How To: C15a Wire-3 restoration

[Jordan Baker]

I finished doing my basic welding on the tailgate yesterday. I decided to use the original tie down loops as they weren't in too bad of shape and would clean up just fine once sandblasted. Once I finished, all the parts were loaded up and taken for a drive to the sandblasting guy I use for the bigger stuff. Tomorrow when I pick up all the parts Ill be giving them a good coating of POR15. The plan is that once the POR is dry, Ill finish all the needed welding.

[Private_collector]

Damn fine work, soldier!

[Bob Carriere]

Been following your tailgate progress with passion as I am about to do one for the cab 11.

Do not forget that any welding will burn off the POR coating on both sides if you get good penetration...... try to get all your welding done first........ for the reinforcement pocket use the zinc primer on the inside section ....weld them .....then POR......

As anyone ever notice that the cab 11 tail gate is the reverse of a cab 13????
On the cab 11 all the bracing and reinforcement are on the inside..... which is a pain in the butt if the tailgate is held open at 90 degrees and you sit or drag something over it...... but the cab 13 has all the reinforcement on the outside leaving a smooth inside.


Unfortunately the hinge straps on the cab 11 are riveted....which implies a little more work .

Cheers

[Jordan Baker]

Welding is almost done on the tailgate. Lots and lots of welding. I did discover I suffered some heat distortion even with me clamping. This happened along the top edge where the cutout is. Both sides bent in towards the box slightly. Hopefully the 10lbs sledge hammer will help them back to where they should be. Overall I am pretty happy with how this has turned out.

The next thing will be making new sides for the box. These should be a lot easier in comparison then the tailgate. Fingers crossed.

[Jordan Baker]

A big thanks to a fellow MLU'er for helping my project move along. I'm very thankful to have picked up a near complete WS19 ground station.

Yes I know it's not part of the truck restoration but it's part of the onboard equipment.

[Jordan Baker]

I started in on making the new sides for the box this past week. I stopped in a local fabrication shop and they will be making the long top channels on the sides for me. The originals are 14ga and 80" long. Id love to do them myself but that is simply just to heavy a gage and too long a piece for me to do at home on my own.

However what I have begun is making the smaller vertical channels. I got the 16ga cut to near finished size and then bent them up in about 1.5hrs worth of work. I still have to cut the sides down to the proper depth and angle. I also made up new parts for going on either end of the wheel wells on the outside lower edge of the box.

The one thing I am not too sure how to do is where the bottom of the top bows meet these channels. The channel appears to either have been cut and bent to be parallel with the box sides. Or was it stamped?

[Jordan Baker]

Figured I should get the tail gate all POR15'd and primed before all the rain showed up. Wednesday was a great day to paint so that is what I did. Im really happy with how the tailgate has turned out.