Hot Rods Official 1959 Chevy Apache Build Thread

Well I have the door skin peeled over the edges, the front welded up, the rear just barely welded up and it looks like everything is going to fit perfectly. I have to do some work on making sure the bottom edge is even all the way across and finish her up and I can finish up my cab corner. I am glad it was 70 degrees out today... Finally I was able to get a lot of stuff accomplished.

 

just going through and knocking dents out, nothing picture worthy. Still straightening out panels to ensure they are correct. I will post some more pictures of the finished cab corner as soon as I get everything else figured out. yay progress.

 

Well my lady gave me a hand tonight and she helped me solve a puzzle to why the door would not fit right. She is a strong one... she helped me by lifting the door as I worked on adjusting the hinges and we got it pretty close.. close enough that I was able to weld up most of the cab corner (still have some more work to do). She also cut her knee when I was closing the door. She took one for the team...

Anyways, I am going to work on getting this cab corner completed to move to the other side.. I am honestly sick to death of work on this side.

 

Well she is in there, I have very little metal work to do on the cab corner. Everything is looking up on this side so far. I still have to adjust the bottom portion of the door to get that where I want it to be then I can finally move on until the actual paint prepping stage comes along. Here are some pictures. I will post more when I have them of the completed cab corner.

 

I'd say you nailed it... your gaps look perfect !!!

 

Nice truck! I had a 59 apache 3200 8' bed. texas truck cost 75 bucks. we put a pontiac 350 and tannny out of a 69 firebird. Used a 72 lemans trans crossmember under the motor and the frameplates and motor mounts welded it right in it was sweet. we used the firebird trans mount and 2 of the holes lined up and drilled 2 more for the crossmember It was set in in 3 hours it was a sweet setup they were soulmates. the poncho hsd nice torque. i drove it everyday for six years it was my favorite truck.

 

man that is coming along real nice. you have inspired me to get off my butt and do some work to my 58 apache. look forward to your next update

 

First off, thanks for the kind words gentleman, it helps!

Well this bastard really bit me this time. I am definitely going to lose the nail and I have broken the tip of my finger after smashing it in the door while trying to correct how it was supposed to hang yesterday. man it hurt and it still does.. but that didnt stop me from going back out today and getting some work done on it.

Here are some pictures of what I am working with.. If you want something done right you have to do it yourself...the jackass that wound up stealing a bunch of crap from my house did this work on the front fender after I gave him shelter after 3 months so he wouldn't sleep on the street. I trusted his abilities after going to school for body work, but what a hack job... This means more work for me, but I am going to do this right because it means less work in the end. Plus this gets my body work abilities in check to finish the Plymouth!

I will be working on the bottom front fender corrected to get everything lined up so I can finally get my gaps right. Once the gaps are good I will have to take care of this god awful patch panel for the bottom of the door. Lesson learned.. make your own patch panel..

 

Here are some more of the gaps and everything for the door. There is a lot of work to do...

 

Just ordered a bunch of electrical to get some of the lights (brake lights and turn signal lamps for the front) and a couple other things to get this thing street legal. I will be tackling the front fender to try and straighten it out to take care of the poor job that was done to it prior, then I can fix my door patch panel and then to completing my cab corner so everything looks nice. I will post pictures this evening of the progress.

 

The door will come off one more time for me to do some metal working... There are just some strange things that are happening that I have to fix before I can go any further, Once the bottom edge is fixed then I can finish the front part of the fender. I know this is a reverse of what I said before, but I just noticed that the door is warped because of the bottom edge not fitting right.... Oh well I am going to take care of it... Here are some pictures.

Lesson learned with this truck.. fit all panels on the truck before welding anything so that everything can be aligned.

 

nice build apache. i just went thru the whole thread. nice.
i'm impressed with what you've done over the past year and a half.
if it's any consolation, your truck started out a lot better than mine.
that' why mine took 7 yrs (ok i'm lying; 8 yrs)

 

Great progress! The road to completion is not always smooth, but with your determination it looks like you'll have no problems finishing it!

 

Does anyone have a spare Driver's side door that they would be willing to sell... Long story short this door is keeping me from tending to other portions of this project and I just don't have time for it. This is going on for about a month and a half and I am going to call it quits on this door.

 

Man, good luck finding a good door, lol. I think everybody that owns a '55-'59 is looking for a set of doors. You could always go the repop door route at $500 each then sell your door to recoup some of the cost.

 

Well I have a lead on a drivers side door and will hear back shortly on that.. In the meanwhile I am going to hack into the passenger side cab corner, which doesnt need a huge amount of work like the drivers side, but enough to keep my busy for a while. I was easily able to salvage this cab corner too.. now for the chopping here are some pictures:

 

Well I got my parking lights and tail lights in! Here are some pictures of what they look like. I am still working on the cab corner... but you can only do so much grinding before you go insane, so I hoped to the front really quick to see if I could set this stuff up.. I am going to have to remove the grill in order to get these things in.. YAY More pictures to come of the tail lights and eventually cab corner.

 

So shiny....

 

Well I kind of crappily welded in the cab corner to see how much material I am missing from having to chop it up and to me it looks like quite a bit. So I will be working on that soon to get everything laid in. I also got some of the lighting in on the front end and will be posting a movie shortly

 

It was a nice rainy day today.. so I really couldn't do much outside or with the garage open

Thank you to my girlfriend for taking the video

 

Well I am getting this other cab corner knocked out... I still need to do some more metal manipulation and welding, but she is turning out a lot better than the other side.. but what can you do.. I will grind the welds down enough to put the bed back together so I can start working on the rear end (roll pan, tail lights, etc.) .

I also got a surprise visit by 36DodgeRam who just happened to be tooling around the neighborhood. Thanks for coming over.

 

Well I spent about 5 hours out there tonight and got the cab corner welded in (still have some malleting around to do on it). But I put the bed back together and will start working on something else to get my mind off of these damned cab corners.. I will probably work on the rear fenders or get the new tail lights installed. Anyway... good day today!

 

Well starting working on the rear fenders again to get my mind off of these cab corners... Everything is going very well with them and I will be posting pictures very soon this weekend. I have to work on replacing some sheet metal on the lip of the passenger rear fender and everything else looks good. I am pretty happy with it. I will be putting them on soon and moving to the tail end of the truck to get some work done there (like installing my roll pan)

 

Well Almost finished with the passenger side rear fender. I still have to clean up the last couple bolt holes on the rear lower flange. They look really messy, but I think my guess work was okay... not great, but no one will see it anyways, so no biggie. I will go through the drivers rear fender here shortly and once that is done they are going to go on the truck!

 

Look'n good, you making alot of progress quick, I have a 59 s/b fleetside like Caddy-O that is under construction also. Keep going at that pace and you'll be drivin in no time.

 

Thanks for the kind words, trying to get this thing on the road so I can go to a car show in it. post some pics of your truck for crying out loud!

 

You seem to be working on the truck at a good and steady pace, looking good. Those corners are not easy. Keep up the great work 1959apache.

 

Thanks buddy, I am not done with either cab corner and will be going back and making sure that they are as close to flawless as I can get them.. boy it is a lot of work though when you are working with crappy panels.

 

Just had about an hour to work on this stuff, I have the fenders ready to put onto the truck for the time being so I can tweak everything else in and maybe get the roll pan on. It will make it appear that I am getting a lot farther too and it will trick me into working more on it to try and get it road worthy. The steps were all cracked (stress) so I welded everything up, took out a bunch of dents and creases and sanded the areas down and sprayed some rattle can primer on there so it doesn't surface rust.

Oh and a trick that I thought up to get broken off bolts from these old pieces of sheet metal... weld a nut to the stud and simply unscrew it... haha and no I thought I was original in that thinking, but I am sure a thousand other people thought that up first. Enjoy!

 

I will be posting pictures of the fenders and steps on finally, I need to stop by the hardware store here and pick up some crap to bolt these suckers up. Yay progress. I will probably dig into something else to get this thing closer. My mom and dad bought me a pretty slick brake flare tool kit from the 50's from a swap meet up there a few weeks back (at least it was made in America and is a tough set of tooling). These Chinese tools just break every 5 minutes.. mainly because they are huge POS. After he sends it from Tacoma, WA I will try and redo my brake lines so they look professional and then I will be able to take the truck around the block! Pictures incoming today sometime