The California Hauler Part III

Building a car from a kit is sometimes akin to traveling down a dark and lonely path. With that in mind, I know I'm only beginning my journey with the Willys truck project, but I'm optimistic at this point.

I've owned a bunch of cars but haven't built too many from the ground up, and trying to remember what needs to be done so it makes sense (in both money and time) can be difficult. Whatever list I try to make gets revised the next day, and that list gets more revisions the following day.

There are many levels of quality, too, that can be addressed when building a car. Will it be a show car? Probably not. Will I try to assemble a vehicle that anybody from outside the kit and replicar world could look at without finding any hint of "kit car" in it? Definitely so. And I'm not a shortcut kind of guy. That's why when I found myself at an early crossroads of the build I decided to go one way rather than another. After blowing the S-10 body off the chassis and cleaning off the parts I didn't need, I was essentially ready to shave off whatever old mounting points I needed to and drop the body on when it arrived. I know that happens in the kit and replicar world all the time--the dirt that was squirrelled into the nooks and crannies on the chassis could be the dirt I drive out with if I chose to.

But if the folks building kits ever want to lift that phrase out of the mud it's been dragged through for so many years, then you don't just bolt a body to a dirty chassis and say you're done, and neither did I. After gathering up a half-case of Gunk Engine Degreaser, I rolled the chassis out to the gutter at the end of our shop's driveway and let it have it! Breaking out the putty knife, I went after all the clumps of caked-on crud that had accumulated over the life of this 25-year-old chassis.

Surprisingly, a lot of it came off without too much trouble. The crossmember area was another story--lots of goo there. Once that work was completed, I then set aside another day to do my own sandblasting. Over the years, there was a sandblasting business I had always used for everything, from ornamental iron to steel wheels with many coats of paint on them. I've never blasted a car body (for fear of warpage), but I have had one steel body media-blasted with what looked like ground-up Legos. I took a nice 8x10 photo of my newly degreased S-10 chassis to get an estimate, but the guy didn't want to talk to me about it. He didn't do chassis anymore, let alone as roller. (It would have to be completely stripped before he'd consider it, and he wouldn't do it anyway.) So while at Harbor Freight one day, I spied a sandblaster gun that hooked to any air tank, and it only cost $16. Well, I had to at least give it a shot.

Much to my amazement, this little gun actually worked! I was recently on the Harbor Freight Website, and they don't sell the version I bought anymore, but rather an improved version (same price) that holds about 34 ounces of material. And that was my only complaint about the gun I bought--the media holder was too small and needed constant refilling. It worked well enough, though, to strip about a foot of the chassis at a time, and though I'd never really noticed before, there are a lot of feet on an S-10 chassis! The job took all day, and it was pretty tiring leaning over the chassis for hours. If I was smart (hindsight is great, isn't it?), I would have set the chassis up on blocks at elbow height instead of working over it like I was inspecting anthills. I also didn't have any method of reusing the sand I was spraying, so it just hit the ground. No big deal, really, until it was time to sweep up all 150 pounds of what I'd put down. Now that the blasting is done, I'm looking at doing a primer job on the fresh metal, but hey, I live in Southern California--it's not like it's going to rust or anything. Next item on the list is to remove the mounts and items in anticipation of setting the body on the chassis. I can't wait! It seems the road to completion is just that much shorter now.