Next up was the hood. It had a small crease across the crown of it that looked like it ran into the hopper on a combine back when it was a farm truck. After sanding it to bare metal I worked it out with hammers and dollies until it was ready for a little filler. More sanding and into the booth for priming.
Next up the steps. These had the same rubber mats like the fenders had but I didn't have the option of just painting them. I decided I could kick that can down the road until I had to decide how I was going to cap those and the back steps. First, I had to take them all apart. They are in 5 pieces counting the tops. Most of the bolts were badly rusted and I was going to replace them all when I reassemble them. So, after fighting with a couple, I just got my big breaker bar and twisted the rest off. That made for short work of taking them apart. I saved the rubber top pieces because they are backed with a 16 ga. plate and I was thinking I may want to try to re-cover them. Then I started sanding and sanding and more sanding. There are a lot of surfaces on these and it's almost all hand work. But finally, all the pieces were ready for primer.
By this time, I was ready to build something again. I had been thinking how to do the taillights and I needed somewhere for the license plate and back up camera. If I attached them to the frame, they would be too far under the deck to be able to see them clearly. If I hooked them to the deck, I had to come up with a way the electrical would roll out and retrack with the deck and it all wouldn't get crushed by the deck coming down. What I came up with is a parallel bar system that welded to the frame on one end and hung from the C-channels on the deck on the other end. When the deck slid back and down it would slide along the channel staying plumb and become a post under the ramp when the end of the ramp landed on the ground. There is a post under each C-channel, and they are tied together and cross braced. Over that I built a tube steel frame and covered it with a piece of 1/8" plate. Then I cut out where the taillights were going (I had ordered the lights earlier knowing I needed to see how they would fit and mount). The recesses for these are deep enough so they flush out with the face of the plate. In the middle of the plate, I took 1/2" tube steel and created a Chevy Bow Tie logo that the license plate would fit in, and I could mount the backup camera above or get a license plate ring with a camera in it. Then into the booth for priming and back to prepping more parts for me.
