With some paint on the cab, I moved on to some of the other bare metal bits that were sat in the garage. I had two pretty ropey front valance panels and had started to make one good one from them. I didn’t plan on running a front bumper so I wanted the bumper holes filled in too. I cut out the openings and cut patch panels from the worst one before tacking it all together. Unfortunately neither of them were in good shape in the centre section, so it took a lot of heating and hammering to get it close to the right shape.

Some of it was completely beyond hope, so I had to make a few patch pieces to bring it all back to roughly the right shape. There were also a few bad splits and cracks round the edges but with all that done and cleaned up with the sander it all looked pretty good. It still needs some filler but I’m pretty happy with the result.

The weather here is getting increasingly colder and wetter as we head towards winter, and the bare metal cab sat in the garage was starting to worry me a little to say the least. I decided that regardless of what state it was in I was going to put a light coat of sealer on when I finished on Sunday. It’s been a while since I painted anything, and a quick check of my Devilbiss gun revealed it was leaking air. I’d lent it to someone, and they must have taken it to bits, lost the seal, and given it back to me, which was nice. Plan B was the cheapy gun I had, so the kids got to spray paint the patio with water to "test" it. I had put some more filler on in patches last week, so I sanded it all down again with the long sanders before switching to a block and some 80 grit. After an entire afternoon of sanding, bits of it were spot on, and bits of it were crap. I decided to crack on and paint it with a light coat as planned, rather than risk having to re-sand it all again. I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to suddenly see everything in the same colour, and despite not being perfect it’s still looking pretty good I reckon. The filler shows through the light coat of sealer which makes it look worse than it is. Plan is to guide coat, sand and fill it before doing it again, but it should give me time to get the rest of the bare metal ready too. Still pretty happy overall!

After what seems like forever, I finally got to a point where I thought I wasn’t going to get the roof any better without cutting it off and starting again. With that being a bit too drastic for me, I decided to use filler instead. It was surprising how much better it suddenly looked with just a thin skim of filler on. It wasn’t long after that I remembered how much I hate sanding panels down. I’d bought myself some long flexible sanders which made a world of difference in trying to get the shape right on the curves of the roof. It’s still extremely easy to go too far tho, as I discovered. As you get closer and closer to the right shape the odd high point shows up too so they are getting tapped down gently at the same time. Pretty happy with the progress tho.

With the door gaps done, I realised just how bad the rest of the gutter was on the drivers side. I’d already made a new piece for the end, so I decided to cut off the rest of it and make some more as it was beyond saving. After a few hours with the hammers, files and the shrinker it was replaced with a nice shiny new bit

I had been thinking about what to do with the door gaps as I still wasn’t happy with them even after chopping them up and extending the frame.
I hung the door properly and did my best to get it to sit evenly. The top hinge didn’t feel right, so I took that back off and set about it with a hammer until it worked properly. With that done the gaps were still big enough to get a horse through, complete with rider.
I finally decided to TIG filler rods onto the edges to close the gaps up, then once I was happy I was pretty close, I went over it all with the MIG to “fill in” the joins between the rods.

After a lot of careful grinding and hand filing I decided it was time to call it a day. It was a lot of work, but there’s not much else you can say about it! The end result is much, much better than it was.

After a good clean with panel wipe and a quick skim of filler the lumps and bumps mostly dissapeared. Needs a bit more work before I call it quits, but I’ll leave it alone till it’s back on the cab now.

Weather was absolutely awful here this weekend, the only thing that was missing was Noah and his animals. I didn’t want the ’55 sat out in weather that bad so I had a big tidy up and spun the cab round ninety degrees to get a bit more space to work in. I had a quick look at the passenger door and decided to leave it alone till I got it back on the cab and could see what the gaps were like. I got one of the wings out of the cab, and set about doing some more on that. It had a few rust holes on the top edge, so I ground them out to good metal and tig’d them up.

A quick rub down with a grinder and a file and they were done. I had put a big patch panel in the middle and it needed a bit of work to get the curve back in it. Faced with trying to spend the next year or so trying to hone my metalwork skills or using a bit of filler I got the filler out. It’s a lot smoother than it looks in the pic, but it’s had a tough life made worse by me. It got a quick skim of filler and I’ll give it a sand down when I’m out there next.

I’d spent a fair bit of time stretching the door edges to fit the opening a lot better, but had noticed that the inner part of the frame was all over the place from where the roof had been chopped.

I decided it was beyond hope, and just chopped it out. The replacement panel was easy enough, but welding it back in wasn’t so easy. I decided to hang the cab from the roof by one of the hinges with the other side on the floor.

With it up like that I could stand in the hole where the transmission cover goes, and reach up to weld the frame. Welding was better but I burnt my head a lot with sparks!. Quick smooth with a flap disc and I was back where I started minus the wrinkles and dents.