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CHAPTER 2

GETTING STARTED

Ever take on a huge project and find out halfway through that you’ve missed some major component? We’ve all been there, and it’s not a lot of fun. The solution? Preparation. By making sure that you’re well prepared for any eventuality, as well as having a plan, you can be sure that you’ll do the job right the first time. And if something does throw a wrench in the works, you’ll be okay.

Again, it all comes down to having the right plan in hand. Estimate your cost, add another 20 percent (we’ve all been there), and set your budget where it needs to be. Make a list of the items you know you want, their costs, and make sure you keep track of how much the project costs along the way so you don’t end up in the poorhouse over a truck. And finally, know that without the right tools, you’re never going to do this job correctly.

This 1972 Chevy is in great shape, and it’s a good candidate for restoration. It also came with all of its paperwork, which makes it even more valuable in the long run.

Organization

The flaw in many restorations is trying to do too much simultaneously. What typically ends up happening is that there are several things that are in process but nothing that’s truly complete. That’s not a lot of fun.

Instead, plan out your process before a single bolt is turned, and know solidly how and when you’re going to accomplish things. You can start and finish in any number of ways, but you do want to get the project done one way or another.

The key, as it is with any big project, is to plan things out beforehand. Break each section of the system down into individual components, then work it down from there. For example, you could organize by area: cab, bed, engine, etc., or you could go by the type of work you’re doing: rust repair, bodywork, paint, mechanical. There are multiple different methods to break down your restoration, but it’s absolutely critical that you do so. If not, you’re putting yourself in a bad situation, and it will come back to haunt you.

The easiest way to do this is to write down—preferably in a notebook or something similar—what your goal is for the truck. Are you planning on launching your truck at a particular event or show? Do you want a reliable driver? Does this truck need to tick off certain requirements to be your true dream vehicle? Write all of that down so that you have a good starting point.

Getting your truck down to a rolling chassis is the goal for any complete restoration, but once you’re there, you’re not done yet. Now it’s time to strip everything completely off of the frame. (Photo Courtesy Mark Burdo)

With that all in mind, you need to set up a build process. Since these trucks are big and can be broken down into different components, it is possible to do multiple things at the same time. Note that the idea isn’t to get ahead of yourself, per the warning at the beginning of this chapter. Instead, it’s so that you can send projects out to be done while you work on other stuff at home so you’re not sitting idle on one thing or another. For example, if you want to work on mocking up the suspension while a shop rebuilds the engine and another friend rebuilds the transmission, those are all options. But at the end, there are still some basic sequences that you should follow. Most of the time, you’ll build things in this order:

1. Tear down the truck

2. Repair any rust

3. Rebuild/restore the engine and transmission

4. Rebuild/restore the suspension and braking system

5. Perform bodywork

6. Paint the truck

7. Reupholster and restore the interior

8. Install the wiring and other electrical components

9. Assemble it all one last time

Again, some things can be done simultaneously. If you like, you can ship the interior off to a specialist while you tear down the truck. Then just keep it somewhere safe until it’s ready to be reinstalled. The idea here is to sit down, take your time, and figure out exactly the way the next few months and/or years of your life with this restoration are going to go. There’s no way around it; you have to be seriously organized for the project to succeed.

Spreadsheets and To-Do Lists

Now that you’re committed to a project, you should take the time to organize things. There’s a lot of stuff to think about: money, time, money, level of restoration, money, where to start—is money in there yet? This is a mammoth undertaking, and it’s not going to be cheap. But if you’re not organized as you go about things, then you’ll spend more money in the long run.

Where do you get started? It starts with a computer or tablet and a plan. Pick up a spreadsheet app: Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Docs, Airtable, and a ton of other options are out there. The idea is to create a document that will track every component you purchase, how much it costs, and possibly the time you invested in a particular project—the methodology is fluid, so do whatever works best. You could even turn it into one giant to-do list and put checkmarks next to each item once it’s been installed.

Need a starting point? Begin with a simple spreadsheet with columns and rows. At the top of each column, put these terms: Task, estimated cost, estimated time, actual cost, and actual time. Now that you have that prepared, take a moment to fill in all of your estimated information based on your concept for the truck. Add up the estimated cost and time columns at the bottom (the term “=sum” works in most applications) and now you have a rough estimate of how much this thing is going to cost and how long it’ll take to do. As you’re plugging along on the project, start marking the actual cost and time spent. When you’re done, you can compare the two and see where you went wrong (or right), and that should help out a ton the next time you dig into a truck.

Keep a Journal

These are some of the notebooks mentioned in this section. The one in the middle has been in use for a few different projects (including this book). The one on the left is for a 1981 Chevy truck project, and the one on the right will replace the middle one once it’s full.

Okay, this is going to sound like a weird one, and that’s kind of because it is. But even in this world of digital products where everyone has a note-taking app in their phone, a pen and paper notebook is a good thing to have handy. Here’s why.

Your restoration is going to take some time to accomplish. It might be a month; it could be 10 years. And in that time, you’re going to forget exactly how everything goes back together or how it came apart to begin with. This is why you need to keep some kind of record of everything in one central place. You need a journal.

Why not do it all on your phone? Well for one, keeping electronics on you while you’re wrenching in the garage is a good way for it to get broken. But also, this process is going to take time. Do you know what kind of phone or notes app you’ll have next year? In five years? Probably not. Sticking with pen and paper keeps it futureproof.

Pick up either a softbound or hardbound notebook with dot-grid pages and pagination. (Amazon sells Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks in A5 size, dot grid, and everything for about $20. Pick up a Leuchtturm 1917 pen loop for another $6 and you have a notebook that always has a spot for a pen so you never can forget.) The dot grid is handy for a number of reasons. Since there are no lines, you don’t have to write with any constrictions. If you need to map out how a part goes together, the dots help you form straight lines and also give you the freedom to sketch whatever you need. Say you need to disassemble the steering column and the parts are shaped in a weird way. Do a rough sketch, take lots of notes, and then you have a record of how it’s done.

A suggestion: get an A5 size—that’s 5.75 x 8.25 inches. It’s large enough to be able to find easily and small enough that you can put it in your waistband in the small of your back if necessary. The A6 size is also pocketable, but that’s easier to lose and it’s not quite as nice when it comes to writing long-form notes. Conversely, the larger size is nice, but if you need to take it to a shop for parts, it looks like you’re carrying a schoolbook with you, and that’s just weird. And one other thing: the hardcover/softcover thing is personal preference. The hardcover can be convenient because you can write in it without pressing it onto a surface, but it’s all your choice. Make the call that works best for you.

As for the other detail—pagination—that’s so you can find your notes later. Each page on the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks is numbered, and there’s a table of contents at the front. Every time you fill a page or pages with a topic, note the subject down at the beginning of the book. Then, when you come back to the task months or years later, you can find it.

And there’s a ton more you can do with the book too:

• Write down torque specs

• Record socket sizes for specific bolts

• Mark locations for where the parts are stored

• Color code the pages by area—engine, interior, exterior, etc.

• Note future plans

• Remember the problems you encountered and your solutions

Keep this journal with the truck at all times. Shove it in the glove box or keep it with your parts—as long as it’s handy. When you work on the truck, always keep it nearby; that way you can always keep track of a note if you need to. Don’t lean on this too much, though. Having photos on hand is also invaluable to the process. ■

This is an A6-sized notebook, and you want that size (or something similar) mostly because it fits in your back pocket.

Maybe a spreadsheet isn’t your thing, or you want to do something more task-oriented. One option is to follow the methodology used in Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s a popular book in the business world because it lays out in plain language how to map out a project from start to finish and then use your to-do list as a guide. This way you don’t have to think about what you need to do, you just do it.

Obviously there’s a whole book on the topic, so it’s more than we can fit in here. But the basic idea is to lay out each step of the process, one at a time, being granular about how you execute it. For example, let’s say you want to install the taillights on your truck, and you need to get some new parts. The list could look like this:

• Purchase new taillight lenses

• Buy new taillight bulbs

• Inspect wiring for taillights

• Rewire/fix any wiring issues

• Install wiring for taillights

• Install new taillight bulbs

• Install new taillight lenses

• Test taillights to ensure they work

Now that may seem like a meticulous list for something as simple as taillights, but each step leads to the next. You can’t rewire or fix the wiring if you don’t know if it’s good or not. You can’t install the bulbs if the wiring is bad. And so on. The idea is to build a list so that each time you check off an item the next thing you need to do is listed next.

Picking Your Build Style

When it comes down to it, there are basically three different types of restorations that you may want to do.

The first is a daily driver. This is pretty much just like it sounds: a truck that you can drive every day, whether it’s to haul stuff to a scrapyard or cruise to the office. It’s reliable, everything works, and you never have to worry about whether or not the gas went bad in the tank because you drive it so frequently.

Sounds great, right? Well on the other end of the spectrum, the paint job is nice but might be done in your garage, not by a professional you pay thousands of dollars. The interior is redone but not necessarily in the nicest of materials. And should your truck have some kind of problem, replacing a part with one from your local auto parts store isn’t a big deal.

Next up are show-quality trucks. Here, your truck will look pretty much perfect. The bodywork is super clean with nary a wave or ripple. The paint job has little to no flaws, and orange peel is nonexistent. As for the interior, it’s spotless. No stray threads are visible, and everything is top-notch.

At first, this may seem like the top level, but it’s not. Show trucks may go down different paths depending on the type of show you’re attending and their accompanying show classes. If you’re aiming to shoot for a “Stock Restored” class, then your truck will be as stock as possible. But you could go for “Mild Custom” or “Full Custom,” in which case you’ll have some custom aftermarket accessories onboard. The Goodguys series of shows have both types of options, for example.

Finally, there’s the concours restoration. The “concours” comes from the Concours d’Elegance, which is a centuries-old show, way back when carriages were the thing you pulled by horse on your way into town. The idea here is that your restored ride is as accurate as possible to a truck that would’ve rolled out of the factory in Flint, Michigan. That means the tires are the exact size and model that GM used in those years, as is the glass, chrome, etc. These trucks and cars are typically rated on a 100-point scale, so the higher the number they get, the “better” they’re considered to be.

Now for some people, a concours restoration is the ultimate goal. And although that’s great, it can cost upwards of $75,000 to get your truck looking that way, which, depending on your perspective, may or may not be a good investment of your time and money. This book doesn’t cover those level of restorations. Instead, it focuses on the show quality level, where you can build the truck of your dreams without having to sacrifice a major organ. ■

Determining Your Level of Restoration

You may not have thought about it much yet, but you should take a moment to consider what kind of restoration you want to perform. Are you just freshening up the truck or do you want to go all out? Do you want something you can drive or have you already picked out a matching trailer to haul your C10 across the country? These are tough decisions, and they’ll shape the way you handle the process.

Why? Two reasons: cost and time. Building a show truck takes a lot more time and money than it does just to freshen up your grandpa’s old farm truck. With the latter, you could maybe get away with a new seat cover and fuel filter; with the former, a large pile of cash might be the best course of action. By figuring this part out now, you’ll be able to accurately determine how much money you want to spend and how long you’re going to build the truck, and visualize the end result better.

There’s nothing either right or wrong about any of these different types of restoration. It’s all up to personal preference and available funds. Some people restore vehicles for the resale value, and they expect to dump in tons of cash on the front end to get the results later. Others don’t care about the money, they just want a truck that works. Different strokes, as they say, so if someone ever tells you that your chosen restoration path is wrong, just know that there is no right or wrong in the truck world; it’s just a matter of personal preference.

This book is meant to be a guide for restoring your truck, but know that it’s totally your call if you decide to diverge from the path. Many of these trucks came with an inline-6 engine, but the preference is often for a small-block V-8. Restoring a truck to its “true” stock condition would dictate that you keep and restore the original engine. But this isn’t the world of muscle cars or hot rods. These are trucks, and so many of those rules just don’t apply. If you want to put an LS1 into your 1969 Chevy, have at it. After all, it’s your build.

Let’s make one thing clear from the jump, though. This book isn’t about recreating what came out of your local dealership back in 1967. Instead, the focus is on building a show-worthy vehicle that you could take to any local event with pride. It can be drivable, if you so choose; and if you want to modify it, go for it. Concours-level builds are above and beyond the scope of this book. Instead, when you’re done with this book (and your truck), you’ll have a solid and faithful stock restoration.

Of course, some of this does just come down to how much money you have to work with, and that’s why it’s important to start by …

Budgeting

Now that you have your level of restoration in mind, it’s time to start thinking about cost. You have a few things in your favor. First, these trucks were made in mass quantities, and a lot of them are in junkyards. So if you need to buy parts, there are yards full of them scattered throughout the country. Except that since you’re restoring your truck, there will be parts you’ll need that won’t be parts-yard friendly. And then there’s paint. That’s gonna cost you.

If this is your first time restoring a vehicle, your head is probably spinning, but don’t worry. There are ways to budget this all out properly. Let’s start with some ballpark numbers.

If you’re looking to restore a truck to daily driver condition, and the one you buy is in pretty good shape, then $5,000–$10,000 may a reasonable figure, particularly if it doesn’t need paint. But if that same truck is to be restored to that hypothetical 100-point winner, you might spend $5,000–$10,000 just on the interior.

At the end of the day, your restoration budget comes down to three factors: time, cost of materials, and cost of parts. Most people only think of those last two, but the first one should be heavily considered. If you’re doing the bulk of the work yourself, you will eat up a lot of time. And if that affects how much money you earn on the other end, then you may have some tough decisions to make.

Component Pricing

Let’s begin by breaking the build down into the individual components. As mentioned previously, you have the interior, bodywork, paint job, suspension, engine, transmission, and any other miscellaneous work you want to perform. You may or may not want to tackle this all yourself, so take the truck—on a trailer, if necessary—to various shops and get some quotes. Talk to friends who have done this before and see if they have any recommended facilities. Once you have all those numbers in hand, you can have a more broad idea of what you’re looking at. It’s a starting point, not a firm number, but you can work with that.

The interior of your truck could cost anywhere from $1,000–$5,000 to restore, depending on its current condition and what needs to be done. You can get dash pads at Brothers Trucks for around $70, the door panels for $80–$230, and carpet is typically a few hundred bucks, depending on if you have it glued in or you buy a pre-molded kit. Other than gauges and electronics, there’s just not a lot to the interiors on these trucks. There’s usually no headliner, and the seat is usually wrapped in vinyl, which should cost about $1,500 to have done. Your situation will vary, but those are some basic numbers.

The owner of this truck knew it had some bodywork issues from this hole in the bed. See that white stuff? That’s dried filler, and it was everywhere—as thick as a 1/4 inch in some spots.

If there’s one spot that’s going to cost you some money, it’s paint and bodywork. Expect the bulk of your budget to go this direction: easily 50–75 percent. The problem here is that there’s no good way to know exactly what it’s going to cost right out of the gate. You could take a perfectly restored truck to a body shop and they could give you a quote. But once the paint is stripped down, they could find shoddy bodywork and a ton of rust.

Now let’s take a moment to get this out of the way: body filler isn’t a bad thing, per se. It’s a useful tool for smoothing out the bodywork on your truck, and it’s also relatively fast. And you can absolutely get superior results when you use body filler properly.

That’s the key word of course: properly. Body filler is designed to be used in thin passes, and the idea is to keep it under 1/8 inch in overall thickness. The idea is to use as little filler as possible, so it doesn’t pile up on the metal. Even in small doses, the filler can shrink back over time, causing a wave or ripple where previously there was none. So if you want your end result to be perfect, make sure either you or the shop you go to knows about your goals and slings the mud appropriately.

And on the shrinking back thing, that’s an issue not only for filler, but also for primer. Many of the materials used in the bodyworking process will have some form of shrink to them, and it typically happens in the hotter months when the material expands or contracts. So what’s the fix? Unfortunately, time. Custom car guys joke about dropping their car off to “Paint Jail” because they won’t see it for six months to two years. And although that may seem like an exaggeration, many a person will tell you a story about the truck that sat in the back of a shop for five years because the body shop kept de-prioritizing it, or the build just never ended. The world of restored vehicles is littered with abandoned projects—and lots of lost money.

Body Shop Estimates

With all of that in mind, there’s a lot to look for when you go on the hunt to find a body shop to do your restoration. You want a company that will be timely; one where your truck won’t sit rusting in the back for years while they push faster-paying projects up front. You want one that knows restorations, has done more than a few of them, and understands the differences between custom and a stock respray. And, obviously, you want them to be able to do the rust repair that you can’t, just in case something comes up.

The easiest and best way to do this is to hunt around locally (and even nationally) for the types of places you want to go. If they’re local, load the truck up on a trailer or, if it’s drivable, swing by the shop with the project itself. Explain what you want, the quality of finish you’re expecting, and discuss deadlines, both realistic and unrealistic. Then get an estimate. Do the same thing with a few other shops, and once that’s in hand, you can start making some decisions.

As a very broad rule of thumb, you’re going to spend a lot of money on this half of the project. The paint is the first thing most people will see, and it’s the last thing you want to skimp on. But whatever number you get, make sure to add 10 to 15 percent on top of that for cost, and do the same with time. That way you’re covered if something random comes up, like a cab mount that’s rusted out or a bedside that needs replacement.

The Hard Truth

It may seem like this point is getting hammered a bit too repetitively at this point, but it needs to be stressed from the outset: this isn’t a cheap process. If it was, everyone would be doing it. You will spend a lot of money restoring your truck, even if you do it all yourself. Prepare yourself—and your wallet—for that.

And again, there’s that 10 to 20 percent number. By adding that to your budget spreadsheet, you’ll have a pretty good idea of where you’ll likely end up when you’re finally driving the truck out of your garage. When that day happens, you’ll be out a bunch of cash, sure. But the amount of satisfaction derived from such a complicated task is second to none and so very, very worth it.

Preparing Your Workspace

No matter where you decide to do this process—your personal garage, a local shop, or maybe even a rented warehouse—everything there needs to be organized meticulously and kept well stocked. If not, you’re in for a world of hurt. Again, the fastest way to do something is to do it right the first time. (That, and you’re not wasting time looking for tools or parts that you can’t find.)

Having racks handy to hold your parts will help make sure you can find everything when you need it. Ones like these are nice because dust won’t collect the way they would with shelves built with plywood boards. (Photo Courtesy Lonnie Thompson)

First up is a solid cleaning. The goal isn’t to be able to eat off the floors, as at some point in the process you’ll probably dump out tranny fluid on the ground or get a leak that needs some kitty litter. But you do want it swept and mopped fairly regularly. One good habit is to spend the last 10 minutes of your day making sure all the tools are put away in their proper spots and that there’s no dust or dirt on the floor. Use some degreaser on your tools if you have to, just make sure that everything is in good enough condition that if a stranger came by and wanted to borrow your ratchet, they wouldn’t need a bath after they used it. Overall it’s a good habit to get into, and it will help get the process done faster in the end.

You also want to give yourself plenty of room to grow. Your truck will come apart in a bunch of different pieces, and that can spread out fast. Think about it: your front clip, cab, bed, engine, transmission, and chassis can all be separated and worked on individually. And if a two-car garage is your only choice, keeping it organized is critical.

Evaluating What You Have and What You Need

So now you have a truck and an idea of the type of restoration you want to perform. Time to bust out the tools and get started, right? Slow down, buddy. First you need to figure out what you have and what you need, and sometimes the difference between the two isn’t that obvious. Oh, and then there are the missing parts—the ones you don’t know you need because you don’t know they’re gone. The solution? Getting organized. That, and a good inspection.

Grab that journal and take a walk around your truck. Write down anything obvious that you know you need—missing panels, clips, screws, etc. And while you’re doing that, mark down any components that need restoration. The goal is to put everything into those two categories: restore or replace.

Let’s take the trim as an example. If you have the original trim, it could be restored. The dents could be hammered out carefully, the paint refreshed, and the whole thing polished just like factory. Or, if it’s in bad shape, you could just replace it with new ones from a supplier, including putting on new clips and hardware. That’s the faster way to do it, but since it’s not original, there may be fitment or quality issues. By taking the time to evaluate everything first, you’ll have a better idea of what you can fix and what you’ll need to buy.

NOS and Reproduction Parts

Now that you have a list ready, let’s talk about those parts that need replacement. But first, go back for a second and think about the level of restoration that you want. That’s because the two main types of parts out there are new old stock (NOS) and reproduction. There’s a big difference between the two.

NOS parts are primarily ones that either General Motors or one of its many different subsidiaries made either originally back in 1967 to 1972 or were found at a parts store from that time period. Sometimes they’re literally new in the box, other times they’re out of packaging but still have original labels, indicating their factory condition. You can get these kinds of parts online; Craigslist, eBay, LetGo, and Offer Up come to mind, as do many online forums. If you do some digging, you can also find guys who bought out the entire parts department from old dealerships and have stock to sell. Some junkyards also have NOS parts, although they tend to fall into the restoration box as well. NOS parts are a great way to go if you want original GM quality, but you’re going to pay for it. These parts aren’t cheap because they’re difficult to find. Prepare your wallet.

The alternative for many people is reproduction parts. These are sometimes built using the same tooling and dies as the GM models but in more modern shops with better equipment. The idea is that they’ll be just like (if not better than) stock, and everything will bolt or weld up perfectly. The reality is that some reproduction parts are good, and others are garbage. How do you tell the difference, particularly when you’re just looking at a listing online? Well unfortunately, you don’t. It’s difficult to pick them out just by looking at pictures, but in general, read the reviews, make sure the sheet metal gauge is noted and is correct to your truck, and check that the price doesn’t seem to be too good to be true.

Who are the good guys here? Dynacorn, Classic Industries, Goodmark, and AMD are a few, particularly for sheet metal. If you look at them as a starting point, you have a solid foundation.

Going back to your level of restoration, the one you select will determine which parts you need to buy. If you’re meticulous about keeping your truck absolutely original, then you’ll need to go with NOS parts or just putting more time into restoring what’s on it. This will cost more and take more time, but there is a potential for added value in the end, particularly with other collectors.

If the goal is instead to build a daily driver, reproduction parts might be just fine. And if the component you need is one that will degrade over time—rubber window moldings or taillight seals, for example—then buying something from the aftermarket might work as well. Aftermarket parts aren’t NOS because they’re not made by GM, and they’re not reproduction because even though they may fit like stock, they don’t look or function like stock parts.

Let’s take the stock hood hinges, for example. Often you’ll find a truck with the back of the hood popped up slightly and misaligned, and that’s because the rivet between the moving parts has worn out, causing play. Some aftermarket hinges remove the spring entirely and replace them with gas-charged shocks. They function and look better, but by no means are they authentic.

At the end of the day, this is all your call. If you’re insistent on NOS parts, then by all means, use authentic NOS parts. But if you’re a bit more flexible or less particular, aftermarket or reproduction parts could fit the bill.

Using a Parts Vehicle

Before you find your perfect project, you’re going to find more than a few duds. Sometimes they’re missing a title, other times they’re missing a bed. Or cab. Or everything but doors and a bed. However the truck is found, typically it is cheaper than usual. And if the parts on that truck are needed for your build and the cost is cheaper than buying NOS, then you might have the perfect parts vehicle in front of you.

Think about how a junkyard works. They buy cars and trucks from insurance companies and local wreckers that no longer function for one reason or another. They buy them cheap then put them in a huge yard for people like you to wander around and get what they need. Then they mark up those prices accordingly, and by the time the vehicle is nothing but a stripped-down shell, they’ve more than made back their initial investment.

Now let’s take your truck project. Say you need a pair of doors for your 1972, and they have to be 1972 doors because of that screw hole that only they have. You find a truck that’s got doors in amazing condition, but it was pinched in a front and rear collision, making the rest of the truck essentially worthless. Oh, and it’s missing the title. If that person was selling the entire truck for less than the cost of a pair of similar doors from a junkyard, and/or they’re just easier to find, then it might be worth picking up the truck. Then, should there be other parts along the way that you need, maybe they’re on that truck, maybe not. And when you’re done, you can sell it just like the original guy and move on your way.

All that said, the main reason why many in the 1967–1972 restoration crowd purchase a parts truck comes down to two things: the frame and the bed.

If you want a short-bed truck, you’re going to have to do some digging. Chevrolet sold substantially more long-bed models than short-beds, and the people who own them typically know how much they’re worth (particularly the fleetside models). The two defining characteristics of a short-bed are the bed (naturally) and the frame underneath, both for the shortened length. Although you can shorten a long-bed frame to match the short-bed’s dimensions, a purist prefers the original chassis, not one that’s been cut and re-welded. Hence why the bed and the frame are so popular in a parts truck. In fact, sometimes there are parts trucks available that are just frames and beds because the current owner needed everything else for their own project.

One last thing to note: trucks without titles are usually missing it for a reason, and although they are numerous, there’s a nefarious one that stands out: theft. The same applies for trucks with VINs that look like they’ve been removed or are missing entirely. And should you decide that you want to buy a parts truck for the cab, know that swapping out the VINs is illegal in most U.S. states.

Parts Organization and Cataloging

You’re going to have a lot of parts floating around your shop, particularly since the plan is to take the truck apart completely. That means you need a place to put all of your parts, and again, those need to be organized.

This shelving rack isn’t complicated and could be made yourself with some plywood and 2 x 4s. In this case, it’s holding all of the primered parts prior to final sanding and paint. (Photo Courtesy Lee Hurlbutt)

Small parts are the ones you can lose the most easily—bolts, screws, small trim pieces, and so on. These are the kinds of things that you should put in a Ziploc bag to keep them handy.

The next up is a medium-sized part. These are bigger than a plastic resealable bag but smaller than a metal panel. For example, your headlights, door mirrors, or climate control panel. For these, use a box. Clearly label it on the top and at least two sides so you know what it is, even if you reshuffle the packaging.

The more details you capture on the index card you put inside your bags, the better off you’ll be. If you put down what tool you use for that particular part as well, you won’t have to go hunting either.

Finally, there are large parts—your grille, doors, hood, etc. One good option here is to buy large shelving and keep everything on it. For larger pieces, you could also build a cart with casters.

Shelving is an important part of all this because even with small and medium parts you’ll need some place to put them all. Most home supply stores, such as Lowe’s and Home Depot, carry industrial shelving that you can put together with a hammer. They work well for holding both the small and medium parts, but you may want something more extensive or homebuilt for the larger stuff.

As for small parts, there are some options other than just using a sandwich bag, but let’s just start with those. The ones you want to use have some kind of white spot for writing with a Sharpie or other permanent marker. They’re resealable so you can put parts in and out repeatedly. Another tip is to write down the contents of the bag on an index card and put it inside the bag as well. Over time, the permanent marker on the bag can fade, and that means you have a part and no idea what it is. The index card mostly fixes this problem.

What do you put on the index card or bag? As much as possible. Location in the truck, what it is, what size tool you used to remove it—whatever gets the job done. If anything, err on the side of caution, and write everything possible about the part, being very descriptive. One example would be, “Interior, under dash, to the left of the column, holding up bracket that connects to brakes.” Be thorough.

If plastic bags aren’t your style, you can spend some money on cloth bags. These are made for restoration projects like yours, and their canvas makeup means they’re pretty durable. They’re not as easy to get as running to your local grocery store, though, so keep that in mind.

Boxes in various sizes are also important. If you order online frequently, break down those boxes and keep them somewhere handy near or in your shop. Rebuild them as needed to hold your parts. If necessary, pick some up at a home supply store or even a packaging shop. If you’re holding many smaller parts in bags, you can buy some boxes that have divider trays for sorting things like dishes and clothes. They’re not perfect for every job, but they come in handy.