So, what do you do when the top of the cab is rusted all the way through? Get a new cab? Believe it or not you can get them, but they cost $10,000 and I'm not even kidding. Instead, I treated the area with ospho, then used the grinder to cut out the rotten places and then fiberglassed the holes.
Here I've started to fit the fiberglass patch.
Then, I mixed epoxy resin with microballoons (dustlike spheres of glass) into a slurry and applied that over the top of the fiberglass. Next, I sanded all of it nice and flush. Believe it or not, this is an aircraft repair technique. When it's finished you can't tell there was ever a problem.
Meanwhile, Matt and I started cut out the old rusted floor pans,
But even as we were working to cut out the years of decay, surface rust was forming on the parts I had already stripped. I didn't have a choice, I had to quickly get it primed to stop the rapid decay.
The day after hurricane Arthur came through (the 4th of July) the weather was amazing with low temperatures and low humidity, perfect for shooting primer. So, I did a little final body work, wiped everything down with denatured alcohol, and sprayed on epoxy primer. Now, epoxy primer is extremely hard and actually much better than what they used on the truck in 1964, but authenticity be hanged in this case, we want it to last. It turned out great and stopped the surface rust, now we can concentrate on the floor pans. More to come.
