The Truck of Doom: An Occasional Build Thread

Have you thought of using sandbags to get the floor to fit around places like the transmission tunnel?

salans7 wrote

Have you thought of using sandbags to get the floor to fit around places like the transmission tunnel?

I haven’t, but that’s a really good idea.  

Not a whole lot of progress today, although I did roll the truck out to the driveway to let it start sitting in the sun and softening up the new flooring.  Hopefully tomorrow I can start working it into it proper position, such that I can start trimming it on Saturday.  

In the meantime I've decided to try my hand at interior plastic painting, starting with the seat belt retractor covers.  The rear portion of them (the part that faces the rear window) was doing the chalk thing, but overall they were in much better shape than I originally thought; I expected them to be very brittle coming off, but in fact the plastic was overall quite pliable.

For those of you who have done this before, a question: how much do I sand them down?  I've gotten all the chalk off, and am now just generating pink dust.  Or do I need to sand it down into the original color, as seems to be happening in spots?  Also, do I need to sand the plastic that is in good shape?



As for the paint itself, I've got some SEM Napa Red along with plastic prep and adhesion promoter.  The Napa Red is a little more maroon than original, but it matches my aftermarket door panels almost perfectly and will make a nice complement to the otherwise red interior.

Once you have the dead, chalky plastic off you don't have to go any farther.  But I like to use a #60 grit paper so things aren't dead smooth 'cause they weren't from the factory.  And in my experience, #60 will load up pretty quickly if you don't keep it wet.

Anyway, if the paint pretty well matches your door panels then it should work out good.  Ford used way too much red in most of these trucks in my book, so I like going with maroon.

Gary Lewis wrote

Once you have the dead, chalky plastic off you don't have to go any farther.  But I like to use a #60 grit paper so things aren't dead smooth 'cause they weren't from the factory.  And in my experience, #60 will load up pretty quickly if you don't keep it wet.

Excellent, thanks.  And oddly enough, 60 grit is just what I was using...and yes, it loaded up quickly.

Anyway, if the paint pretty well matches your door panels then it should work out good.  Ford used way too much red in most of these trucks in my book, so I like going with maroon.

Agreed, and it wasn't just the trucks; the first car I ever bought with my own money was an '89 Tempo, I still have nightmares about that interior!  By far, the worst car I ever owned.

Very little progress today.  I did trim off some chunks of the floor I know aren't going to be needed, to make it a little lighter and a little easier to move around in the truck.  Also, I took advantage of Shaun's excellent suggestion - I only have one bag of sand, but I have several bags of topsoil I've been putting off applying to the back yard; they make pretty good weights:



I expect by around 3pm tomorrow the interior of that truck should be nice and hot, and the flooring about as flexible as it's likely to get.  Hopefully I can get it positioned correctly and start trimming it down to the final size.

I think that's an excellent use for those bags.  

I'll bet tomorrow afternoon things will be very pliable.  Good luck to you.

Since the flooring won't be at its most pliable until around 3pm today, I decided to get started on painting the retractor covers.  I have no skill or knowledge whatsoever when it comes to painting things, so I followed the directions on the cans exactly: soap and water wash, then plastic prep, followed by a couple of hits of adhesion promoter, and finally three light coats of Napa Red at 5-10 minute intervals.  I think it worked out very well:

Before:


After:


My only complaint is that you can still see the boundary between the good plastic and the plastic I sanded down, but that's not the fault of the paint.  And really, who is going to be staring that closely at the back of the covers anyway?

The pieces dried very quickly, too...quick enough that I felt comfortable putting them back in the truck just a little while later:



Although it doesn't look like it here, the covers are almost perfectly matched to the door panels; the doors are a bit glossier, which I think exacerbates what little color difference there is.  At any rate I'm judging this experiment a success, and I'll be repainting my kick panels this coming week.

Now to go check on that floor...

Matthew - The cover looks great.  Well done!  

As for the color difference between that and the door panel, I find it amazing what the camera sometimes shows.  Things that look the same to the eye don't to the camera, and vice versa.  I'm not really sure why that is.

Gary Lewis wrote

Matthew - The cover looks great.  Well done!  

Thanks!  It's amazing what can be done when you RTFM and then actually follow it.

Meanwhile, I'm not quite there yet on the flooring:



The sacks of dirt did a pretty good job of flattening down the folds and creases, but even after letting it sit overnight and into the hottest part of the day, the fit around the transmission tunnel is terrible.  I got to wondering if maybe I accidentally ordered the floor for the 4x4 cab, but I checked and my order was 4x2, as it should be.  

The other possibility seems (to me) to be that I need to trim material from the front of the floor, not the rear as I've been doing.  This flooring is molded to the shape of the cab floor, and the transmission hump (obviously) gets larger the farther forward you go.  If there's substantial excess at the front of the mat, then aligning the mat to the front edge of the cab is going to give me a too-big vinyl hump along the entire length of the floor, which might look like the picture above.

So...anyone who has done this before want to weigh in before I start cutting again?  I probably get one more substantial cut in the fore-aft direction before it's too late.

My father would have said "That fits like a sock on a rooster."  I've never seen that in real life, but have imagined it - both what it would look like as well as installing it.  Neither is good in my imagination.

Any chance you can move the thing forward w/o cutting it just to see how it would fit?

Hard to tell from the image, but I think it might need to go farther forward.

Gary Lewis wrote

My father would have said "That fits like a sock on a rooster."  I've never seen that in real life, but have imagined it - both what it would look like as well as installing it.  Neither is good in my imagination.

I can't say as I've heard that one before, but that's a fair assessment of the situation.

Any chance you can move the thing forward w/o cutting it just to see how it would fit?

Maybe.  The problem is that this thing doesn't fold easily and the pedals are in the way on the driver's side, so I may or may not be able to make an accurate determination even if I do get it moved forward.  I'll give it a try tomorrow, of course.

salans7 wrote

Hard to tell from the image, but I think it might need to go farther forward.

I certainly hope you're right and that's all it is.

Dorsai wrote

Since the flooring won't be at its most pliable until around 3pm today, I decided to get started on painting the retractor covers.  I have no skill or knowledge whatsoever when it comes to painting things, so I followed the directions on the cans exactly: soap and water wash, then plastic prep, followed by a couple of hits of adhesion promoter, and finally three light coats of Napa Red at 5-10 minute intervals.  I think it worked out very well:

Before:


After:


My only complaint is that you can still see the boundary between the good plastic and the plastic I sanded down, but that's not the fault of the paint.  And really, who is going to be staring that closely at the back of the covers anyway?

The pieces dried very quickly, too...quick enough that I felt comfortable putting them back in the truck just a little while later:



Although it doesn't look like it here, the covers are almost perfectly matched to the door panels; the doors are a bit glossier, which I think exacerbates what little color difference there is.  At any rate I'm judging this experiment a success, and I'll be repainting my kick panels this coming week.

Now to go check on that floor...

I was wondering what the parts looked like after sanding and painting? "My only complaint is that you can still see the boundary between the good plastic and the plastic I sanded down".

I sanded down 2 sets of kick panels, AC and non-AC and washed them. I did not want to paint them till I added some texture and wondered if you did and what you used. I see you did not add texture.
I seen posted that SEM makes an under coat that dries and leaves a texture that I want to try.
I have also used a sand type spry paint that might also work if I can find it down here as it was up in CT I used it.
Dave ----

In case Dave's comment about SEM having a texture to apply to plastic gets missed, here's some info. First, it is called Texture Coating, oddly enough.

And here's their video that tells about it:

Dave - I sure hope you try it and let us know how it works.

Gary Lewis wrote

In case Dave's comment about SEM having a texture to apply to plastic gets missed, here's some info.  First, it is called Texture Coating, oddly enough.
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And here's their video that tells about it:
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<iframe width="1120" height="630" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aeEBZZQ9AXE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Dave - I sure hope you try it and let us know how it works.  

Thanks Gary
My paint supplier carries SEM products so I will have to check with them if they have it and if not to get a can or 2 so I have them when needed and I will report the out come but my be a few weeks till I can get to them as my work hours don't work on when they are open and I have to work next weekend and think they are only open half day on Saturday's.

I am sure where I got the SEM under coat for texture, Google on dash repair from a BMW site, was old and SEM may not of made this back then.
Dave ----

The problem did in fact appear to be that the floor mat just needed to move forward.  I was able to fold it back and then slide it forward enough that I could see from the passenger side that the fit was much improved.  It’s not perfect, but with the application of time, heat, and feet I think it will be fine:



I’ve got the dirtbags in there again (literal bags of dirt, not my friends or neighbors) to flatten it down, I think I’ll be ready for the final trimming tomorrow.

That looks MUCH better! And I think it'll lay down nicely with the bags, heat, and feet.

Definitely looks much better!

“I’ve got the dirtbags in there again (literal bags of dirt, not my friends or neighbors)“

Darn, I was going to make a wisecrack!

Looking good! Good job!