looking great Dave , but carefull spraying the hinge pads/mount points with the line X .. it will increase the height of the tailgate ...



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I was orignally going to do grey, but I wanted to be a little more flashy after all the work I've done so I went with red. It really isn't as vibrant as it looks in the pictures. I'll likely also to the grey to mediun grey to dark grey factory stripes to break it up a bit.

The shift boots fit really well - they shift through all the gears with no problems. I don't mind them, but I don't love them. Ideally I would like to go with a leather boot, but I'm not sure what colors I am doing on the interior yet. I've been thinking about going with brown seats and trimming the interior out with a combination of blacks and browns. But all that depends on what I can do/find in interior trim. I'm a ways off from making those decision so these boots will work for now.

 

I hear you on that Corey, but I had a brain fart when I was masking off that area and ran the tape on the wrong side of the hinge mounts. i fixed it after I took the picture.

 

So this morning I loaded up my bed and hauled it off to the Line-X shop. When I got there I was talking to one of the guys there and he said that they wouldn't be able to fit it in today and they don't have room to store it until Monday (despite the guy telling me otherwise yesterday). So I asked "well, can I make an appointment to get it done next week?" He said, "nah, you don't really need an appointment. Just drop it off on Monday and we'll likely get to it on Wednesday or Thursday." Where the hell does that make sense?! Drop it off just to have it done two or three days later? I suppose that is the kind of customer service you can have when you know that you own the market... I think the guy had a bad case of "it's Friday and I don't want to do more work than I have to so I can leave early this afternoon." I'm going to call the owner on Monday and get an appointment - last thing I need is to be held up by Line-X.

In other news, tonight my dad's friend had his annual oyster roast. His family (particularly his Dad) has done this every year since 1966. His dad, Capt Bob (who is the guy that built that '55 Chevy Pickup custom extended cab with a 454), died eariler this year so this is the first year that he has taken over the party. If you own any kind of quality hot rod or custom car around my area then chances are Capt Bob had something to do with building it. Needless to say, this party is the ultimate gathering of the best car builders in the area. This year's party was bigger than ever - we went through 24 buschels of oysters, 3 hogs, 4 deer, 5 kegs and plenty of other food. It is outrageous how much automotive knowledge was packed into the shop tonight. If you couldn't find an answer to your problems among the people there tonight then you're likely working on the space shuttle - and even still that isn't too far fetched since one of the guys there works for NASA and has actually welded parts that go on the space shuttle!

Here are some pictures from the party -

The "car storage" part of the garage. It's sickening how big this place is and how many cars can fit in it and still have room to hang out without fear of scratching the paint:


This is looking from the working side of the garage into the storage side (basically the opposite end from the previous picture):


This is the working side with two lifts and garage doors on both sides (there are two more garage doors behind me like the ones pictured here):




One of the lifts was converted into an oyster bar for the evening. Oh, and those doors lead into a 1,800 sq ft man cave/guest house/place be his college age son to crash.


There were tons of cars there tonight both inside and out but this Bel Air is the cream of the crop. The guy that built this is THE top body guy in the area. If you want you car to be laser straight and absolutely perfect then you go to him to get it done. He isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but you get your monies worth! This car is absolutely flawless! Oh, and he damn near drives it every day!



Interior is emaculate too:


Annnnd it has a teeny tiny bit of "go" as well. If you can't hear it coming from a mile away then you need to have your hearing checked.


It was a heluva time and just what I needed to get amped up about gettjng my truck done. It's nothing like what some of these guys have built, but that's ok. These are the kind of people that respect the fact that a) you are bringing something back to life and b) you did it yourself.

 

All I can say is wow! The Bel Air is amazing. One cool party.

 

I love that shop, talk about shop envy! Thanks for sharing the pictures of the party.

 

OMG that Bel Air is suuuhWEET! Who needs Two Lane Blacktop when you have that!

 

Well, I got an appointment at Line-X tomorrow morning at 8:00. Unfortunately, there is a small chance of rain that might screw me again. Apparently, the Line-X guys like the substrate to be as dry as possible in order to prevent possible bubbles - Line-X is sprayed on at 200* so any little bit of water trapped under the coating will turn into steam and cause bubbles. Normally they would bring it inside and let it dry for a while, but they are solid booked for the next two weeks and this is the only slot they could fit me in. My Pops has a 30' enclosed car hauler that I could use, but unfortunately he is running up north to pick up a '67 GMC pickup tomorrow so I don't have access to it. I went out tonight and bought some heavy plastic to cover up the bed during transport if needed tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!

 

Well, it's there and dry! Just needed to get done....

 

Just picked uo my bed from Line-X. The actual Line-X looks good, but the chips the put in my paint don't....





This is EXACTLY WHY I always like to do things myself. Nobody treats your stuff like you would. This bed has made a journey all the way across the continent, has been loaded and unloaded off a landscaping trailer about a dozen times and has been worked and stored in several confined areas. Despite having the bed for less than 5 hours, the morons at Line-X managed to do more damage! I was pissed! The guys said, he'd take $25 off. I said, nope... You'll take $150 off because I don't have any leftover paint and I can only get the paint in gallons at around $150. That was the deal and I stormed out of there. I'm so irritated right now... I'll post some pictures later after I get everything assembled.

 

Dang that sucks. How the hell do you fix a chip like that? Eye dropper?

 

Mother jeez!!! 25$ off that's adding insult to injury, I feel your pain, I am genuinly pissed! That's four chips in 3 places that I can see, 1 might be an accident, but 3 places that's just not giving a flip. And it's not like you brought in a geo metro, they should have known. argghhh

 

unbelievable ... geez , you'd think they would take a little more care with such a nice shinny piece .

I think I would have a couple of professional shops come in and do a quote on the repair , just to show them how much it actually costs ... I feel your pain my friend



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How in the heck did they knock chips like that out? Grrrrrrr.

 

Yep, I could hardly believe it when I saw them. Not sure how it happened, but they got it good. Ideally, the correct way to fix it is to sand down the whole panel and repaint it, but I don't have time for that right now. Foor now I'll just grap a pipette and touch it up. I laid down the paint rather thick so I have plenty of paint around the chip to wetsand the touch-up smooth. In a perfect world, I shouldn't have to do this. I'm still really irritated about the issue - mainly because I haven't even driven it yet and I would like to be the one that does the damage first. Oh well, it is what it is. You better bet that nobody else is going to be working on my truck again!

Got most of the bed assembled - tailgate installed, latches installed, latch strikers installed, tailgate stays installed, tailgate handle installed and side markers installed. Only thing I have left to do is install the tail lights but I have some adjustments to make due to the thickness of the Line-X - no biggie. I had Linex do the tailgate jams so I needed to do some tweaking there to get everything to fit up properly. I took some clearance measurements and knew that it was going to be tight given the thickness of the Line-X (about 1/8" thick), but I wanted the protection. I had to shave a little bit off of the jabs, but that wasn't too bad. The latch is still a little tight up against the Line-X but the tailgate does shut and latch all the way. Some minor adjustments hear and there I'm good to go!

The tail lights aren't fully secured, but they are in there for effect:


Went up, over and under the bed rails:




And it is already becoming a parts and tools bunker:

 

Damn that is a lot of work to fix such small things. Is this going to be a show truck or a DD/toy?
Also sent you those pictures via pm but never heard back from you, did you get the pm's?

 

Yep, it's a lot of work to do just to fix a moment of carelessness.... This will be a semi daily driver and my fun toy - nothing too crazy. I haven't checked my PM's in about a week and I know I have about a dozen of them piled up in my inbox, but I'll check it out and get back to you shortly.


Finished adjusting everything tonight so it'll be ready to plop on the chassis this weekend. I even mounted my license plate just to say I did...


That's not the one I'm going with, I got a special vanity plate on the way, but I had thought about using my motorcycle tag on in. In Maryland, when you have vanity plates on a motorcycle you can keep your generic plates as well. I haven't had this plate on my motorcycle in years, but I still own it and could transfer it to my truck -DCS TOY (as in Dave Church's Toy).



I think that you all will like the ones coming in though....

 

Tailgate is looking great!! But man o man I would be just as pissed as you. Seriously such a bummer.. Hope it gets fixed okay

Also not sure if you plan to get a black decal for the tailgate letters but that would be the cherry on top.

 

Really sorry to see the chips Dave. But the thing is making me like red!

Nice... Real nice. You'll make time to clean up those chips and it won't detract one bit from the big picture. Fact is, you'll be the one that knows where the "imperfections" are. No one will even notice.

Don't stop now. You are getting closer to the day!

 

I got those ... if memory serves , I did send Dave a "chip chart"
maybe a spoiler alert ?



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