'65 GMC 1500 project. From the Netherlands

[Jim A]

Nice work.
Curious about the master cylinder. My '60 is side-by-side for clutch and brake. Is that also a dual cylinder?

[Prowbar]

Thanks Jim. Yes, this is a dual master cylinder from a 1967 C10 which I've upgraded from the standard single pot master cylinder. I believe 63 was the last year for the hydraulic clutch, mine has the mechanical clutch. Both reservoirs are used for the brakes, one for the front and one for the rear.

[blang]

Just been reading up on this thread and Man ya'll are some pros in here

[Prowbar]

2 Land Rover gearboxes and 1 New Process transfercase rebuild further, and I'm finally able to continue the work on old Goliath.

I started with the front end, right now I'm working on the driver side front fender rust repair. More to follow on that later.

Question for fellow GMC restorers: there are some rubber flaps/weatherstripping in the fender that is stapled to the sheet metal. Have anyone restored this, and can you tell me how you did it? Seems you need a very powerful stapler to do so.

The driver side corner of the hood is rusted out and pretty difficult to repair with no patch panels available. Rustbucket told me that he has a patch from an original hood available, which will be of great use when I have it here.



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The first serious task has been the steering box. Mine had quite a bit of slop, but most of the slop came from the joint in the pitman arm. I could tell that the bushings of the steering box were worn too. I removed the box and this was the grease that came out of it:



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I removed 60 years of grime and grease as best as I could with a wire brush. I as understand these were left bare cast iron from the factory and I wanted to replicate the original look.



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Buying new bushings from Ebay and having them shipped here was too much (Ebay international shipping is expensive) FWIW so I made my own from metric split bushings. These have better pockets for the lubrication as well.



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I turned the OD and ID for the bushings by making up 2 fixtures in the lathe. Aimed for .002" (0,05mm) clearance as per the manual. new bushings definitely tightened up the steering box.



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Here is a picture of the OD turning.

(continued in the next post)

[Prowbar]

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Next up I needed to turn the ID. I made a bushing that has the same bore size as the steering box. This allowed me to press in the bushing and size it to the required bore for the .002" clearance.



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Pressed in the new bushings and a new seal.



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Re-assembly of the ballscrew. The ballscrew and bearing surfaces looked very good. I had previously bought another steering box to rebuild in the meanwhile, but the ballscrew and bearing surfaces had extensive pitting. At least it came with a good pitman arm to use.



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Steering box assembled and filled with the class 0 EP grease as per the manual. Made my own gasket to use.



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Here is the final product. I set the axial clearance of the ballscrew and the gearing. A new seal for the steering shaft was installed as well. Most of the slop is gone, but there is still a little bit present.
Much better than what it was. You can tell that the new bushings have an effect on the clearances because the slop has been removed from the center position, which is a positive (usually most slop is in the middle). When the surfaces break in again I may be able to tighten up the gear a little bit more to remove the rest of the slop.

The steering box has been coated in a rust preservative to prevent further corrosion and retain the bare cast iron look.

[Prowbar]

Tackling the driverside fender was long overdue. I had already broken off the bolt when I removed the front end to paint the firewall, so it was flopping around on the truck.



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The inside of the front fender was chockful of asphalt. I'm guessing they drove over a wet asphalt road back in the day. I did provide good rust protection however, it had to come out to do the job right. It was quite a bear to remove and cost me a couple of hours before everything was removed.

The dent was pretty big, I took most it it out before cutting off the rusted out section.



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A nice frisbee disc of bondo showed up when I cut off the outer skin.
Welded in a new support and added a large drain hole on the bottom.



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Went on to weld the new patch panel in place. I used the contour from the patch panel to restore the contour.

[Prowbar]

Here is the new patch welded into place. I could have taken out the last bit of Bondo, but it is solid and I left it be.



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The last step is to remove the small dents, lots of sanding and preparing for a layer of epoxy primer. I bought some sanding blocks to try, I still have to finish sand the fender. The rust will be treated with rust converter before spraying on the primer. I'm sanding down to the original flame red paint as it is still in good shape.



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Already prepped the other fender as well.

Still have to do the mudflaps and seals. Decided to make new staples by bending them from stainless steel tig wire and drilling small holes in the new panels. The L-shaped panels were completely rotted out so I bought new reproductions.

The plan with the paint is to shoot 1 or 2 layers of epoxy primer, then the bodywork, followed by another coat of primer. Then 2 coats of epoxy 503 light green.

As you may have read previously I kept debating between the original flame red and light green, but settled on the light green.

I already started on the hood rust repair. This will be covered in the next posts.

[Prowbar]

Starting on the hood. The passenger side hood corner is pretty rusted out, I have a patch panel coming my way thanks to forum member Rustbucket.

Both sides where the hood reinforcement is spotwelded to the side of the hood are rusted out on mine. I haven't seen other trucks than are worse than mine.



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A pretty straight forward job, though. Starting on the driver side, I drilled out the spotwelds only to finds that the inner brace is rusted out too. The outer skin was already starting to tear its way through the thin metal.



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I made up an oversized patch of 18 gauge sheet metal to cover both sides.
I then made an inner support that I welded in. The new outer section was spotwelded to the inner support brace and then fully welded in place.



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As you can see I has to extend my front cut a little lower to deal with a high spot that I couldn't seem to get out except to cut the metal and weld it back together. This did the trick.
After a lot of going back and forth I had the body lines pretty straight again. Took out a small dent where the V6 logo resides.

On to the other side. I'll post an update when that side is finished, but I am first waiting on the new patch panel to it weld in. There are quite a few dents on the other side, plus with all the bondo and the piece I cut out there is a lot of tension in the metal, making it impossible to get the bodylines like I want.
When I have the new corner to weld in I can make adjustments there to adjust the bodylines.

My job contract runs to the 31st of December, after that I have 2 months to work on old Goliath before heading to Wyoming in March!

The to do list before flying out:
- Front end sheet metal work completed, primer and paint the inner fenders, inside of the hood, radiator support etc.
- Pull the engine and transmission and make them ready for final installation.
- Remove the cab from the chassis and complete all rust repair work on the cab. Clean up and paint (parts of) the cab in turquoise.
- Paint the frame for the final time.
- Rebuild the front end.
- Install the completed engine for the last time and reinstall the cab and front end.

I'll leave the bed as is for now. This will be tackled later.

My thought process is to do all the work required to avoid having to pull everything back apart to complete the job. Before flying out the truck should be back together for storage.

We'll see how it all works out but this is the plan.

[Prowbar]

Looks like I'm having to adjust my schedule, was a little too optimistic I think.

Right now I have the front end sheet metal torn down and most of the rust repaired. Still need to do some sandblasting to prep the parts for paint.

The small parts I'm able to blast myself, however the sand blasting cabinet is one of these El Cheapo's, basically a piece of garbage, but it allows you do to do it yourself, which I like.

The large body panels like the inner fenders, grille, bumper, front suspension etc. will be farmed out. Next week I hope to bring them to a company that will do these for me.

I straightened out the bumper, which was quite a lot of work but it looks straight again.

Most of the parts that need to be zinc plated are prepared.

Starting on the front suspension now. Hope to get it disassembled this week, then that can go to the sandblaster as well. I might start on the body work for the front fenders then.

Hope to get the sandblasted stuff back in two weeks or so, then on to paint and re-assemble.

Decided to focus on the front end. (everything up to the firewall)
The cab and bed will be done later.

[Jim A]

That hood hinge area corrosion is awful. Snow and salt impaction?
My 1960 is really clean there, even though its first ten years were in Alaska.
Only bad areas are rockers and lower door posts. And a little floorboard.
I hope to see your finished product pics some day.