...sitting in Greenwich CT doing some contract work for a couple firms up here.  Keith and I decided last night that it is time to start back up...it have been on hold for a year.  Keith moved into a new shop, I moved back to Texas and other things all worked together to put us on hold.  No worries, we begin cutting all the old bad body panels out today and welding in new stuff.  It is about 20 panels all together.  I listed all them in a post earlier.  The great thing about this step is that when we finish, we can do some paint work and get some new rubber in doors and windows and sorta dry it it.   There will still be massive work to do but we will be rust free, good intial coat of paint and glassed in.  I will start up loading pics of the body panel work as soon I can.

I have some new pics in the gallery.  They are about the last 10 or 12 that show the latest progress on the bed.  Keith is about to be finished with the new shop in Jonestown so the truck will be the first project in the new shop and it will now be only a couple miles from the lake house.  I am beginning to work with Stockton Wheels www.stocktonwheel.com to build me some custom wheels.  They are going to be replicas of the original wheels, smoothies, but they will be 18 inches tall by 7.5 inches wide.  This will modernize them and let me put some real tall and narrow tires on it.  I hope I can find whitewalls in this new dimension.  If I can not find whitewalls in this size, I will have to rethink the 18 inch wheels.  Looks like 235 /65 R18 might be the tallest I can get without getting too wide.  These would be 9.3 inches wide on 8.5 inch wheels.  These are Yokahama Miradas.  They should come in at 30 inches tall.  I still have more studying and phone calls to do.

I ordered the new parts last week and hopefully they will get to Keith soon.  Keith sent some great pictures and Bill Dahleen loaned us a sheetmetal brake.  New pics and new brake in the photogallery.

Below is the latest list of parts that have been ordered.  This is a pretty comprehensive list and it will not get too much worse for repair and patch parts.  There will be dozens of more parts ordered but it will be AC, steering, wiring, upholstery type things.  This is for rusted and worn body parts.

Parts previously ordered include:

1) Tailgate - LMC  $xxx.xx

2) front bed panel (bowtie) - LMC  $xx.xx

3) left and right inner bed panels (shortbed fleetside) - Premier  $xx.xx

Below I photoshoped an image of a shortbed fleetside and shortened the rocket rails to something a little more paletable.  They pay homage to the original overly long rails and also allow you to keep the stock tail light.  I think they look sporty enough and in line with the original and not too custom.  The points of the rail are still a little to sharp as there is nothing on the truck quite that sharp.  So I am going to have them a little more rounded or blunt when I fab the real ones.  I will also experiment with a few different lengths.  Real short, short and just a little longer.  I have two different lengths pictured here as well as the original, way too long, crack cocane length!

Real short - to the "d" in the Fleetside emblem above it.

Sorta Medium - to the back of the "t" in the Fleetside emblem above it.

Step sides are very popular and they should be.  They are awesome looking trucks but they are sorta, "dime a dozen".  I had already decided I really liked the mid-fifties Apaches.  I wanted a fleetside but did not like everything about the 1958 Apache, Chevy's first fleetside.  The hood bugged me and the twin headlights were just too much.  The '55, '56 and '57 Apaches were the perfect truck, but again, they only made stepsides. 

So, Apache11. 

Let's put a 1959 Apache fleetside bed on a '57 Apache cab.  Then let's get rid of the '57 fish mouth grill and put the perfect grill of 1955 on it.  Oh yeh, one more thing, I think the rocket rail on the '59's fleetside bed is just ...not for me (some folks love em).  Just not me.  It looks out of place, an afterthought, trying to capitalize on the newly burgeoning rocket motif.  I wished I could tolerate it.  It would have saved so much hard work and planning but even though I tried, I can not get past it.  It has to go.  It is going to be shaved from the bed.  So this means a pretty custom rebuild of the bed sheetmetal.  Then, after deciding to 86 the wooden bed floor for a modern 1992 steel floor, cutting the rocket rails off a long bed '59 and putting it all back on a late model, 1992 short bed, we had made for a real custom, unique job.   The bed is everything on this truck.  It has to be perfect and look factory.  I do not want some hotrod, custom looking truck.  I want it to look just like it would have when it rolled of the factory floor.  That is, if this truck would have ever been built.  It has to look perfectly stock.  When it does, we will have a winner!

I went to Texas Oct 25th and could not get back to New York due to Hurricane Sandy.  So I got an unexpected week off and went to the lake house.  I hung out at the shop a bit.  The truck had just come back from sandblasting and ititial priming.   Pictures of the post sandblasting work are included below and more are in the photo gallery. 

The sandblasting job exposed much more body work to be done and some more rusted out spots.  But that is nothing new.  That's one of the reasons you do it.  No big deal.  We will replace every body part that is rusted and patch other areas too.

Well I went to see the truck over the labor day weekend.  I took some pictures.  I put everything in the photogallery.  The cab and front fenders are temporarily on the frame.  As of this weekend we sat the long bed on the frame.  The fun begins now as we shorten the bed to fit the frame.  We will have to cut both in front of and behind the wheel well.  This will be a tricky part of the job but the  real step that worries me is cutting off the rocket rail that runs the length of the long bed.  This will be very important to get perfect and will also be the most custom change on the truck and make it very unique!!

We got ol' Blue, the 1992 Cheverolet doner truck, to Keith's shop.  I bought the truck a few years out of college when i got tired of driving used BMW's.  I have had the truck ever since.  I used it to build the lakehouse, build the boatdock, hunt, fish, tow the boat, drive back and forth from Houston to Austin and generally love the truck.  It has been stuck, sunk and wrecked a few times.  It has about 170K miles on it.  "If the truck could talk, the tales it'd tell...about Bec and his friends and the dog as well!!" 

Now it's time to start stripping the bed and cab off the '92 so we can use the '92 chasis to set all the Apache sheet metal on.  Keith has begun this process and i will get to see his progress when i get there Labor day.

Apache cab going on 'Blue's frame!  Many more pics in the photo gallery.