Saturday, March 14th, 2009.

I went to the shop with Matthew (my youngest son) today to get caught up on a bit of work and to work on the cab.

I brought in a welder that belongs to my boss, but something is wrong with the trigger. I'll have to budget and get my own, now.

I spent an hour or so reinstalling an intake manifold, and after that, we worked on the cab.

Matt is new to body work, but I know he'll be old hat in no time.

Our objectives on the cab today are:
1) Sand the paint off of the cab.
2) Remove the rusty floor.

We met both objectives!

While Matt was sanding away, I began to cut out the floor.

I cut in circumference around the entire floor damage. I'm hoping the damage won't extend into the floor supports and upper rocker shelves.

After cutting, I removed the spot welds one at a time with a Rotobroach. Rusty spot welds are hard to find.

Meanwhile, Matt continues to remove paint...

The moment arrives! The floor is free! ALL supports are in good shape! The rocker panels are fine! Only the upper floor sheet metal was rusted through!

What a gaping hole I've left behind!

Left support.

Right support.

I removed the rusted sheet metal layer (what used to be the floor, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an intact rocker panel.

There was some other damage I found at the lower A pillar attachment to the floor. I've enhanced the photo to show the damage.

Really, not too bad. All in all a profitable day. Here's Matt, my helper today.

Time to wrap it up for today. I'm going to try to find some time to work on the cab during the week. We'll see! Time to find a MIG welder...

Saturday, March 21, 2009. It's spring! We were only able to work on the truck for about 3 hours today. We continued to remove all paint from the outer surface.

I continued to "peel" the rusty skin from the rocker panels...

Matt and Levi (Levi is another son of mine) worked on the paint/surface rust removal.

I found out that the roof is not a 'dent-free' as I would have liked it to be.

It's all very fixable, though.

I also cut out rust damage in the lower cowl sections.

Right...

Left...

We just began to clean the surface rust out of the inner cowl area.

The rear panel of the cab is coming along nicely.