Fixing up an older pickup truck, part 4

avatar

Hello, and welcome to my page!

A few days ago, the weather turned out to be a good day to do some more work on my old pickup truck. The temperature got up into the low 60s F, so I was able to do some painting on the frame. Before I could do any painting, I had to use the air powered de-scaler and a wire wheel on the angle grinder to remove the loose rust to prepare the frame for painting.

The air powered de-scaler is basically an air hammer with a needle scaler attachment on it. It removes loose rust and scale pretty quickly once you figure out how to use it. The only problem that I had with using it is that my air compressor is not large enough to provide a constant supply of the amount of air pressure and volume that the air hammer needs to work for any length of time. I would use it until it ran down the air pressure and then I would have to wait for the compressor to pump up the air tank again. It takes longer to do a job that way, but you can still get the work done.

This is what the frame looked like when I started on it. You can see the difference that the needle scaler makes in the rust that's covering the frame.DSCN2361.JPG

Once I had an area cleaned up, I painted it with a product called Rust Reformer. This is a primer paint that also chemically changes the rust to make it inert. The rust turns black from the primer, and stops further rust from growing, if you've cleaned off all the loose rust first. My past experiences with Rust Reformer have been pretty good, it works well as long as you have the lose rust removed.

At this point in the process, I had most of the frame cleaned up and painted with the Rust Reformer.
DSCN2394.JPG

The forward crossmember had a lot of scale on it that had to be removed before painting.
DSCN2395.JPG

DSCN2398.JPG

I was running out of daylight when I got the crossmember finished and painted, so I didn't take a picture of that until the next day. It rained the next day, so the frame was still a bit wet when I took the pictures.
DSCN2410.JPG

DSCN2411.JPG

I don't think I will be able to get any more done on the frame this year because it's too cold to paint now. Next year, when it warms up, I'll be able to get back to the parts of the frame that I wasn't able to get to this year. I still need to clean the underside of the frame and get that sprayed with the Rust Reformer. I also need to put some regular paint over the primer to keep the rust from starting again. The Rust Reformer works pretty well, but you do need to put paint over it to seal it up to keep moisture from working back into the rust.

There are still some things I can do on the truck this fall before it gets too cold to be outside. I need to replace the rear crossmember with something, I want to mount a class 3 hitch on the back of the frame, and I'm planning on building a flatbed for the truck instead of putting the box back on the truck. I have the treated 4X4s for the basic flatbed cross-frames, so I have parts to work with for now. I don't really know when I'll be able to get back to work on it, that depends on the weather.

That's all I have for this post. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!

amber_yooper.png
steeming on.jpg
banner2.png



0
0
0.000
7 comments
avatar

That's a great restoration project! A shame the rest will need to wait, but the progress in the pictures looks great!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thank you!
If I had a garage, I could continue to work on it, but I don't have one.

0
0
0.000
avatar

You are an amazing woman @amberyooper, to do that kind of work takes tenacity and focus, as well as a lot of time and effort, you go girl.

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Congratulations @amberyooper! Your post was featured on our daily build newsletter! We set you as a %15 beneficiary of our newsletter rewards.

Keep sharing your awesome DIY and How-to tutorials together with the recommended tags.

Cheers!

0
0
0.000