Picked up up hood, running boards, gravel pan and tailgate from paint shop

Mounted the tailgate this weekend

OHHH my! what I have been longing for this moment when the parts start falling together!!!

Spare tire carrier mounted

Its getting almost to good! will I be able to use this truck once I am done?!?!

Bed tarp hooks mounted

Aftermarket tarp hooks ,from the 50:s, mounted.

Rear fenders mounted to bed

Got the fenders mounted a couple of weeks ago. This is really fun!!

Bed to frame assembly

Got some friends over last night helping me out lifting the bed onto the frame. It´s moving in the right direction.

Bed floor assembly

Time for the fun part and when its fun it seems as the phone and picture snapping is forgotten. This was what I got from the assembly process.

Bed wood fitting

Time to do some finishing carpentery to the bed wood so that the bed wood will become the higest point, 

Picked up 1st batch of painted parts

A picture of a color is never gone make it justice but MAN when I came to the paintshop today and fell over these beautiful fenders just inside the door. BAM!! I just knew I had made the right choice.

Bed primer and color code decided.

Bed parts primed and we finally got the right color code mixed and sent to us from PPG.  Looks great. Can't wait to see the final result 😊👍. Might have the bed painted and ready by the weekend.

Bed and fenders of to sheet metal guy.

Managed to load the bed and fenders all by myslef aswell but the weather was wet so I had to tarp the whole thing to prevent the blasted fenders to become wet and rust. I belive i took longer time to get the tarp strapped tight than it took to load the whole bed myself.

Cleaning some paint of the fenders

Have been cleaning my fenders before I send them over to mediablaster to clean all the edges that I cant reach with this disc below. It works perfectly!!! After media blast they are of to a sheetmetal guy that will help me fix some dings.

Rear fenders, paint stripping #2

Damn 24 hours later and the paint hasn´t risen yet, I guess the former owner had putten on a 2K primer, I was a bit dissapointed and decided to take the parts out for a wash to get all the paint stripper off. But wait a minute......

Rear fenders, paint stripping #1

Time for some paint stripper to get down to bare metal.

Rear fenders, undercoating removal

Propane torch and some scraping tools. 

Bed back on chassie, atleast temporary

Bed in primer back on the chassie. Moving ALL the stuff to a different location......

But it starts to look kind of promising

Bed primer and assembly

All the boring things with prepping went undocumented ;-) Here is the first coat of primer.

This is when the rivets holding front to sides has been put in place. 

Bed sides rust repair

Some previous owner had tried and replace the lip that lies ontop of the bed wood, I would say that he wasn´t that sucessfull of doing a good looking job. Functional yes but not good looking. The bed side also had some heavy pitting hidden under some bondo, so I decided to replace the whole area from scratch. 

Pay it forward!!

You know it´s not just in the movies!!

A couple of weeks ago I took my original beaten up bed appart to get the salvagable parts from that and combine with some other original bedsides (better shape) that I had found. The thing is that the four 5/16-24 unf panhead pozidrive (phillips) screws (two on each side) that holds the top of the bedsides together with the front panel where rusted and 2 of them broke of when I tired to save them. Well i figured I just order som new ones online.

But it turned out harder then I expected to find these particular bolt, either they had the hex drive (that I just couldn´t find myself putting visable on a -56 truck) or they where made out of stainless. Just didnt want to paint over stainless and possibly have the paint peeling of in a couple of years. So after searching all the possible ways over the www I threw out a last question on one of the smaller Ford truck facebook groupes (Group) and a gentleman named John Paradela approached me and told me that he also had been looking for these same bolts for his -61 transmission cover. He told me that he would let me know if he found any around Vallejo California. He kept contact with me over PM on facebook and one thing lead to another and eventually he found a company that could make these particular bolt for us, min order 100 pcs in yellow zink, low carbon for $ 0.51/pcs. Bulls eye. I told him that I would be glad to pay for some inc shipping to Sweden, and today I got a package in the mailbox with 30 pcs inc $22.50 shipping. I sent him a PM asking where to transfere the money and he told me to "Pay it forward"

This just made my whole week. I cant really put words on how grateful I am that a total stranger from the other side of the globe helped me out, and just tells me to "Pay it forward".

I will certainly do just that!! and more than once, thats for sure.

Thanks John Paradela! you made my week.

Bed rear crossmember paint stripping

I just wanted to try out the paint stripping thing and it seems to turn out pretty good, and its easy.