Is it your plan to have the truck painted once completely reassembled?
A lot of paint shops prefer to do it that way on more modern vehicles. Personally, I can't recommend to do it that way on these old trucks. There are too many areas which are hard to get to in order to scuff the existing paint in order for the ensuing coats of paint to stick to it.
My plan of attack is to do all rust and dent repairs of all of the individual unassembled parts, stopping the dent repairs right before I start to make them worse.
Then I have everything sandblasted, and immediately epoxy primed. Then sprayed with high build primer during the advertised window of epoxy prime cure so that no scuffing of the epoxy primer is required prior to the application of the high build primer. That saves a TON of work.
Then my body and paint guy takes it from there to finish the metal work, body filler, apply epoxy primer as a sealer, and then final paint.
In your case, I recommend that you have all of the parts prepped and painted prior to reassembly to assure that all of the surfaces can be adequately scuffed so the next layers of paint with adhere properly. Then assemble the truck.
Last edited by 52Carl; 01/21/2025 10:42 PM.
