To Paint Or Not To Paint, That Is The Question

One of the needed repairs to my truck is the cab floor — it’s rusty. Something that came the neglect of the previous owner/s was the idea that gutter-rubber wasn’t really …. necessary.  The drivers-side one was missing when I got the truck, and the screwy passenger-side door didn’t close all the way.  Ultimately water came in, soaked the flooring, the flooring worked like a sponge soaking up water, and this water was held to the floor.  Now, let’s do some math… paint

Wet Flooring + Time = RUST …. not awesome :-\

Once I got this truck and started going over it, I found the wet and stinky floor and the rust. I got the flooring to be not wet and the cab of the truck to be not stinky — then I started working over the floor. I exposed all the rust and even found a few pin-holes in the process. A car-guy friend patched the holes and told me what to do to kill the rust, how to paint and further seal the cab floor. This would have been nice to work over during a summer but things haven’t worked out that way.  Why summer?  I could work outside, it’s warm and dry, and venting fumes isn’t a problem.  Right now I’m figuring out if I can work over the floor in the off season.  There are some tricks to it though…..

Space — The Final Frontier…

There is a garage I can use.  It isn’t heated but I think I can heat what I need to accomplish the job done.  I need to remove both bumpers to get my truck in … hopefully.  I will also need to remove both doors to be able to do the work.

The Space/Time Continuum

Then comes that “Time” factor again from above.  The rust-killer juice I have is 2 bottles of stuff — some stuff like Naval-jelly that removes the rust followed by a bottle that neutralizes the Naval-jelly once it’s done its work.  After that, paint.  My car-guy friend instructed to put it on with a brush so the paint would be thick — reading the can it sounds like it won’t dry correctly.  I’ve figured that I could probably spray it on and do multiple coats, which would help it to dry better and end up being thick.  I’ve been trying to check with said-car-guy to see if that should work. The funny thing is that I think this paint is technically Ford’s signature-blue colour and my truck is a Chevy.  The other time issue is if I can pull this off before looking to have my truck back on the road when I want to go out of town this coming weekend …. this on top of stuff going on with my book (available on Amazon.com), holiday baking, the holidays themselves, AKA life.  Add to the time-issue, I’m also looking to paint my rear bumper while it’s off the truck.

That said — I need to shake a leg on this stuff…  Whatever why things go, I have just a little more to do on a door-repair yet today.

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