1959 Chevrolet Pickup Truck
When the customer bought this project truck, he was led to believe that it just needed a little work and some paint, and it would be ready to go. Wrong. Somebody put a late model Tahoe chassis under this truck and it's just not a good fit. The wheelbase and the track width aren't correct in it's stock configuration. And without channeling the body to fit down over the frame...well, let's just say whoever started this project got in over their head and abandoned it. So, our customer has bought another truck that we will be using as a donor to help with putting this truck back to more of a stock configuration.
Click on a photo to enlarge.
At first glance, this pickup truck looked okay. But after looking closer and seeing the problems, the customer decided to abandon the late model chassis and put a stock chassis back under it.
We pulled the bed and cab off of the late model chassis.
This is what the under side of the cab looked like.
We knew the cab corners would need repaired from the beginning. This is on the driver side...
and is this after we cut the outer corner out to expose the inner.
Here's Evette media blasting the cab to remove the rust.
This shows what the rear cab corner on the driver side looked like after media blasting...
and this is after repair.
We didn't media blast the cab steps because we...
replaced them with new aftermarket steps. This view is of the bottom of the cab...
and this is right side up.
Both front cab corners were about in the same shape. This is a shot of the driver side before repair...
and this is after the bad metal was cut out and the aftermarket piece tacked it place, which was fully welded later.
Both sides of the cab had rusted areas at the rear of the cab steps that looked like this. This is the driver side before repair...
and after the custom piece was welded in and ground.
This is the same area after primer.
This shows where the cab corners and steps have been repaired.
We then removed the chassis from the donor truck.
Holes were cut in the firewall of the project truck by its previous owner that needed to be repaired. We used the donor truck by cutting areas out in its firewall to use for patches...
and welding them in place to get it back to its original appearance.
We media blasted the chassis to reveal what's really there...
like areas shown here that will need to be repaired...
with a quality repair like this one shown here.
Once all the repairs were made, we painted the chassis.
The cab was primed and its seams were sealed, and then set on the chassis.
This is the bed with the fenders removed, just before media blasting. It's a good thing these old beds were made of heavy gauge steel or there wouldn't be enough left of this one after we media blasted off the rust.
Here's Evette just starting to media blast the truck bed...
and here's the bed after media blasting.
This shot is of the bed after primer was applied.
The bottom of both doors were rusted out so we cut out the bad areas...
and welded in aftermarket door bottoms. This shot was taken before the welds were ground down.
Here's a picture of Evette welding on the outside door bottom.
This is the dash we cut out of the donor truck. As you can see, the area where the radio goes has been cut out...
so Fred tig welded in an aftermarket radio plate...
so this truck would have a complete stock dash.
The area where the original dash was had to be cleaned up...
before the donor dash could be welded in.
This is the donor dash welded in, cleaned up and primed. If you didn't see this photo, you'd be hard pressed to find evidence that this dash was taken out of another truck.
Another project completed to the specs of the customer. He and his sons have a good start to a project they will finish together.