In my last update I showed a picture of how the hood overlapped the hood a bit. I started thinking about that and what I was going to do. It occured to me that when I bolted the inner fender panels and outer I bolted them right up against the radiator support. This didn;t allow any real outward adjustments. So I loosened the boltd and was able to pull each side out about a 1/4" which made all the difference in the world. Having done that I was able to slide the new grill in place as well.
This leads me to a question. How have you all assembled the front end after paint? Piece by piece on the truck? Or as an assembly on the floor and then slide the entire thing in place? Getting all the holes to line up and move thngs around can lead to scratches that when painted I'm not going to want to deal with. Curious what others have done.
The rear fenders showed up yesterday, so I unboxed the passenger side and bolted it on. I had to loosen the running boards and take off the filler panel that goes from the bed to the running board. After some tweaking I was able to get all three parts lined up.
With that done I decided it was time to put it on the ground and look at the entire truck as a whole for the first time since November 2020 when I dismantled the whole truck to start the project.
While things fit ok, ok isn't enough for me. Some of these things are just the way GM made them, but I'm going to fix all the things I think they should have done. To start is how the running board ends before the front fender unlike the rear where it bolts directly to the fender.
I'm also not a fan the way the filler panel just ends rather than continuing the slope down under the cab.
I'm going to extend the stake pocket and roll it in to meet the filler panel.
These two are to show the fitment between the filler panel and rear fender as well as the running board and the rear fender. These will both be fixed.
Time tally:
7 hours
491.6 total
.