The Plow Truck: 99 454 CCSB

[RichLo]

^ that pressure washer nozzle is awesome!! I'm going to order one right now. For when the turbo nozzle isnt quite enough, lol.

I've known about wet sandblasting for a while but I didnt look into it enough to realize it could be so cheap for a simple pressure washer attachment.

 

[Supercharged111]

^ that pressure washer nozzle is awesome!! I'm going to order one right now. For when the turbo nozzle isnt quite enough, lol.

I've known about wet sandblasting for a while but I didnt look into it enough to realize it could be so cheap for a simple pressure washer attachment.

Yeah I should have bought it sooner, but it'll be nice to have in the rotation.

I suppose this is good enough for the plow truck.

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Cleaned the top with a knotted cup wire brush on my angle grinder visible in the pics, painted with VHT roll bar and chassis satin black epoxy paint, and 3M rubberized undercoating on the bottom.

 

[RichLo]

Better than mine... I took a sawzall to the rear quarters to clear the 37" hummer tires, lol.

 

[Supercharged111]

Someone took a sawzall to this thing too, I assumed it had something bigger than the 285s it came with at some point.

Predictably I got my ass handed to me yesterday. I'd wanted to use the blaster to clean the front most bit of frame. First bag I got was wrong, second different bag was wet. F me. I did plop a couple welds down as the frame had tears on both sides.

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Right at the weld on both sides. Here you can see what I want to clean with the new dustless blaster. It had been addressed to some degree in the past.

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So should be pretty strong now, more so than the petite stock welds would have been. Next up was this core support mount, I bent it back up with a jack and 2x4.

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Also more of what I want to clean while I'm in there. This would pass for immaculate by you midwesterners.

 

[Supercharged111]

Well the dustless blaster has underwhelmed me even with the correct Quikrete medium sand. It just doesn't draw much up into the tube. I'm thinking I'll try to gravity feed the hose and see how that works. Most people wish it drew less sand, I'm not getting that and my pressure washer is a 2700psi gas unit so I don't think it's undersized.

Today I took a second crack at what I failed at a week ago with the paint. It didn't start much better, but after the crappy first coat flashed the second went on a jillion times better. It's obvious this stuff isn't meant to be brushed on, but it came out fine on my floor boards.

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IDGAF what it looks like, I'll never see it again. Except for the bit on the rocker, but eventually even that will be covered by some sort of 2 part undercoating. I just need it to keep the rot out. Between coats I scrubbed a bit of the core support with some acetone.

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Looks a lot better without all that Maaco over spray.

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Got the fan zipped back in too. Gonna look a lot better with the grille on, but one thing was very apparent when I started it: apparently adding a PS cooler will run you low on fluid. I can only assume the same for the trans, but I want to flush it anyway so that may have just snuck up the list a few steps. I have a 4 day weekend and Friday I'm driving 4 hours one way to hopefully pick up a new open deck equipment hauler. So Saturday is the next time I can get after this. I was gonna use this weekend to swap the trans out in the dually, but this has dragged on for far too long and I'll end up burning the weekend piddling away at this thing. I need to prime the bottom of the floorboard and the passenger side of the cab where I did the driver's side. Gotta let all that cure and get both inner and outer fenders back on. Gotta finish blasting them front of the frame, make sure it's all welded back up in any spots I missed, paint it, and get the plow frame bolted in nice and tight. Then I can finally get to the piddly stuff like adding and torquing all the missing fasteners in the bumper with this body lift, installing the trailer brake controller, and make a junkyard run for a bunch of crap.

 

[Supercharged111]

Cleaned up the core support where the battery had leaked and caused some corrosion. Got it all.

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From here I zapped the inner fender and battery tray back in. I stopped there last night and today schmeared primer over this mess and the bottom of my last year's floor repair.

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Other side cleaned right up. This side not so much. There was a bunch of scale left after the wire brush, so I grabbed a ballpeen hammer and started going to town. I had to stop because I was going to run out of material. This will bite me in the ass down the road. If I'm lucky I can cut a chunk out of a truck at the junkyard to take with me, but I can't deal with this properly before we move later this year. This rot was all caused by the fenders and flares being trimmed for bigger tires at some point in its life. It let the rot and dirt in and it stayed. This is not something I was planning on dealing with.

Onto something else.

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This hole originally had a rag halfass shoved in it. I wallered it out some for a grommet.

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Since it's right at a bend in the firewall the fit is a little wonky. Best way I could figure to use the existing hole. I caulked around it to hold it in place, will add another layer on top to make sure there's enough to keep it there for good. I needed a place to run the plow controller and brake controller wiring anyway so this will do nicely. May even sneak an aux power wire through for later use before heat shrinking it all. Hoping to hit the junkyard Friday and have some good progress by the end of the weekend. The weather should be on my side which is key this time of year for truck stuff. My trucks don't fit in the garage where all the tools are to deal with this kind of tedious work. Bolt on crap like brakes on the dually are easily dealt with at the hangar.

 

[89RCLB]

It's supposed to be a decent weekend here, finally! Have fun at the boneyard!

 

[Supercharged111]

It's supposed to be a decent weekend here, finally! Have fun at the boneyard!

So nice I should be testing the Camaro with its spare transmission and rebuilding the primary, but alas I need this heap in order to serve its purpose next winter and also be a tow pig for our impending move. I have very little wheel time with this thing and thus not much trust yet for such an undertaking. But aside from finding rot and general maintenance ignorance, the driving experience has been giving me positive vibes.

 

[Supercharged111]

I was able to find what I was after yesterday.

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Got some Ford EV1 4 hole injectors that should cure my hot hard restart. It's positively awful on this truck. And some ABS sensors as one of mine is chopped. I'll be in there whenever I deal with the pads and rotors. And that intake elbow?

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Wasn't even on the list but why not. As for the battery, I need to decide if I'm staying top post or going back to side post. If I go back to a side post this can always take up residence in the Monte.

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I'm about to hook up the pressure washer and try yet again with the dustless blaster on the front bit of frame for now.

 

[454cid]

I was able to find what I was after yesterday.

Awesome! When I was going, I never really saw much in the way of 8-lug/454 trucks, locally.

Got some Ford EV1 4 hole injectors that should cure my hot hard restart. It's positively awful on this truck.

Have you checked fuel pressure? I had the hot start problem, and I was sure it was injectors. Eventually the pump quit completely. My oem injectors do need to be changed, but it starts fine ever since the new pump.