Body Language

In early 1947, General Motors came out with a totally redesigned pickup which they called the Chevrolet version "Advanced Design" and the GMC ones were called "New Design".  GM was the first pickup builder to make a 6' cab that could actually fit three adults.

Early 1947 Art Deco GMC

 Late 1947 New Design GMC

There is some debate about when GMC stopped building the New Design trucks and started building the "Blue Chip" trucks.  Some claim 1954 and some claim there was a 1955.1 GMC.

1955 Blue Chip GMC

That argument may never be settled because after a flury of lawsuits in the early 80's and a 60 Minutes investigation into a possible design flaw in the gas tanks of the 1973 and later trucks, General Motors lawyers had the bright idea to destroy all of the records of pre '73 pickups.  Either way Old Blue is one of the last New Designs built.

Old Blue's body has definitely seen better days but there is no damage on it that can't be fixed with a little hammering, welding, use of the slide hammer, and maybe a little filler here and there.  The same thing you would do with an old Hollywood actress.

I decided to do the work to the cab first since this would need to be the first part mounted back on the frame.  The first thing that I needed to do was strip the cab down to just bare metal.  After the mess the frame work made in the garage the decision was made for me (again the wife) to send the cab off to be sand blasted.

The cab returned from the sand blaster in much better shape than I was picturing, nothing was rusted and there was only minor pitting under the fenders.

After moving the cab into the garage and inspecting it closer, I realized the cab needed a lot more work than what I thought it did.  There were small dents and wrinkles all over it and the cab corners were very thin in spots.  I started pulling dents with the stud welder and slide hammer (this showed just how thin the corners were).

The cab corners were so thin that in the process of pulling the dents I ended up pulling off chunks of metal. By the time I finished welding and grinding those holes I ended up with about a large welded spot on the bottom of each cab corner. After the welding and grinding was done, I put a thin layer of body filler over the repairs to smooth out the grinder marks.



I also had a couple of other holes to weld up on the cab.  Welding on sheet metal is tricky, too much heat and you will burn right through (learned that on the corners); too little heat and the weld won't hold.  You also run the risk of warping the metal if you try to weld too fast.

So once again I called upon the Old Man for some help.  I'd weld for a count of one, then Dad would put a wet sponge over the weld to cool it off quick and keep from warping the metal around the weld.  When the welds were done, it was a complete ring of welds made up of small tack welds.

One of the guys I work with showed me a trick for filling large holes, like the antenna and spot light hole.  You take a bolt that is just a little smaller than the hole, cut a chunk about 1/8" thick out of it, and weld that into the hole.  That way its not just a weld that can crack- there is actually solid metal in there.  Dad and I did the large holes this way.

Filled and redrilled.

Antenna hole filled and smoothed with filler.

There was one crease in the cab cowl that was too small to use the stud welder on and there was no way to get behind it with the hammer to pound it out so I had no choice but to fix that with only filler.  The filler that I am using on this truck isn't the cheap Bondo that you can pick up at Wal Mart this stuff is rust proof and made for high end work.

10/29/12

Old blues cab has been at the body shop since the middle of July, I thought I had the body work pretty good, turns out it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was.  After a couple of trips down to Sullivans auto body and paint and Robin telling me to calm down, it was decided to let the pro do the body work.  Our original plan was to have a nice looking truck with some imperfectons to give it some charector, now it looks like we will have a show truck when it is done.

The first day the cab was at the shop Jeff and I went over it to figure out what was needed, the first thing was my filler work was sanded to smooth so he needed to roughen it up so the primer would stick to it. The second thing was to get some epoxy primer on it to keep it from rusting, after the primer had a chance to finish gassing off all of the rest of the body work would be done on top of the primer. 

Find my antenna repair!

 

I was suprised how many dents were still visible on the cab once it had some shine to it.  Jeff got busy with the body work as soon as the primer was ready and the cab should be coming home soon.

 

There are still a couple of butt prints on the roof that need to be dealt with and the two front lower cab corners had to be cut out and replaced, the rust and sand blasting had them paper thin so the self etching primer ate right through them. 

Once the body work is finished on the cab the interior will be painted and the exterior will have its final prime and sanding done to it, it will then be sent home so that I can mount it on the frame and mount the fenders and hood to it.  After the fenders and hood are mounted I will bring it back to jeff so he can do any adjustments that are needed and fix a couple of rough spots on the hood and fenders where they meet the cab.