Rollman

Any suggestions on what color to paint the rims? In all of the photos that I have looked at, the rims are always seemingly dust covered. I am thinking possibly a light grey color, but am not for sure.

I got the truck back from the welding shop today. I will have the bed sanded down by Thursday night, and hopefully prime it Friday night and paint it on Saturday. The Sunday and Monday will be installing the grill and wrecker booms, lights, emblems, decals, and other odds and ends. I would like to put on the new carburetor before Dukesfest but I'm not for sure that I will have enough time, unless it fits with little modification. The truck runs ok, but it currently will not idle at normal rpm.

As you can see, the truck was sanded to bare metal, body filler was applied to the dents, I primed it with epoxy primer, then painted it. My bondo skills left something to be desired, as I didn't get the dents as smooth as I had intended. I had also planned on wet sanding it after primer, but apparently epoxy primer is very tough to wet sand, so that didn't happen. The painting itself was very easy, but I made a few mistakes here and there that will be corrected on my next paint job. I'd say that the truck is a good 20 footer at this point--not bad for an amateur job but not great either. It's like Cooter's real tow truck, a little rough around the edges! I take the truck to the welding shop Wednesday to have the wrecker bed installed. I hope to have it back by 21st at the latest, so that I will still have time to sand and paint the bed and then take it to Luray Virginia for Cooter's Last Stand.

I replaced the original rusty fender with this one, just a little dusty at the time:

With the help of a friend, I was able to take the wrecker bed off of the black Chevy and move it onto a trailer. I will take it to the welding shop in town and the welder will install it onto the Ford. It has a few rust spots that need patched, and he could do a much better job on it than I ever could. I am going to try to give the Ford a final sanding this week, and hopefully paint the cab this weekend.

I think that the blue in the picture above looks more like a medium blue in real life, it looks like a royal blue on my computer monitor. They are acrylic urethane, and they will require a clear coat. I am painting a vehicle for the first time, so I took the paint guy's advice on the paint itself. They seemed to know what they were talking about, and they did recognize Cooter's tow truck when I showed them the picture of it!

I just picked from what few non-metallic colors that PPG offers. I will post the paint codes and a picture of the colors tomorrow

We have had a lot of rain lately, so I have had time to work on the truck. As you can see, I have sanded it down to bare metal, but I still need to go over it again to remove the remaining spots of primer. The truck had the original primer, then red paint, then another primer and red paint, then the top layer of blue paint. The blue removed easy, but the original paint took many, many hours to sand off. I bought my paint and supplies at the local PPG store. I will have to wait for another full weekend off before I try painting it, because I want two full days of painting time in case things don't go smoothly. I don't know when that will be. I have also been working on removing the wrecker bed from the black Chevy. I am at a point now where I will have to bring up the cutting torch to break a few welds and rusted bolts before I can remove it. The bed will need to be taken to the local welding shop for rust repair and installation.

I just got the truck back from the body guy yesterday. As you can see, it got new cab corners, the cab marker lights were taken off and holes filled to match Cooter's truck, and the various side mirror holes in the doors were filled as well. The driver's fender is rusted through at the bottom and has a few small dents in it, but instead of fixing it, I am tossing it and will be bolting up a NOS fender. I have ordered my sander and spray guns, the project will continue to be worked on as time allows. I hope to have it painted by the end of June at the latest, then have the bed put on and painted by July 20th or so.

Boss JD Hogg--It probably is just a regular blue. Dad and I have disagreements sometimes over what is blue and what is green. I must be slightly colorblind. RogerDuke--Dad and I are corn and soybean farmers. HossC--Great detail on the FanArt! That is what I want the grey Chevy to look like, eventually, after the GMC conversion. You have the same wrecker bed as I do. I had planned on finishing these trucks in the next 5 or 10 years (other projects ahead in line), but since Cooter's Last Stand is apparently the final Dukes event on a grand scale, I knew that I had to get my butt in gear. I had been hoping that they would have held another event in Nashville (3 hours away from me) but that wasn't in the cards. If anyone knows of someone who produces the Cooter door decals, I would be interested in their contact info. If not, I have a local guy in the next county who could probably reproduce them if I take him a picture.

This is the aforementioned grey wrecker, a Cooter project for another year. It has a great body and the bed that I want, but the engine is shot, clutch pedal is very weak, brakes are bad, needs tires, $$$$$.

HossC--Thanks for the photo tip, I will try that tonight. Haha on the blue Ford in the background. It is a 1977 F250 4x4 400M, my dad bought it brand new and it is still used regularly on the farm. Tough truck. Boss JD Hogg--In regards to brand of paint, I will probably use Dupont (Now called Axalta), because that is what the local body shop guy uses and I will buy it through him. He will put on the cab corner and fill in the body holes for me, I just have a stick welder. I was just going to use a random color of white, but I am not for sure on the blue-green color that Cooter used. I think that I might just have to look at a bunch of color chips and pick out one. Any recommendations that anyone has on the blue/green color would be appreciated.

I am having trouble posting the pic of the grey Chevy, for some reason I am limited to a attachment size of only .03 MB and the picture won't fit.