i started my 67 chev shortbox back in about 95... i was still in highschool. it was suppose to be just an old truck my dad had that i would get running and drive around. Once thing led to another... and i now have 15,000 into this truck and have yet to actually drive it.
The engine was seiezed... out came the faithful straight 6 and in went the balanced 350 we had sitting in the 69 k5 blazer.
Next thing was the body... the cab was falling off... so i scrounged peices from other vehicles. Then i mad the mistake of sending it to a body guy i knew who never finished it. It became a frame off restoration.... So it wen to a body shop to be finished... they went bacnkrupt. My truck almost got sold off in the reposation from the bank. I had to buy it out of the body shop even though they did a crappy job that never got finished.

Well... good news is that i have new fenders, inners, a 67 grill, hood, doors and a 67 cab that was butchured to death and welded back together solid again... yet to know if it acually all straight. I have DP40 epoxy primer on everything. The body shop did good work until they sprayed it with paint... the pain flakes off... i know i have to take that off and re-paint. the high build is solid. and sealed under that. I also have a fleet side short box from probably a 70' that has a solid floor but iffy sides and a bent bulhead with no tailgate.. I figure i can swap the bulkhead and try to fix the box later.

The body is sitting on the original 67' short box frame with the 350 attached to the munice 4spd and NP 205 t-case that sends the juice down to the locked 14bolt in the rear and a Dana 60 up front.... both hooked to the frame with custom mad 8" lift springs.

My problem is that i am out of money... i need to get it back together myself. The body shop finished highbuilding the cab and front clip. They did a crappy job and painted it the color i had selected and then assembled the parts together with a few bolts so i could take it away. Barely any of the lines from this truck match up. I can't even get the fenders to line up to the grill and rad support. i have tried and got sooo frustrated with this thing... i don't know where to start with it... Body work is definitly not my thing... i can't afford to throw any more money at this monster of mine. I need to peice it back togther and get it running. I have almost everything i need to get it back togther... and my dad has a cople of 67'-72's that have been sitting around as long as i have been around for me to grab parts from....All the parts I have were never acually togther... they all came re-production or from other vehicals that had good comonents to make this one devastating machine... It's been two years since it's came out with some paint on it. My dad hauled it to where i live for me. I need to finish it, or get rid of it...

Please Help...

Thanks

Dude....... sounded like you need a lawyer more than anything else!! About your truck, I know how frustrating stuff can get. As far as trying to get all the pieces lined up, you need to start at square one. Make sure the cab is sitting right, meaning if the cab mounts are shot you'll never get anything to line up right. Then, try to align the doors. This can be a challenge of your patience, but the key to it is slow adjustments. Take off the striker plate when you're aligning it, then align the striker to the door. After you got that done try to align the fenders. Here's a tip, go to a auto body supply store and pick up some fender shims. They look like little square horse shoes. Get a couple different packs of thicknesses, like 1/16" and 1/8". Then try to align the fenders to the doors. The shims will come into play if you need to bring the fenders out away from the cab to be flush with the doors. Now you can do the cowl. Again..... it will probably take shims to get it sitting right. I'm making this sound easy but it isn't. If you can't seem to get it, just take an hour break, have a drink, and come back to it when you aren't yelling and screaming at the thing. Sometimes it might take a fender shim on the front of the fenders where they bolt up to the radiator support. Now is the time when you really need to get the hood on and fit that too. Oh, a tip that served me well when I was doing all this $hit on my truck, get one of those white-out correction pens and use it to make the relationship of all your panels. Like the doors for example, sometimes its necessary to take them off and on more than once. So what you can do is put a dot of the paint on the hinge bracket and a dot right above it on the cab. This provides you with a reference point so you dont have to agonize with the fitting each and every time. You can do the same with the fenders. Put a dot on upper corner of the fender where it bolts to the cab and then put a corresponding dot on the cab.

And as for being out of money...... do one last thing before you start saving again. Try to scrounge up some $$$ to buy just enough DP to cover the rest of the truck. This way you can drive it around while you're saving up for all the rest. Don't worry about trying to fix the body before you spray it, just make sure everything is clean and if you have rust make sure you treat it with one of those rust killing products..... then sand the stuff with some 180 or 220 and you'll be good to go for a while.

I went to work on it this weekend. I did what you said and started from scratch. I pulled the front clip off and the took it all apart. I then tried to line the fenders up to the grill. I ended up having to slot the holes so things would line up. then i put the rad support in the front clip and bolted it down to that.
As far as the cab mounts go. I have urethane ones. They weren't the right height from day one so i had them cut down a while back. I think i cut too much from the front cab mounts, because it seems like the front of the cab is pointing downward, so i can't get the front clip to line up. I think i should look into rubber mounts. i heard the urethane ones are too stiff anyways. But, things are looking better. I found a few rust spots that are starting since the first coat of DP went on. I guess what i will do is clean it up the best i can and do like you said... spray it to keep it clean of rust. I noticed that some of the seems in the cab have rust coming from them. I don't know how i am gonna clean them out. I guess just wipe it down as best i can with paint tinner clean ect, and then spray the hell out of it with anti-rust ?!? Would that work. The rest of the flat spots i will clean down to bare metal, seal with DP i guess then throw cheap primer over to keep it fresh.
I am mostly scared of the rust coming from the seams... i can't get at it to clean it up, and i don't want it to cause problems in the future.
I think i can do this though. I am already feeling better about it. and suggestions you guys have about the cab mounts would be appreciated.
I checked the frame over the weekend... It's straight... so that was a relief.
I have one peice of advice for anyone considering aftermarket re-production fenders.... DON'T they are crap.... Get a decent set of old ones and have them fixed.

Keep the help coming...

Thanks.

hey, instead of spending money on new ones, if yours are new and not cracked, just to short maybe put a shim under the bottom of it, like a big washer? that might save you some money. good luck and dont give up, Ben

I don't know anything about Canadian law, but there is no way you should have had to buy your own cab out of the bankruptcy. It wasn't an asset of the body shop. If they didn't finish before going belly up, you should have been able to get it back in its incomplete state. If they tried to charge you for any work done, your could have said you would just drop any breach claim you had in exchange for a release.

Again, I'm not a Canadian lawyer, but I doubt the legal issues are any different there. If you "bought" it from the bank itself and the statute of limitations hasn't passed, you need to go see a lawyer quick if we are talking about a lot of money.

No, i didn't quite get to that point. I paid the body shop and got the truck out about a week before they went under. The owner advised me of what was going on and said that if it wasn't paid off and taken out, i could end up with problems. I avoided the whole thing, paid the guy, and then realized about two months later how bad a job was done. I was living about 8 hours away from where i grew up and had it in the shop. So i had to go back home, get it out, and then i had to head back to work the next day. I didn't have a chance to have a good look at the work until it was a little late.
Oh well, i know better now. It's at least moving forward again... Maybe in another 9 years i will actually be driving the thing.