Big Blue's refresh

[Oliver Closehauf]

I'm going to use this thread to document by truck's refresh. What was supposed to just be a replacement bed has turned into a full refresh. New fuel system, new coolers and lines, new Bosch hydroboost and new steering gear and pump. water pump, Idler, etc. I'm trying to stick to as close to stock as possible. For example, it took me 6 months to get a new Denso Starter. My CP3 and injectors are Stock Bosch units. Ok, I did get a Banks intake, because why not.
Anyway, a couple rotten fuel lines, turned into a tired 20 year old starter, leaking injectors, rotten rockers and eff that noise, I'm not letting this nickel and dime me to death. I'm doing it all in one go. After dealing with the fuel lines last year, I realized that it's getting to the broken part that takes all of the time and effort. So the 20 year old stuff I know is waiting to f**k me is getting replaced. Basically, I'm going to start at the front bumper and work my way in to the firewall and transmission and remove on my way in, and replace on my way out.
I've been setting this up for years. I think I posted bringing the "new" bed home a few years ago. I finally pulled the old bed off today, in the feels like 105 degree heat. I'll post the pictures after I get them off my phone. The frame needs attention for sure. It's solid still thankfully, but rust has been attacking it and it's intervention time.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

So here is the replacement bed with the bedsides removed and the bed primered and ready for Raptor liner paint. It's been so hot and muggy here I keep putting it off. I wanted to get the liner painted on before moving to the next phase, but my OCD be damned I couldn't let another week slip by. This was a white bed, I've got the tail end in the body color. Just waiting for cooler weather now. You can see Big Blue's grill behind the tarp up by the gate.

 

[Islander39er]

Nice going!

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Here is a shot of my rolling gantry in place. As you can see, I live in the land of the infidel, AKA the ghetto, AKA Cincinnati.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Here is the bed all rigged up for removal. I used straps at all wheels to keep the legs from spreading.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

My driveway back to the garage is only one lane (and a walkway) wide, so I had to move the replacement bed up behind the house to make room to pull the truck forward. Driveway Tetris.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

I just used ratchet straps to lift the bed off the fame high enough to drive out from under it.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

What you can't see is the yellow jacket nest in the front driver's corner of the bed. Amazingly I did not get stung.

Also, when I put the new bed on, I will be getting some more 2x4s to go across the top of the gantry so the ratchet straps can go straight up and down. They are at an angle and that made things more difficult, but still a one man job.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

And here are a few shots of rust. These are before I started working on anything. That gooseneck hitch is a cancerous tumor and I'm afraid of what I will find under those mounting brackets. I did buy a welder for Christmas, so if I need to patch, I patch. The wet spots are water. It rained last night and the tarp filled up in pockets.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

I did work on trying to get that hitch off this morning. Not much to show. I spent at least 2 hours breaking off bolts, cutting through bolts, cutting through steel, used a sawsall with Milwaukee Torch blades, a Dremel with a cutoff wheel and it is still on there. If only frames and body panels were as strong as those nuts and bolts, cars and trucks would last forever. I'll take a picture of the pile of scrap I turn that hitch into once it's in a pile on the ground.

I went to harbor freight and got some sale items, one of those welding pick hammers for knocking of the big chunks of rust, a needle scaler, a blow gun set that came with extension nozzles that I can get way up inside the frame rails, and a sand blaster.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Hitch is off. I chipped as much of the big rust off as I could and then hit the big patches with some phosphoric acid rust converter just as a stop gap until I can get everything scraped, scrubbed and blasted. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so won't get much of anything done. probably spend that time organizing the garage that has gotten way out of hand.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

It looks like I'll be welding in some fishplates on the outsides of the frame there above the axel. Passenger side could probably get away without it, but the driver's side is pretty bad. I was looking inside the frame with my borescope and it didn't look too bad, but I plan to run a steel chimney brush to knock off any scale inside there once I cut out the thin stuff and create an access, then after the frame is all back together, the inside from front to back will get fluid filmed. I keep having to remind myself, this doesn't have to last forever, just until I'm dead.

I tested the needler out today for a few minutes. Definitely a Saturday during the day kind of job just because of the noise I'll be making. Although I do have a neighbor 2 doors down that likes to blast their bass canon party speaker all the way up, I can make use of that window if they do it any time soon.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Today was supposed to be a big day, and it was. I was sort of bequeathed an air compressor from my neighbor that passed away last year. When his kids came and cleaned his place out, they gave me that compressor and some other tools they didn't want. Anyway, I wanted to used that compressor to do the scaling and painting because its a 1 1/2 horse, and my big compressor is only a 3/4 horse but with a bigger tank. I had not had an opportunity put it through its paces to see if it was any good so today I started scaling with it. After 20 minutes of it running pretty much non stop, these were the results.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

So had to do a little rewiring. New outlet, new plug on the compressor, and..... it's raining. Rain lasted all of about 5 minutes and then magically cleared up. Exactly as the forecast had predicted.

1 hour later.

Forecast said no more rain...OK I'm going for it. Bedliner is going in. I go out and get set up, sun glaring down, I get the bed positioned out of the sun and WTF, where did the sun go? Where did all these clouds come from? Sunofa.... I deliberate for the next 30 minutes and said it's go time. Here's the results. Pretty happy with it.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Here is a couple more shots of the bedliner. The Raptor Liner kit with the spray gun really is pretty awesome. I'd never sprayed this stuff before and the results were great.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

So now I have to report what I can only describe as a "what the f**k what are you doing moment".
When I pulled the bed off, there was a bolt I couldn't get out of the frame. It was a bed mounting bolt but it had a larger washer on it. It was not a standard bed mounting bolt, and no matter how I positioned it I could not get it out of the end of the frame. I don't know if part of my brain was pre-occupied with the scale of this work, heat stroke-dehydration, or I'm too focused, or too focused on the wrong things or what, but I ended up ordering more Dremel cut off disks and cutting off the bolt so I could remove it.
And then I "saw it". I'd seen it over and over since removing the bed, but it never registered. I could have just reached in there the whole freaking time.

 

[Rustbelt Bob]

Ollie,I'm Loving This Thread..!! Trust Yourself..!! You're knockin' it right outta' da' park..!! Keep clawing your way through it..!! With me living in the N.E. Ohio,the "Ceremonial Chasing Of The Dreaded Ohio Salt & Brine Monster" has always been a damned obsession..!! You're doing this right..!! Stay Loose,Brother..!!

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Thanks RB, appreciate the words of encouragement. I keep having to remind myself the only deadline I have for this project is self-inflicted. Need to shift gears from "on the clock time is money" down to AMSR-R&R level where R&R stands for both repair & replace and rest & relaxation.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

So this is in response to Rustbelt Bob's post in the older thread on this subject. Figured I'd reply over here to keep things simple.

In the other thread I said I wouldn't get started until spring, what sucks is I actually have been working on this since spring as weather and time permits. I'm getting more OCD as I age. I decide on an order of operations and I have a problem changing. Character flaw, mental illness who knows. Anyway, I wanted to paint the bed while it was closer to the garage, but before I could paint it, I needed to prep it. This is a picture of the inside of the bed after I had scraped, by hand with different scrapers and putty knives, all of the old cheap bedliner paint the last owner had sprayed in there. It's a white bed, the inside of the box was black. In this shot I'm just about ready to start scraping the tail end. This is before I did any sanding. Whoever put in the old bedliner didn't degrease or scuff. It was peeling in places. I degreased, scuffed, primed, sanded with 120 by hand to remove dry spray and provide some tooth. So the bed was actually about 2 years of round 2-its. The reason I didn't just sand the hell out of it from the start was that white paint is like rust proofing from God. I wanted to save it as best as I could. The black streaks are where the paint had been worn through to the steel and the bedliner paint stuck. That was removed before I primed. In the end I did not apply the bedliner while the bed was near the garage.

 

[Rustbelt Bob]

Ollie,for openers,maybe toss a request to a Mod/Admin to merge your two topic threads.. They might appreciate you asking. From all you've got going on,the "Workflow" did a "Merge" too..!! Stay with it,it'll be worth it as long as you can sleep peacefully at night when she's done..!!