Projects '65 Suburban Carryall

Winter rust repair time has come.... I've got no idea what I'm doing, but my father-in-law has agreed to help... after several reminders that this would have been a lot easier if I just got a C10 instead of something weird.

Rear quarters are caved in, some rust along the bottom as well (all behind bondo) so I figured we'd start there to see what everything looks like underneath.

Actually really good! The truck took a hit at some point. We found previous body work right in front of the wheel, plus that brace there is bent. Someone did their best to pull it out--which wasn't horrible--but it was still caved in a bit. This also gave us a good look at up towards the back of the door pillar, which is filled with bondo.


So we stopped with the quarter panel for now, moving over to the rockers and floor pan, and then we'll return to the quarter panel. The entire floor pan was covered in bondo, even the "good" bits. Lots of chiseling.

The rockers are the same as a C10, but the passenger side floor pan isn't. It's shaped a bit different to allow easier access to the back seat. So cut up the C10 floor pan and make it work...

 

No better way to learn than to jump in and do it. I will be following along on your progress. I have always wanted one of these suburbans.

 

Excellent, it’s just metal, the best way to learn is to do it.

 

And, the way I learned to weld sheetmetal was because I couldn’t afford to pay someone to weld a quarter on a car that I had that I got hit in. So, I bought a cheap mig and started cutting and welding. That was 30 years ago now and the quarter is still on and looks good.

 

Learn by doing ........and, sometimes redoing. The rear inner panels look really good, this should be a great people hauler.

 

My 66 had considerable hack work done to the driver side quarter panel by previous owners, in the 90's before replacement Suburban parts were being made I used a pickup replacement bedside to fix it, also relocated the gas filler instead of cutting it into the new panel.

 

I'm also using pick-up bed sides. I have a pair of short-box bed sides, as well as a long-box patch panel. Between all that, I believe I'll have everything I need to fix the quarters. I plan on keeping the gas cap right where it is; I'll remove the original door/opening and add it to the bed side before putting the bed side in place.

 

Thanks for taking us along for the ride.I'll be following.Good luck.

 

Nice work. It's great to see the rear inside metal is so good..

 

Mine was pristine! Basically rust free

 

I've always loved Suburbans and had five from the 1960's and also a '57. Have a larger '69 now, and I like it, but not as much as the 2 door Suburbans of the past.
As you mentioned the Suburban is a separate body in many ways from the doors back, so often require a bit of fab work when bringing them back to life.

 

My father in law had the week off while I had to work. He's been busy without me.

 

Nice! Seems I married wrong for that type of help.

 

The guy is awesome.

He's frame off building a '49 Chevy pick up that he pushed off to the side for this. He also has a somewhat stock '72 C10 and a '55 F100 that he built in the early aughts. Good taste in rides, and generous as hell.

 

id of married an ugly woman for that deal...

 

Nice! Never had any family to help me. I've always been the one helping my family with car things.

 

Looking Good. Nice work on fitting the truck bed side on. many dont know that it uses the wheel opening of the short bed truck. Even though the 8ft bed side would give you extra metal, problem is the wheel opening is larger.
Nic job on fitting the inner floor to suburban step.

 

I had a '65 panel truck that had a remarkable body on it, one I should have hung onto. But it was a C30 and 8-lug. Too heavy duty so do something cool with.

 

Did a bunch of tweaking on the new sheetmetal to get it laying better, made a pretty pathetic patch to the kick panel... it works, but it certainly ain't pretty. Then started welding everything in.



I took the door off and started tackling that. Needs a new lower (inner and outer). The outer will be easy enough, but boy, am I butchering the inner portion much to my FIL's bemusement, "It's metal; just takes time and maybe some money to fix what you mess up." I spent a good 20 minutes planning my cut for the inner portion, executed it reasonably well but different than I intended, and then almost immediately realized I should have cut it differently to make my life a lot easier. Live and learn, live and learn. I can still make it work... I think.

 

Looking so much better already Doughnut!! Keep at it and before too long it'll be all new!!

 

Looking good . Thank You for sharing Your progress.

 

My first attempt at inner and outer doors was a disaster, and compounded by the inner door repair panels being 1/4" longer than original doors! I ended up cutting them in half to shorten them, and still had to cut my spot welds off on one door and remove some more material on the ends to alter the angles and get it to lat right.

 

That's almost exactly the problem I'm running into. The repop inner is just shy of 1/4" longer, and at one end it's 3/8" wider. Six hours of work to get this.


As far as repop stuff goes, the rockers weren't bad, same with the floor pan outers (knowing they'd be very different than the Suburban ones). The bed side as a rear quarter worked fantastic. The inner and outer doors though; what a bunch of garbage.

 

I believe repop parts are being made off very old dies, or new dies that are poor quality. When I was doing extensive metal repairs on my '39 Chev coupe every new repop piece I got needed work to fit. But I happened to locate a NOS lower tail panel locally and bought it cheap. I cut the lower panel out, and couldn't believe how good the NOS tail panel fit! I was expecting a day's work to fit and install it, and was done in a few hours!

 

Still working on the door, but the skin is on. A spot of oil canning, but good enough to move onto front fender fitment. Will circle back to the door later.


Fender fit was less than impressive, but fixed by cutting a few spot welds, taking out the brace, giving the fender some love, then cutting/welding the brace to match. Doing that got us a bit of a bigger panel gap to the door, so we fixed that while we were at it too


Hood line is great, small alignment fix needed on the front clip, but we'll get to that eventually.

Also started fixing up the slider window track on this side.


Some new channel bent up...


I couldn't get them perfect because the two bends were too close to fit on the brake so it would crash. I'll only use the good ones.

 

The sliders were pretty rusty on my 57 Suburban, so I put solid glass in all for rear side windows, using the mid 60s rubber molding (from Steele). The shape/size of the channels, where the rubber fits, is the same for many years.

 

I'm not willing to give up on the sliders. It's one of the main draws to the Suburban to me. I mean, I'm not likely to sit back there, but I want my sliding windows dammit!

No one makes replacement tracks and they aren't very complicated; I've kicked around the idea of drawing up some stuff and getting it cut on a laser, and then welding them together and seeing if I could sell a few here and there. I think pricing would be quite high though. Maybe even selling it as a flat-pack kit that the buyer welds together themself. I haven't looked too much into it though. If I keep them as whole pieces, there's large drops. Breaking them up to minimize drops means more fixturing and welding...

 

The holidays really slowed stuff down. Getting the slider frame back together...


Cut off the hitch that was only held on with booger welds...


As you can see I've got one of each window removed so I can get some new glass (green) cut. Current glass has been scratched to hell; deep enough I can't polish it out.

Bunch of other small things I didn't get pictures of:
-Filled all the mirror mounting holes in the door. Must have been three different types of mirrors over the years (originals, then big wing mirrors, then small crummy ones that blocked the vent windows from opening)
-Removed the rusted out battery tray. Sandblasted and then primed the replacement. Waits for paint.
- Cleaned up a bunch of wiring under the hood (will still need a complete rewire but I'm trying to hold off on that to save some money)
-Lots of sanding... god I hate sanding...

Chippin' away... chippin' away.