Plastic screws? That's pretty cheap GM...

I started working on the truck project two days ago. I cleaned out the garage, got some other projects done around the house, and finished my business travels for a while. Now I can focus on getting this project progressing further along.

I removed the plastic cover in between the hood and the windshield yesterday. It took 5 times as long as it should have because Chevy used cheap plastic screws that stripped out right away. I'll have to replace those with some stainless steel ones. Tonight I will be painting it black and restoring it to the way it used to be.

Taking some time off

I have been gone for work most of the summer and will be back to work on this project again in late August/early September.

Hole is covered

I put some Bondo over the hole now that the aluminum backing panels have been epoxied in place. It turned out ok, I will need to sand and apply some more Bondo to smooth it out. I'll put some primer on it after it looks good.

It's going to be a while before I can work on this again since I am going to be busy for the next two months.

A little progress

I've been meaning to update this for the past few days. I've made some progress in my rust hole patching. I've epoxied a few pieces of aluminum in place to apply Bondo to. It doesn't look pretty now, but hopefully it will once the Bondo is on and sanded into the right shape. I'll attach some pictures later.

I also painted the windshield wiper arms black. That is the color they should be.

Rust holes take a while to patch

I spent about 8 hours working on repairs today. I made some progress, but wish I had another 3 days to get more stuff done. I finished removing the pin striping and rust proofed the inside of the bottom door frame area. I also cut out the pieces of metal I will epoxy in and cover with Bondo tomorrow. It looks like I will have to wait to paint until Tuesday or Wednesday if things go as planned tomorrow.

How can someone let their truck get so dirty?

I spent 4 hours today cleaning out the interior of the truck. I made some progress, but I may be half done. I still have some more cleaning to do and then will start rust proofing the inside metal under the rubber floor mat and changing the color of the interior plastic pieces to black. I will also have to buy some aluminum trim pieces from Lowe's to replace the broken plastic piece on the floor. It should last a lot longer and not rust either. That may be a project for next weekend however.

I bought a lot of paint and repair materials today. I plan to turn my garage into a body shop tomorrow and get a lot of work done.

The first repair is done

I purchased a replacement driver side mirror on eBay last week and installed it today. It is the first thing that can be taken off the list.

Here is a before picture:
And here is the after picture:



It took about 1 hour to complete this job, but the engineer at GM that designed the interior window cranks should be fired. It is the worst possible design and I can think of 5 different ways to install it that would make it much easier to take on and off than that little metal clip. This would have been a 30 minute job had it not been for me taking a long time getting the interior door panel off because of that window handle clip. Also, the Clinton's manual should have told me that it was a 13/32" nut (x3) holding the mirror in place.

I also removed the pin stripe that was just on the front quarter panel today.

Hopefully, a lot of stuff will be done this weekend.

Repairs

There seems to be a few repairs I have to make to this truck before I will start the ICE to Electric conversion process.

In no particular order:

-Remove pin stripe
-Driver side mirror replace
-Put on fender flares
-Undent Driver side door bottom
-Paint dings
-Bondo and prevent rust at bottom of driver and passenger side doors
-Align driver side door, replace hinge
-Remove dents, dings on driver side of bed
-Remove rusted metal & prevent more in rear driver side wheel well
-Align bumper a little
-New rear wheels
-Repair truck bed cover
-Put plastic piece on top of tailgate
-Fix tailgate handle
-Clean chrome on front bumper
-Paint, clear coat hood
-Paint/Repair plastic on bottom of windshield
-Fix/Replace windshield
-Paint windshield wiper arms
-Remove stickers
-Remove antenna and smooth/bondo hole
-Repair & smooth out passenger side door and bed
-Fix hook/latch on tailgate
-Add/Remove/Change color of interior panels and dash
-Add stereo
-Paint frame with POR-15
-Line up truck bed

It's a good thing I got a good deal on this truck...

And so it begins...

Phase 1 - Repairs

So, I have my 1996 Chevy S-10 pickup truck in the garage, but it needs a little work done on the appearance side of things before any actual conversion work will start. I will start by replacing the driver side mirror today. I bought a replacement from an eBay store on-line and received it yesterday.

I started reading Bob Brant's Build Your Own Electric Vehicle book today. It is from 1994, so some of the things are a little dated, but the rule W = V * A (and many others) are still the same. There is a updated version of this book being released in October, so I'll have to see if I can get it before I start my conversion. http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071543732

I am figuring that there will be 3 phases to this project, Repair, Remove, and Rebuild. I am estimating the repair phase to take 2 months. Hopefully that is a conservative estimate, but I will have some business travel to do next month.

Overall, I am excited to get started on this project. It should turn out really good and will be a good, efficient, cheap and reliable mode of transportation for many years to come.