Hutcheson’s frame restoration

Very nice work.

 

Been pretty slow going these last few days. More or less have everything bolted together, just waiting on the welder. Still have to get the crossmember back in but it should be smooth sailing from then on. I’ll hold off from doing the other side for awhile as it’s not as bad but it should go much smoother.

Painted all the bare metal with SprayMax 2k Epoxy primer and then a topcoat of tremclad semi gloss black prior to bolting it in (post photos).

 

Crossmember is almost fully in (what a pain), I made my stiffeners a tad bit narrow and I paid the price haha. Had to mangle the drivers side of the crossmember to get it in, need to re drill the two upper holes as they no longer line up. I’ll be glad once that’s done.. Muffler is back in

 

Been a bit of a slow week but I had the welder over today and he finished up the SafeTcap install. Everything looks good, put on a coat of paint. Found a leak in my brake line so reassemble has been put on hault until I get that sorted.

 

While you have everything apart, this would be a great time to spray the frame and underside of the bed with the underbody spray of your choice. All those hard to reach crevasses, nooks, and crannies will be super easy to get to with the bed off. Pay special attention to the x-cross member for the spare tire.

 

They sell a lot of the brake lines still that are pre bent.
Link to my post where I shared some part numbers. LINK
I'm not certain that those pictured part numbers are able to be ordered by individuals or just the dealers doing frame replacement.

 

Oh it’s been done to the best of my abilities, looks a bit rough in the section I took a photo of as I had to grind it back to metal for the welder and scuffed the paint quite a bit in a few places. Rest of the frame looks pretty darn good. I’ll tackle the front end a bit later.

 

Ended up calling my local dealer (not sure why that wasn’t my first thought..) and they’re bringing in the two OEM brake tubes for me. Saves me the hassle of doing it all myself and I’m on a bit of a time crunch..

 

How’d the leaf spring fitment turn out with new bushings? Did it close the gap?

 

Should have it all buttoned back up by tomorrow, been pretty busy lately. Looks like it’ll be okay but when I get new leaf springs I may as the shop if they’d recommend anything

 

Looks great. Is that POR 15?

 

Sure is!

 

Outstanding

 

Very nice work!

 

POR-15 is great -- I used it on my frame. It's basically "super paint". Sticks well, coats well, really hard finish. But if you think about it, the frame was perfectly painted on fresh/virgin metal from the factory, and look what happened. If you want to keep that from happening again, you need to coat it with something like Fluid Film, Wool Wax, or my choice:WD-40.

 

Back parked in my driveway. Today was productive and everything seemed to go smoothly. Had troubles bleeding the brakes after installing the new brake lines but that’s only because I forgot about the bleeder on the LSPV..



Photo of the new brake lines going into the LSPV, didn’t take many photos of the rest of it but it was much easier than making up new lines myself.



Leaf spring to new spring mount photos, I’m looking at getting some HD springs made up so I’ll see what the shop says. I don’t necessarily want to take it apart as it was a PITA to put together. I did notice one of my leafs have gone a bit haywire, anyway to fix that?



Overall I’m happy with how everything turned out, there’s still loads to do but that was one of the larger tasks.

 

That was quite the project. Go get yourself a cold one and enjoy a project well done! Good work!

 

Looks great Hutch! There's always more to do, these things are never really finished

The Leaf fanning or splaying is somewhat normal. You can droop that side of the axle and use a C-clamp to squeeze it back inline before lowering and removing the clamp. It may stay or it may not. Not something I would lose sleep over.

 

Awesome work. It's nice to see someone salvage a rusty frame. You should get many more years out of this truck.

 

Very very glad you’re saving a two tone truck. Especially an Emerald Mica and Thunder Gray one.

The work you did looks amazing.

 

All that rust, warms the heart of any Midwest rust belt kid. Awesome rehab work with some serious steel, very nice!
I just bought an 06 DC in Texas where we now live. It spent most of its life here but started life in Illinois. It had some rust but its move to Texas seems to have limited the damage significantly. On a trip to visit family in Ohio last month I took it to my favorite oil spray guy. He goes after all the areas where the salt hides out, including inside door panels, under hood, etc. That has been a Godsend to my vehicles from that area. Anyone else use that to mitigate the onslaught of winter salt?

 

Hashtag save the two tones!