The Box is Painted

 We have a painted box with four gallons of primer, two gallons of red, three gallons of black, and two and a half gallons of clear. 

 The first coat of primer. Started with 220 sandpaper for the first coat of primer. After that we re-primed the whole truck again and cut it with 320 then we spot primed the areas that needed more work. The last cut was with 400.

Here were some of the areas that needed some more primer and work.

Mostly the areas around the body lines needed the most attention.

 I'm pretty excited how the top of the box came out. Tom did a awesome job on getting it flat.

 The day before paint and some time in the sun. Time for some cleanup.

 We had a couple of small areas of primer that still needed some work before paint.

Here we have Lucas and Josh who were in charge of cleanup.

 We were going back-and-forth on if we should seal it or sand down to 600 before paint.

We went with the sealer and this meant that there was a small window to get paint on the truck.

 The box is two toned so to make the window of time to get paint on they painted the black portion with one coat and then went back and sprayed the red.

 The box with the top painted with one coat of black.

 Spraying the red.

 The red was sprayed for its final color and took three coats to get complete coverage.

 The red is over sprayed into the black and will be masked off the next day when they spray the final coats of black.

 With two guys spraying clear it did make a lot of over spray. I was the lucky one in the office taking picture though the window. It took four guys to make this all happen. Two painters Bob and Joel, Josh to move scaffolding and keep air hose from getting all tangled up, and Kevin who mix paint and kept the paint cups full.

 Before clear

 After clear

 Before clear

 After clear

Big THANK YOU to Tom who was responsible for the body work and getting the 20 foot panels so straight, to Silver Creek Auto Body and crew for a outstanding paint job, and to Chris Chapman for all the fab work to make this dream become a reality from paper to the real deal.

 The last step is for the cut and polish and then its back to Chris and I to finish the rest.

Other things that have been getting done is the interior work. Rick been working his magic on the door panels.

 Got the polisher out and did some work on two of the panels

 Still want to work on my final step of the polishing process. Looks good till direct sunlight and then I see the super fine scratches left by the final polish.

Also trying to finish up the last touches on the other sign. Just down to sandblasting part.

The Update is Here.

 A lot of time has gone by since the last update, and want to assure everyone that things are still moving along on the project. The body work is done on the box and is waiting for it first coat of primer. Will get blocked and then a second coat of primer and blocked before paint. Hoping to have it back from paint in June.  

 Okay we decided to go a different route on the pizza truck no just kidding. Since the last update I found this little gem and couldn't pass it up. This one was like my first car that I owned as a kid and have wanted one to drive around town for fun. My kids told me that I was going through my mid life crisis and then they informed me no that can't be, because I was already passed that stage.They sure know how to hurt a guy. I don't care it sure fun to drive.

 This is one of the first emblems for the side of the box. This is after I sanded and polished the out side perimeter. Before I started it had the same tooling marks as the inside of the sign.This was my first step of many before the process was finished.

  

 Here is a closer look at what the tooling marks looked like. I wanted the center of the sign to have a cast look. After trying different methods sand blasting was the best choice. I used a very aggressive grit to achieve the look I was looking for. Even with the aggressive sand blasting I still had to sand the inside of the sign before I sand blasted so that tooling marks disappeared.

   

This was my first run at it, but decided that I wanted a heaver texture. I taped it back up and shot it one more time with 36 grit media. 

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 Taping off the sign to get ready for polishing the tops of the letters. After taping I blocked sanded the tops of the letters to get a nice flat edge. Then polished the edge.

 Still working on the tops of the letters.

 Before I unmasked the work.

 Tops Polished up nicely. 

 The inside of the Dough Boy and Pizza will be painted the colors of the truck with the tops of the letting polished. So now I need to re-mask for paint. Almost done. No wait I still have one more to do(UGH). Second one should go better I learned a lot on the first one.

It's mid December and Chris and I are on the way to Idaho to meet a potential upholstery shop for the truck. We have been searching for a upholstery shop since day one but have had no luck. I was following a lot of shops on instagram, but most of the ones I liked where back east. Then one day on the Hog Ring they posted some pictures of some work done by Stitchwurx. So I went and looked at his instagram page and liked what I saw, and the bonus was he was close to us. (Well six hours) I called him up and talked about the project and sent him some pictures. While talking to him he seemed to be very interested and excited about the project and I had a good feeling about how are conversation went. So we made the plan to meet.

  

 So the two weeks before are trip the weather was beautiful and of course the day of the trip this is what we got.  The good thing was it started while we were over half way there. By the time we reached Idaho we had six inches of snow. We made it to Rick's shop with no problems and had a great meeting with him. He showed us around the shop and the current project that he was working on. We talked about two hours and by the time we were done we knew that we found the right guy. He had a opening in March and we took the spot. We left and got to run in snow for the first three hour and a couple of uhh I better slow down. We made it home safely and was a great trip.

 On the way home from are trip to Idaho Chris and I looked at each and said crap we need to get busy putting the cab together. We only have two months to get it done. The next week we were picking up the cab from Silver Creek Auto Body. The cab has been ready for months and Bob was nice enough to store it for us. Ready for the move back to Chris shop.  

 First step is for the insulation of the sound skins. The truck was also sprayed with a sound deadening paint on the inside. 

  

 It's amazing what this stuff does to quite things down. 

 The nice thing is that I cleaned up about four shelves at home. The bad part is now it's out on four tables plus the floor.

 Half of a table is just screws. After almost two years where do they all go?

 I should have taken a lot more pictures, I got so caught up on getting things back together that there wasn't much time for pictures. As you can see we have the front glass and windows in. We took the glass to some glass shop but no one would touch them. So that left Chris and I to installed the glass in the frames. After getting the right setting tape things went fairly easy. Installed the A/C unit, vent doors and motors, wiper motors, and some of the wiring.

 The cab has to be completely wired before it goes to Stitchwurx for the upholstery. To make this happen we used a plug-n-play type setup. We used a 30 pin connector between the firewall to connect the cab to the box of the truck. 

 Front glass installed. The glass has a slight tint to it and looks real good with the colors of the truck.

 Put the dash together on bench to make it a little easy for assembly.

 When designing the dash we tried to keep it period correct. We have push button start  with a light switch and heater controls. The rest of the switches are under the dash out of sight.

 Radio is hidden in the glove box.

 Still need to install glove box door.

View of the wiring from behind the dash. Trust me I do have a note book full of wiring diagrams and notes and sometimes that even confusing.  

  

 Here's the 30 pin connector that we used. Still has more wires to be installed. We also have a two inch grommet with about 20 wires going through the firewall also.

Some of these wires go to the plug and some out the two inch grommet and some to the switch panel. I have it all under control I think.

The under dash switch panel. At the last minute we decided to add the courtesy light to the panel.

 More piece coming together.

 The original vent screen for the side vents

 This is how Rick  from Stitchwurx got the truck. Time for him to work his magic.

Getting ready for the trip to Idaho. It fit real nice in the toy hauler.

 This setup worked really nice and we were able to stay at a RV park just minutes away from Rick's place. We planned on staying in Idaho for a couple days to help Rick with some of the interior disassembly and go over some of plans for the interior.

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 Some sample piece Rick worked on just for kicks. If any of you are Instagram users you can follow Rick at Stitchwurx. He posts a lot of his work there and you can follow the progress of the truck.

 This is how I gave Rick the back panel that goes behind the seat. He said it was a good starting point for him and was going to take it to the next level. It was a one piece unit that was heavy and hard to get in and out of the truck. Rick took it and made it two piece so that the amp stuff would stay in the truck and that the cover would attach to that.

 When he said next level I think it's more like three or four.

 In the truck and finishing up on the wiring. Next up is to start to work on the panel that goes over this part. 

 You can watch this video that Rick posted with the panel lit up on his Instagram page.

It's pretty amazing.

So we have the grill back also. you can see a video of it at mercury_chris on Instagram also. It's also pretty amazing. Well that's where we are as of today. Not much will happen till we get the box back from paint. Plan on working on the other sign for the truck and doing some polish work. Till next time, hopefully soon!!