Work Truck Renewal

Today, we're going to show you how with a little work, you can freshen up your tired old work truck. We'll help you make it look better inside and out. So your rolling office is a nicer place to work. It's all today here on trucks.

Hey, welcome to trucks. I'm Kevin Tates. Well, project super duly is coming along pretty good. A little bit slow, but still we're going to get there and just to refresh your memory, the reason that we decided to build a diesel duly is quite frankly, we didn't want to shell out the 50 odd 1000 bucks it was going to take to buy a new one. And the truth is a lot of guys are doing what we're doing and they're going to end up with a tow rig for pennies on the dollar or taking an exist

vehicle platform and refurbishing the systems one at a time until you eventually end up with the vehicle that you wanted in the first place. And that's what today's show is about.

And I'm Ryan Shane and the truck we're working on is nothing fancy. Just a 94 Dodge Dooly work truck. It's got the plain Jane interior, it's built for use and abuse and it's got the fifth wheel hitch in the back and about 200,000 miles on the odometer.

Now underneath the hood of this truck is the same 12 valve comments attached to the same heavy duty five speed transmission that can be found in our super duly project. So the drive train is virtually identical. Now, this engine has been treated to a big punk and air filter, an upgrade on the fuel plate and ridiculously oversized five inch exhaust. So, needless to say it's got plenty of power to tow a heavy trailer down the road and it gets an honest 21

MPG cruise in

70 miles an hour down the highway. But this truck does have a few drawbacks

and one of the drawbacks is that that guy is fighting a losing battle because this is just a well used worn out work truck and underneath these ultra trick diamond plate floor mats.

Well, the carpet is just nasty.

The uh headliner is shot, the steering wheel has been chewed on, there's a cigarette burned in the seat and it's just generally really dirty. But the good news is there's an inexpensive fix for all of this.

Now, one of the other drawbacks of this truck is that the business end certainly wasn't spared any use of be

or neglect. Now, the tailgate has obviously been repainted at least once and the gooseneck plate is all rusty and probably has all kinds of crud built up underneath it

and the entire floor of the bed is starting to show its age. This thing used to have a drop in plastic bed liner and everywhere the liner contacted the painted surface, well, it's worn through and it's starting to surface rust. So before it gets any worse, we want to stop it in its tracks and fix it

and just like on the interior,

we're going to do it on the cheap and make this worn out truck bed look like new and get it ready for another 200,000 miles of service.

Now, a professional spray in bed liner is a great option, but it's also very expensive to have done maybe too expensive for this particular project. But you've got other options like this two part bed liner kit from hippo liner,

you just mix the part A into the part B and it cross links becoming very strong. Now, the hippo liner has no pigment.

But if you want, you have the option of using paint toners to tint to your desirable color, we're gonna stay with black because we think it's gonna look better on this truck

and you can brush it on, roll it on or use a sprayer. Of course, for a more consistent film, we're gonna use a spray gun,

but there is some surface prep involved. Any painted surface needs to be prepped for the coating to stick.

Now, red scuffing pads are coarse enough to give us enough tooth for the liner to stick and they can contour around all the crevices in that bed.

We can knock the scaly rust off with one of these guys or even some heavy sandpaper. And then what rust has left over, we can hit with Eva a

rust and convert it. Now, make no mistake. This method, it's a ton of work. But if you're like us in this project and you have more time than money, well, it's worth the extra elbow grease. Just make sure that you set aside at least an afternoon to get the job done.

Hand me the piano. Is that heavy.

Oh,

now, we could have taken the easy way out and just left the gooseneck plate bolted down. But as you can see the channels in the bed floor are the perfect home for future corrosion. So, if this is gonna be a project you do in your garage, take the extra time and disassemble everything.

Now to remove any scale surface rust or loose paint, we're using a nylon bristle disc

and these things have hundreds of tiny little fingers that'll get into grooves and crevices and remove the rust without altering or hurting the metal surface.

Now, another tool or attachment you can use to get the job done is a fiber wheel. It's a little bit more aggressive than the bristle disk. It works well at removing the more stubborn rust

just like a paint job. A bed liner kit has to have the correct surface prep. In this case, we're using 180 grid to make sure it's got a good aggressive tooth for the liner to hang on to.

Now, don't kid yourself. This is a bunch of work because most pickup beds get their fair share of abuse. But you got to remember every inch of the painted surface needs to be prepped correctly. Otherwise, the bed liner that you work so hard on will just gonna delaminating and flake off and mess the whole day up.

No short of sandblasting the entire bed. Well, there just wasn't any way to physically remove every last speck of rust. There's always a tiny bit way down in the pore somewhere. So what we're gonna do is use a Vor

rust to convert that light rust into a paint surface.

So we're laying down some rags, soaking it with the Vapo

rust and letting the chemical do its job over that half hour without drying out.

Now, we're just sloshing this stuff around and pouring it into the bed because there's no reason to fear this chemical. It's nontoxic. There's no fumes and it's biodegradable, making it environmentally safe

up. Next, we'll show you how to spray in your own bed liner and later it's cleaner carpet and a new headliner all for less than 50 bucks. Stay tuned.

Hey, welcome back to the shop. What we're working on our 94 dodge one ton. Now, it's seen plenty of work in its 200,000 mile life so far. But the diesel engine and five speed transmission are still running strong. So to make sure the truck doesn't fall apart around the drive train, we to breathe some life back into this truck by cleaning up the interior and freshening up the bed. Now, we've already treated the rust scuffed it down, wiped it down and we're finished masking this thing off just about ready to spray on some diy bed liner. We picked up from autobody color and supply.

Now, the two components in the liner come prepackage. So you can't mess up the mixed ratio, but you have to make sure they're properly stirred. One of my old tricks is to reset the alphabet a couple of times.

Now, after you've said your ABC S twice, you can be pretty secure that both components are blended. Now it's time to add the toner.

Now, the toner is nothing more than single stage urethane paint without the catalyst. But since the main catalyst in the bed liner kit is an isocyanate hardener. Well, it works perfectly with the paint.

When it comes to application, you've got several different options. You can brush it on, roll it on or spray it on like we are spraying, gives you a much more uniform surface, but make sure that you're using a gun with a huge orifice because this stuff is like spraying peanut butter.

I'm using a 50% overlap just like painting and with the pigment applied, this stuff covers in one coat and gives us that cool bed liner texture.

Now, Brian Smith from auto body color gave us some tips on application. If you want to stretch out a kit and get a little more mileage out of it, you can use a ground coat of epoxy on your bed first in the appropriate color,

then you can take your kit, apply it a little bit thinner and it'll stretch out a lot further.

The masking paper on the floor is an old school painting trick. So you don't get contamination on the surface. You're about to paint.

Now, when removing the interior of a truck, you never know what you're gonna find. Especially in a new to you. Pick up

this jack doesn't look like it's ever been out of the truck. Check this out.

The powder coat is rotted off of it. It's oxidized. Oh my goodness.

Oh, look

done.

And we can put that dime towards the car wash fund

and while the seats were in decent shape, considering the mileage, the rest of the cab was a typical mild up work truck in need of some attention

even. That's nasty.

But behind this cover, this truck was paying out.

You gotta be kidding me.

It's like a slot machine in Vegas.

This some kind of joke.

Hey, wait look at that.

That's gonna finance our whole cleaning operation. Jes,

what the hell is under here

KC.

Look at that

eight.

You

got some more money

and with the carpet completely out, it's much easier to clean. So we'll start off getting rid of the big chunks of the vacuum cleaner and follow that up by soaking the stains with a pre cleaner.

In

this case, we use a safety cleans degreaser because obviously some places need it more than others.

Most modern headliners are held in with the sun visors and accessories once you've got them removed. Well, the headliner practically falls out

up next. If your headliner is sagging, don't be dragging. It's an easy fix and later it's easy patching how to repair cigarette burns in your upholstery. Stick around.

Hey, welcome back to the shop. Well, we've got our trucks bed looking like new again and the interior of the cab completely stripped down and we're just about ready to tackle the headliner.

But before we do that, we've got to do something about that grungy nasty carpet we pulled out of here

and that got us back to the neighborhood. Coin car wash. Sweet.

Yes, sir.

Drying shade here for safety clean, simply spray it on the stain, let it soak and pressure wash it. Why am I yelling?

I don't know.

All right now we're not playing here. We're gonna go straight to the tire cleaner because that carpet is toxic.

Now, even though, we pres soaked it. We're dealing with more than 10 years of serious truck punk. So, he wanted to use a tire cleaner to really do a deep cleaning job and get down to the bottom of the carpet pile.

They got you some coffee in there. Some Pepsi. Maybe a milkshake.

Yeah.

Well, so this thing on the vacuum and, uh, at

least make it lighter easier to carry,

check it out.

Spot remover shampoo carpet protected two bucks for three minutes.

This is carpet. He

all right, with our soggy but clean carpet drying, we're going to take the time to recover our headliner. Now, now, if you haven't done interior work like this before, well, don't be intimidated. It's actually pretty easy.

Now, this outer cloth layer is what was sagging and separating from the foam

and removal is pretty straightforward. Just be careful not to damage the fiber board backing because that's what gives the headliner its shape.

Now, you need to remove the foam as well and you've got a couple of options.

The first one we went with is just a wire brush.

All right. Now, this wire brush is getting the job done, just takes a little bit of effort, but say you're doing a headliner and oh, I don't know, maybe a suburban where you might want to think about upgrading to an air powered rotary tool for the bristle dis, make the job a lot easier.

And this will definitely get the job done quicker, just don't lean on it too hard.

Now, the headliner material itself can be found at almost any fabric store and of course, prices will vary, but this stuff's pretty cheap.

And when cutting it to fit, leave a little excess.

When doing this, you need to use a quality spray adhesive and apply plenty to both the fabric and the backing board, allow it to tack up for a moment then work in the fabric.

Now, when cutting out the openings, keep in mind, they don't have to be perfect because they're going to get covered up with interior trim pieces.

Just take your time and use a single edge razor blade

and on the exposed outer edges of the headliner, we need to use a little bit more care. It just might be visible.

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Hey, welcome back to trucks. Well, our pressure washed carpet has had a chance to dry and it actually turned out pretty good and even though it's not 100% perfect. Well, it's tough to complain about the results when all the change we found on the interior of this thing paid for the cleaning. Now, when we pulled the carpet out, had kind of a musty funky odor to it. That's probably

because the original Juke backing had got wet at one time or another. So we scraped most of that off and replaced it with this residential foam carpet padding that we picked up for free. Now, underneath that, we applied some de I spray on boom mat to help eliminate road noise and kill some of the clatter

that diesel engine.

But here on the seat, well, we've got a fairly common problem.

This is a cigarette burn of some sort from the previous owner. And you got to remember this seat is from 1994. So the chances of the dealership having a replacement cover, even if it was affordable are slim to none. A used seat where you're probably going to run into the same thing. But there is a cheap, cheap fix with a single edge razor blade and some clear glue. Check it out.

Now, using a sharp, single edged razor blade, you want to harvest some fuzz from a discreet location on the upholstery. In our case, it's the back of the headrest.

Now you can take your clear adhesive and place it into the cigarette burn being very careful not to go around the outside edge.

Now, keep in mind your fuzz can blow away so carefully, place it without any breezes in the room and try not to breathe too hard.

Once the fuzz is stuffed into the cigarette burn, let it set just a little bit, make sure the glue comes in contact with the particles.

Now, on this seat, there's a diagonal pattern. So using your razor blade and a very light touch, you can replace the pattern with the blade.

Now, after about 25 minutes of dry time, the repair is darkened up and it looks pretty darn good. A lot better than the cigarette burn that was there. Although this is not a perfect repair, it took about a minute and a half and less than a couple of bucks worth of materials. So this is a pretty good fix.

Hey, guys. Now we've shown you the regular invisible glass before, but now they've added rain repellent to the formula making, cleaning and applying the repellent one easy step.

Now, this stuff has the same powerful cleaner found in the standard invisible glass and we're just cleaning half so we can show you and demonstrate the benefits of the rain repellent

and it's pretty clear on the treated side, the water is beating up kind of like it would on the painted surface of a freshly waxed car, allowing the wipers to work that much more effectively

and allowing the windshield to shed water.

You can pick up invisible glass with rain repellent at most automotive retailers.

All right, with the interior of this truck cleaned up and fixed up, we went ahead and threw down some $20 parts store floor mats just to finish things off. So for less than 75 bucks. We've got this thing cleaned up. We got rid of the smell and we generally just made it a better place to spend some time on the road. Now, out back here,

Diy spray on bed liner turned out great. And it made this once rusty and well used work bed look nearly new and for less than half the cost of a professional spray on liner. Now, if you've got any questions about this truck or anything else you saw on today's show, go to Power Block tv.com. Thanks for watching trucks. See you next week.