Day 21 - 28 Chev Ute Restoration (30th June 2015)

Good progress today in two ways. The first improvement was wheels on the rotisserie to make it easy to move the chassis around and store it in the garage overnight.

The second and more important was the ongoing chassis clean up.

So far both rails look pretty good, the bottom edge on the passenger side has a section between the transmission mounts and the handbrake linkage cross member about 15 inches long that's a bit on the thin side. This will be cut out and a new piece welded in.

I did not like the look of the rear cross member where it joins the chassis, so I removed it to get at the rust and will replace it with a better one from the original chassis.

The front cross member has at least 4 loose rivets, so I will remove the whole thing and replace it with the one from the original chassis that does not have any pitting under the radiator.

All in all happy with another days effort, see pictures below:

The rusted area under the rear cross member

The rear cross member with the edges rusted away

Loose rivets on the underside of the front cross member

Loose rivet on the underside of the rear engine mount

 

We now have wheels

Tomorrow, more grinding and wire brushing, and for something different, a bit of paint stripping for the rear sections of both chassis rails to remove 87 year old black paint