping the roof ~3/8" meant it needed to be widened slightly.

 

[theastronaut]

Inner roof structure and drip rail flange coated with two coats of SPI epoxy.

Roof skin mocked up to roughly mark the back edge for trimming. I cut out the original flanged seam, then clamped the roof back in place and scribed the edge of the roof skin for trimming with hand shears... good forearm workout.

I also checked the fit across the sides and front while mocking up the roof skin and made notes to shrink/stretch the flange to fit the drip rail contours better. Lots of on/off and small adjustments to the the shape corrected.

I noticed how rough the pinchweld was on the last '66 F100 we restored, and this one was no different. Most spotwelds were twisted and the edges of the flanges were very rough and uneven. I flattened the twisted areas with a hammer/dolly and ground the edges even and smooth with a 2" grinder. Also slightly rounded over the edge so installing the windshield will go smoother.


Before-

After-

 

[theastronaut]

The A-pillar to upper windshield frame fit was really bad, so I made a relief cut to allow for reshaping, then welded up the cut and seam.

Same issue with the lower seams.

 

[theastronaut]

Initial fitting of the roof took awhile to get the rear edge lined up exactly flush with the lower part of the cab. Once it was in place I made a few tacks, then had to reshape the body line on both sides for a flowing shape through the two panels.

The sides had uneven shapes meeting at the seam from top to bottom.

Adjusting the tightest part of the roll in the body line.

Fixing an overlap from the metal being stretched out due to reshaping.

The slow process of a row of tacks, then planishing the tacks, grinding them nearly flat, and repeating until it's welded solid.

Welds flattened with 36 grit, taking care not to cut deeply into the surrounding area.

36 grit scratches removed with 100 grit.

DA sanded with 60 grit to prep for epoxy.

 

[theastronaut]

Details- the seam that was eliminated ran into the end of the drip rail, and the roof skin flange was overhanging the end of drip rail a bit. The inside corner of the roof skin flange also didn't fit tightly against the drip rail, or the lower panel.

Inside corner tightened up with a rounded chisel and hammer.

Seam welded closed.

I also welded the roof flange to the drip rail so they wouldn't have a chance of separating later and cracking the paint.

Initial smoothing with 36 grit and a cutoff wheel for the tight corner.

100 grit.

DA sander.

Roof skin flanges welded via plug welds with a bit too much penetration.

Antenna hole was filled in.

 

[texasking]

Beautiful art work.

 

[theastronaut]

Beautiful art work.

Thanks!!

I want to assemble all of the sheetmetal on the frame next to start panel alignment. That means I need door hinges, and the old ones needed attention. The driver side upper was really worn, as was the lower and passenger upper. The passenger side lower seemed pretty tight but it was packed full of old hardened grease that could make it seem tighter than it actually was so I pulled apart as well.


Before- caked on grease, misshaped door check levers, and worn out pins and bores.

Stamps to keep track of the individual parts.

New oversized pins. I bought a tapered reamer set which included a .3400 to .3740 reamer which worked well with .373" pins.

Blasted all pieces.

Since the reamer is tapered I could set the inner diameter of the hinge brackets slightly smaller than the pins so the pin won't become loose in the bore.

The mounting flanges had a lot of raised edges from the stamping and tapping processes so I flattened those down.

The last F100 I restored had wide/loose notches on the stop arm which let the door move excessively on the stops. There was also a "ramp" shape on the stop to hold the door fully open which put the roller in a bind and made the door "pop" when closing it off the stop. These were the same way.

Original shape of the ramps-

New shape. I had to weld one ramp to get the shape corrected. The "V" shape holds the door tightly in each stop position with no free play, and the flat ramps allow the roller to smoothly come out of the stops without binding.

Another problem- the stop arm bottomed out on the hinge body, which let the roller separate from the ramps so the door moved freely. I ground away the edge a little to make more room for the arm to correct this.

Finished and reassembled, ready to test fit the doors.

Video showing before/after reworking the stop arm ramps.

 

[theastronaut]

The door bottoms needed to be cut out to repair rust damage, and to extend the flange. There are back to back 90* bends that are only 1/4" apart and my brake only does a minimum of 3/8" apart. The logical thing to do is buy a milling machine to help make dies for the Pullmax, then make door bottom dies... right?


We actually bought a Bridgeport about a month ago but hadn't set it up yet. So I bought a pallet jack to move it, a few things to get the mill up and running, and had to dissasemble and clean the vise it came with before I could start making anything with it.

It came with a Kurt vise but it was filthy inside and out. Ended up having to boil it in Purple Power to loosen up the crud enough that it could be scraped off.

After deep cleaning, filing/stoning any high spots down, and repainting it.

In it's temporary spot, ready for work.

The Pullmax uses 22mm posts so I bought 1" bar and machined it down to size.

I also cut a quick tool post alignment jig. I'll make a real one out of aluminum eventually.

First lower die attempt. The right side is a plain 90 to hold in place a 90 that I pre-bent in the brake. The ramped left side progressively stamps the second 90. This design didn't have the correct shape ramp so it distorted the work piece.

Version 2 using a twisted steel bar instead to fully support the flange being folded over. This worked much better.

For the test runs I stuck sandpaper on the test panel and slid it in and out by hand with the machine off to show any high spots on the dies. High spots thin out and stretch the work piece and cause distortion.

The finished part with matching 1/4" offset between the 90's.

Welded in and welds smoothed.