Build Mister Blue the sunburned 2004 diesel 105

[John Young]

I'm looking back and realizing I have not updated this thread in a very long time!

A big part of the reason is that I've been using Mister Blue as my daily driver. And it has been a real pleasure. The 1HD-T has enough juice to make me reasonably happy and it is very efficient. I can get up to 1100-1200 km on a fill up of the main and sub tanks.

I've been using Mr Blue for everything including transporting engine blocks to the machinist. Finally late last year I decided I really wanted my daily to look a bit nicer and I took it into a good body and paint shop before heading back to the US for the holidays. The places I prefer to use take the paint down to the bare metal almost completely. Here is a little video from the early stage of the work:


This will stay my daily in Dubai until I leave for good in a couple of years.

 

[John Young]

It took about a month to get to the stage of initial paint.

One little detail that I carried over from a regular 100 project from a few years ago was to paint the little insert at the back of the rear quarterpanel black instead of body color. I think it adds a nice detail.

We had replaced the front and rear bumper during the initial mechanical work. I prefer the unpainted ABS look. It also takes scrapes a little better than a painted bumper. I asked them to just clean up the existing bumpers.

 

[John Young]

It was nice to see the progress from afar.

I asked them to paint the bump strips body color except for the center stripe.

This photo was taken in mid-FEB 2026. The truck had already been in body and paint for 2 months, which was fine.

 

[John Young]

But it is not easy doing this remotely and there were problems. For example, in Mister Blue's first life as a government truck some maintenance guy had welded bosses on the left rear door for the license plate. I assume because the original holes had gotten stripped. In the absence of explicit instructions the body and paint ship had just cleaned them up a bit but not corrected the situation. But once it was pointed out the guys did a great job of fixing it with a bit of repaint.

I got back to Dubai in late FEB. One thing I made sure to do was to ask them to put the left-over paint in a can for me.

it was a big thrill to see Mister Blue in person again after about 3 months!

And bring him home.

 

[John Young]

I then proceeded to use Mister Blue as per normal. A few issues showed up. And boy did the dust and dirt of Dubai quickly show the downside of a dark paint scheme.

The biggest teething problem was a little interference on the passenger side body trim.

 

[John Young]

I think the issue resulted from not having the passenger front door adjusted properly. We had replaced, BTW, several of the door hinges during this work.



Also in this time frame I had taken Mister Blue out to the desert for the first time in new paint, which was a great load of fun!

 

[John Young]

 

[John Young]

It gets really dark out there. There were some good drivers.



I had pushed Mister Blue a bit hard earlier in the evening and I was a bit worried about getting out. And as mentioned it gets really dark out there.

Here were all the trucks that came out for the Iftar:

 

[John Young]

A friend had taken this video from when I was driving out to the Iftar. As you can see, Mister Blue is straining a bit.



This would come back to haunt me later.