Builds Treebeard (2 Viewers)

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The heater core flush went alright. My hoses are old and tough so finding a combination that I could remove to do the flush was difficult. I ended up back flushing with hose water and was rewarded with cloudy green, cloudy brown, and finally clean water from the core. My final solution was to connect the hose to the heater out line (blue), plug the out line (green), and run a tube to a bucket from the heater in line (red). I also plugged the engine side of the red connection. This way I didn’t risk getting any crud from the core in my engine or the rear heater but I do now have some hose water mixed into the coolant. I also made a mess on the street by doing this without draining my coolant first.

Still... I now have heat! I haven’t measured it so I can’t say how it compares to other cruisers but it’s a clear and noticeable improvement for me.

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I came out to a small puddle of what I’m pretty sure is gear oil under the truck today. It’s coming out of the bellhousing so I blame the input seal on the transmission. My transfer case has been weeping oil for a while and oil is migrating into the transmission so I’ve been planning on a rebuild anyways. This is my shopping list for a transfer case rebuild and the other things to do while I’m in there. What am I missing?
  • Transfer case rebuild kit
    • Will have a machine shop swap the bearings
    • Will extend breather
    • Will plug hole between trans and t-case
  • Transmission input shaft seal
    • Are there other seals or gaskets I should replace on the transmission? Cover plate?
  • Clutch kit (pilot bearing, TO bearing, pressure plate, clutch plate)
    • Will resurface flywheel
  • Rear main seal (it's a year old but... might as well, right?
 
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Today was all about rust! I spent most of the day in the truck with a grinder/wire-wheel and a can of Rustoleum enamel. Yesterday I received a big package of Noico (80 mil butyl and 150 mil foam) in the mail so I'm actually starting to put the interior back together now. My goal today was to treat all of the surface rust on the floor so I can start putting butyl down next week. I also placed my carpet order from @dnp and I expect that to arrive sometime next week as well. :)

Any rust that I could grind down to bare metal I hit with the enamel. Anything deeper got some Permatex rust converter today and I'll get it with the enamel tomorrow.

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I also spent a while working on the tailgate sill. It's going to need cutting and patching before long but I wanted to get it to a point where I could clean it properly, treat it to stop the rust from advancing, and have a better idea of how far it's gone. I pulled off most of the weatherstrip lip and found that there was rust behind it even in spots that looked clean. I'm not sure how that seam is treated from the factory but it was clearly allowing water to get down between the box and the lower part of the lip. After I took this photo I hit it with a wire brush once more and gave it a few rounds of rust converter.

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While working on the floor I used this rust bath on much of my seat hardware and was really pleased with the results. I'm sure whatever this stuff is could be made at home because it's extremely safe and I bought it from Home Depot. I originally used it in my old gas tank last year but it's reusable so I pour it back into the bottle through a shop towel and it keeps delivering.

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I'm planning to hold off on the cargo area carpet until I can properly repair the sill. The wheel well rust spots shouldn't be too bad to work on with carpet installed.
 
That tailgate area looks like a cut and patch. Seems like you need to maintain the strength there for hinges and floor integrity.
How are you going to handle those spots by the wheel wells? Based on other posts here, that seems to be coming from below. Guessing all of that will be handled prior to Noico.
 
That tailgate area looks like a cut and patch. Seems like you need to maintain the strength there for hinges and floor integrity.
How are you going to handle those spots by the wheel wells? Based on other posts here, that seems to be coming from below. Guessing all of that will be handled prior to Noico.

Yep honestly the tailgate area doesn’t look as bad as I thought, now that I can see it all a bit better. I have a rear sill piece from a parts cruiser sitting in my shed that I can start patching in as soon as I learn to use a welder hah.

I’m still trying to figure out how to address the wheel well spots. You’re right that the rust goes all the way through and goes lower than the floor on the wheel well sheet metal. Only one of the hinge mounting plates are salvageable so I think the easiest thing to do will be to get new pieces that include the entire hinge area (mounting plate, wheel well sheet metal, and backing plate with “drain” channels) and patch it all in together. I’m open to ideas for sure.

I had been thinking that I would punt that job down the road... the carpet in that area is easy enough to pull back and I can avoid covering it in butyl for now. My thought was to cover the holes with 3M body repair tape to keep the wet out and start practicing my MIG skills. Maybe this is a bad plan and I should just start welding?
 
Yep honestly the tailgate area doesn’t look as bad as I thought, now that I can see it all a bit better. I have a rear sill piece from a parts cruiser sitting in my shed that I can start patching in as soon as I learn to use a welder hah.

I’m still trying to figure out how to address the wheel well spots. You’re right that the rust goes all the way through and goes lower than the floor on the wheel well sheet metal. Only one of the hinge mounting plates are salvageable so I think the easiest thing to do will be to get new pieces that include the entire hinge area (mounting plate, wheel well sheet metal, and backing plate with “drain” channels) and patch it all in together. I’m open to ideas for sure.

I had been thinking that I would punt that job down the road... the carpet in that area is easy enough to pull back and I can avoid covering it in butyl for now. My thought was to cover the holes with 3M body repair tape to keep the wet out and start practicing my MIG skills. Maybe this is a bad plan and I should just start welding?
I think your plan is a good one for a few reasons.

for one it’s easier to remove the 3m tape for full repair than it would be to cut out a bad weld and do over

for two you’ll probably get a better seal out of the tape. Especially without welding skills.
 
Good points. Glad you have the donor piece. As for wheel wells - can you access easily from underneath? Might be good to convert the rust and then seal that up best as possible.
 
Good points. Glad you have the donor piece. As for wheel wells - can you access easily from underneath? Might be good to convert the rust and then seal that up best as possible.

Yeah I think I can get to all of it. Maybe I should cut out the rot, paint the edges, then tape it up? I’ll at least seal it up with fluid film.
 
Last night I refreshed my front doors with new window runs, new vapor barriers, Noico 80 on the outer skin, and some lube on the regulator. Thankfully there's very little rust hiding in the doors but I did do a little bit of rust converting wheel I was in there. I also put Noico 80 down in the front foot wells because it was easy and quick. Maybe it's a placebo but I think the truck already sounds better. The exhaust sounds obnoxiously loud from inside the truck now. XD

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Last night I refreshed my front doors with new window runs, new vapor barriers, Noico 80 on the outer skin, and some lube on the regulator. Thankfully there's very little rust hiding in the doors but I did do a little bit of rust converting wheel I was in there. I also put Noico 80 down in the front foot wells because it was easy and quick. Maybe it's a placebo but I think the truck already sounds better. The exhaust sounds obnoxiously loud from inside the truck now. XD

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Looks great Nate!
 
Last night I refreshed my front doors with new window runs, new vapor barriers, Noico 80 on the outer skin, and some lube on the regulator. Thankfully there's very little rust hiding in the doors but I did do a little bit of rust converting wheel I was in there. I also put Noico 80 down in the front foot wells because it was easy and quick. Maybe it's a placebo but I think the truck already sounds better. The exhaust sounds obnoxiously loud from inside the truck now. XD

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I noticed the most difference doing the upper rear quarters and rear wheel wells.
 
You don't need 100%. But I tried to cover end to end leaving the lower portion because that's were rust is happening. I doubled up on the wheel wells but left a gap where it meets the quarter panel. The tinny sound mostly goes away by just doing the top edge.
 
You don't need 100%. But I tried to cover end to end leaving the lower portion because that's were rust is happening. I doubled up on the wheel wells but left a gap where it meets the quarter panel. The tinny sound mostly goes away by just doing the top edge.
This is good advice. Avoid covering seams if you can and don’t go too low into the rear quarter panels. That’s exactly how I tried to do mine. 👍

Just wait until you get everything all buttoned up Nate...you should notice a big difference!
 
I've made lots of progress since Thursday!
  • I overhauled the rear doors with butyl on the outer skin, some minor rust repair, cleaning, and new vapor barriers. Just like the fronts they were surprisingly clean on the inside.
  • I finished covering the floor, quarter panels, and wheel wells covered with butyl. I left gaps and edges open but made sure to cover all larger pieces of sheet metal. The rear sill and part of the wheel well I left intentionally un-done so I can repair that rust first.
  • I cut some new cargo panels out of cheap hardboard from Home Depot. I spent something like $12 for a 4'x8' sheet of the stuff. I messed up the first one earlier in the week but that gave me enough time to realize that I didn't want to use the plastic clips any longer. I bought some 5/16" well nuts with matching screws/washers and now I have some reasonably presentable cargo panels! I'm thinking about picking up some latches and hinges from HD and cutting doors into them...
  • I finally wired my carb fan up to the thermosensor on the intake manifold. Hopefully this helps make warm starts a bit easier.
Next up is probably the Noico Red 150 mil closed-cell foam. My original plan was butyl/foam/carpet (with attached jute) but after more research I'm convinced that the foam is primarily useful for decoupling the floor from an MLV layer... so now I have to decide whether to omit the foam or to order some MLV. Any strong opinions?

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Some tips for the butyl...

  • The $6 roller that Noico sells is absolutely worth it. It fits perfectly in the grooves on the 60 floor and saves your fingers.
  • Start with the big sections first and work your way down to the fiddly bits. The last pieces I placed were under the driver's seat and I was able to use all of the scraps I had left over from earlier sections.
  • I used exactly 56 square feet of butyl for what you see above and for similar coverage inside the doors and quarter panels. I'm hanging on to more so that I can cover the wheel wells and tailgate sill after rust repair (probably another 4 square feet). I'd love to add some to my tailgate as well but that will require chopping it and installing a storage lid... I'd guess that 2-3 square feet of butyl would be plenty.
  • I ordered one box of 36 sqft and two boxes of 18 sqft and found that they include differently size sheets. The larger ones (in the 36 sqft box) were perfect for the front foot wells (1 sheet each), rear foot well (2 sheets) and the cargo area (2 sheets covered most of the open area).
 
Yesterday I...
  • Tuned my carb using the lean-drop method. This is too easy to not do more often, I just need my own digital tachometer. The engine is idling lower and happier now which is absolutely helpful for sound-deadening purposes. ;)
  • Started putting foam down in the interior. @Jonathan Faunce had given me some leftovers from his sound deadening work and they turned out to be 300mil Noico Red. There was just enough to fill my footwells where I had been planning to double up on the 150mil stuff. Perfect! I read something somewhere about "decoupling" passenger feet from the floor to reduce felt vibrations and it made good sense to me.
  • Tested my coolant for exhaust fumes. Negative! That's a relief because I've been losing coolant and stressing about white smoke in the exhaust at startup. I've seen some coolant drops around the rear of the engine/bellhousing/driveshaft so I knew there was a leak somewhere but it's very nice to know there really isn't any coolant/oil crossover happening.
  • Used an IR thermometer to try to diagnose my thermostat... which I'm pretty confident is stuck open. The truck warms up quickly enough but temps seem to max out around 150f rather than 190f as intended. I also observed consistent warming of the top of the thermostat housing, upper rad hose, and radiator from 0 up to 150 (which shouldn't happen if the thermostat is working as intended).
Tonight I'm planning to put down more foam and do a pressure test on the cooling system. I'm already plotting to do a cooling system overhaul (thermostat, fan clutch, hoses) but if I can find the leak and stop it up for a little while I'll feel better about it.

Anyone following along has noticed a real productivity burst and it's largely because I've finally found a shop space to work out of. It's shared space but the bay is typically available and it's very close to my house so I've been able to spend quite a bit of time here working over the last couple of weeks.

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Had the same cooling issue with respect to temps - swapped out my thermostat and all gaskets and hoses. My thermostat was indeed broken and stuck open, so truck never warmed - using an IR therm, the top hose to the heater core wouldn't get much above 140 degrees. Result of swap, things are much better now. Heater is blasting hot air like a furnace now - 20 F outside yesterday and actually had to turn heat down!
 

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