Weekly Update #6

Last week was a fairly productive week with the frame being coated with POR-15, installed the wheels, repaired the exterior wheel well covers, and worked on dry fitting the floor. Here is a picture of the repaired frame from the previous week.

The POR-15 went on really well with two coats. We will be putting on a top coat of POR-15 black chassis paint on the axles, frame wheel well area, and the exterior wheel well covers later this week. It took a gallon to coat the bumper to most of the hitch area two times. We will finish the bumper and hitch later and then have a silver top coat of POR-15 that is UV resistant.

We moved the a-frames into the shop and lifted the shell off of the 4×4 supports. The a-frames make this such an easy process and took no time at all to setup. We then moved the frame under the shell to get it ready for a dry fit. The shell looks a little crooked in the pictures, but we added some counter weights later and that got it to sit perfectly level.

The floor has been cutout and waiting for a week or so now. We dry fitted the floor and it looks pretty good. The front curved area was partially rotted, but we were able to use the c-channel that was still in great shape to create our pattern. The rear was almost completely rotted and the c-channel had broken into three different pieces. We are going to use a combination of the c-channel that has been spliced back together and the curve of the shell to trace a pattern and get the rear floor cutout probably sometime tomorrow.

This update is a little late and already this week the floor has been partially bolted down for a final dry fit. The shell went on almost perfectly and a notch was made for where the door frame is inset into the floor. We are still awaiting price quotes on aluminum so the shell will have to come up again once we have the front banana wraps and the rear belly pan aluminum ready to install. The new hoist system makes that a one man job that takes very little effort.