When we left off at Part II, Project Old School was officially a big-window shortbed. There were still many obstacles to overcome, however. There's still the 1/2-inch of body filler residing in large areas of the bed, and the thick layer of glue-pot glue that covered the entire inside of the cab. Also, we still had yet to test fit our new front fenders from Brothers and our GMC hood and grille support from Chevy Truck Salvage. Then there was the matter of all the filler pieces we needed to weld into place and smooth over (somewhere in the neighborhood of 30). We continued our quest with the help from the crew at Totally Polished. We also simultaneously performed some of the work on the hood and tailgate in the shop of Off Road's Mike Finnegan with a bunch of help from Mike and Devious Customs' Jefe. This month, the goal was to A: strip all of the unwanted body filler, glue, paint, and undercoating from any and all areas of the sheetmetal; B: complete all of the welding and rough body work; and C: cover everything in a coat of PPG primer similar to the factory stuff before bolting all the old, new, and traded sheetmetal back together.
Next month we'll take a break from the bodywork to install some much needed new products from Classic Performance Products. But, rest assured, after that we'll complete the bodywork and suede paint, and we swear we're actually going to put some chrome on this thing.
...And, this is what we ended up with. Chris worked the area until it would have no more than an 1/8-inch of filler once it was blocked out. | 
We applied a layer of Evercoat Z-Grip filler from Eastwood Company, and Chris smoothed it over the area. | 
A cheese grater was used to knock the filler down fast. It was quickly followed by 40-grit sand paper and a long board--both also from Eastwood. |
By the time we repeated the process on the other three large areas of the bed (at least we started with the worst one), this is what our bedsides looked like. It still required a decent amount of filler primer and blocking before the final coat of suede. | 
Here's how the back end looked prior to us getting our hands on it. There were six holes to weld up along with the tailgate filler panel from Brothers. There were also the four stake pockets that had to go (two got cut out with the bed shortening). | 
Several pieces of 18-gauge steel were trimmed to fit, and the first to get welded into place was the stake pocket filler pieces. After each area was welded, it was cooled and ground down with a 4-inch grinder and flap disc. |
A thin layer of filler was spread over each area and later sanded smooth with the 6-3/8 sanding board and 80-grit paper. | 
The backup light holes were handled in the same fashion: welded solid, cooled, ground completely smooth, a thin layer of filler was added, and then some blocking was done with 80 grit. | 
Across town at Mike's place, Mike and Jefe gave us a hand welding the Brothers filler panel into the tailgate. First, it was set into place and tacked from the middle out on each side. Then the slow process of welding and cooling happens until you have a solid bead all the way around the panel. |
The hole for the chain bracket was filled with weld and ground flush. | 
It was recommended that we use Marglass fiberglass body filler since the tailgate is exposed to so much extra abuse. It's a little harder to spread, but we will be able to slam the tailgate down with confidence. | 
We used the 16-inch Flex sander and 40-grit paper to smooth things out. Then Z-grip was spread over any of the low spots. |
On GMC hoods, the turn signals are riveted into place at the factory, and most people break them trying to get them out. Also, they've never been reproduced. In our minds, there is no better reason to shave 'em. As soon as we brought the hood home from Chevy Truck Salvage, Finnegan trimmed the pieces to fit and welded them up--being careful not to warp the metal. | 
We also welded the seam that runs across the front of the hood. Once everything was ground down, this area was treated to a thin layer of Marglass, as well. | 
The antenna hole had been abused pretty badly, but we saved it by metalworking it as flat as possible, welding in the filler piece, and then metalworking it again. A very thin layer of filler was all that was required. |
We also got the GMC dual headlight grille support from Chevy Truck Salvage. It had tons of green paint and undercoating on it, so we stripped it bare with 3M(TM) pads from Eastwood. | 
There were just a few small spots to hit with filler and 80-grit paper before calling this piece done. | 
Last on our list of things to shave and fill were the door handles and the firewall. We kept ourselves busy cutting and forming... |
...And, Chris stayed on welding duty, cooling the area with compressed air as he went along. | 
The door was ground down until the welds were barely visible. | 
Another light coat of filler dried before we tried out some 80 grit on the new foam flexible sander from Eastwood. Those three nubs on the end are actually long rods that can be removed to increase the flexibility of the sander for more contoured areas. |
This is how our firewall started out. We'll get busy on the engine in a future installment, but we needed to take care of the sheetmetal while we were shooting primer. | 
We removed the stock heater assembly and just about everything else from the engine compartment and wet sanded the entire inner front end with 180-grit wet sandpaper. We had this cool idea to make the firewall appear like none of the holes were ever punched at the factory. | 
This meant welding up the holes while leaving all of the spot welds and wrinkles. |
After grinding, the area once again needed very little work thanks to Chris. | 
Finally, we got inside the cab to prep it for primer... | 
...Because of the glue that covered every inch of the sheetmetal, this basically meant using the stripping pads on the grinder for what seemed like weeks. |
We were pretty proud of ourselves once we got the whole interior looking like this. | 
So proud that we let loose on all the remaining sheetmetal, too. In that pile are a grille support, three cowl pieces, two door panels, and several other miscellaneous pieces. | 
At the last minute, someone pointed out that although we had our new GMC frontend looking pretty sweet, we would see "TELORVEHC" every time we looked into the rear view mirror. |
To remedy the situation, Chris cut a filler piece that would cover the entire raised portion of the area, welded it into place, and ground it perfect. | 
Our base primer of choice was PPG's DP90 LF. It's similar to the factory primer and will provide a solid base for the filler primer and blocking we will be doing soon. | 
After wiping down the entire truck with Eastwood's PRE cleaner, Chris began on the inside of the cab and worked from top to bottom, making sure to cover every nook and cranny to prevent rusting. |
Once the doors were jammed and closed, Chris again worked from top to bottom evenly, covering every surface on the truck. | 
Parts were lined up one by one and Chris shot 'em. During assembly, it was cool working with parts that were as clean on the backside as they were the front. This will definitely pay off later. | 
After a long few days, we bolted our new Brothers fenders into place along with our GMC hood and cowl... |
...We've still got a long way to go, but at least the worst part is over. See you next month. | | |