What did you do to your Ranger today? (Part Deux!)

[Rick W]

Still hurting from when the elite gal slammed into the Road Ranger, but slowly getting back on my feet. I’ve got tons to do at the desk for work and for the accident and for other things, but I get brain fog if I don’t get outside and do something with my hands, even though the right hand is still kind of limited. Getting old sucks!

I figured I’d tackle the dent in the door of the Missing Linc, unrelated. That’s coupled with fixing the passenger door panel, where the vinyl was curling up on the bottom, and once again tackling the stereo to see if I could do something so I could actually hear it with the windows open. I think we’re going to try speakers in the doors, I haven’t made a final decision since I’m hesitant to cut the door panels since the vinyl stretched out so nicely.

Forgive me, I forgot to get a “before” picture, but the big depression in the door just popped out once I got to the inside. Then I drilled a couple access holes on the inside frame under the door panel, and using a couple dowels and a block of wood got it as bad as flat as it’s going to be, and hit it with the first round of Bondo.

View attachment 142404

I was contemplating getting a scrapyard door, but when the big dent just popped out, it was obvious I could just work a little magic with filler.

I used up the little bitI had left in my can, which had an $8.95 price tag on it, and I went up to the corner auto parts store at 7 o’clock on Sunday night to get another one. When the clerk said $32 when I was checking out, I went into the same shock as when I smashed my knee into the dashboard. We canceled that sale.

After riding over to Walmart and seeing it for $29, I went home and I got online and had the biggest case of sticker shock I’ve had in a long time. The price went up 300 to 400% in five years? Thank you Covid fraud!

Harbor Freight had the best price at $14.99 and it was on Inside Track club sale for $11.99. That was worth waiting overnight, and I bought it on Monday. I wasn’t up to tackling it on Monday, but I’m about to dive in now.

Suits the hell out of me:

I missed one little spot, but I’ll say I did that on purpose so it will match the little spots I missed from the first time I did it.

And yes, the paint matches. It’s a little noticeable because that spot I blended is just nice and shiny. I just have to do a good wash on the rest of it and then buff it out for about 30 seconds.

I love rust oleum!

 

[Rick W]

Shocks came in for the Missing Linc. Busted knee is killing me, and the arm is hurting pretty bad, so they may be eye candy in the shop for a while. So strange to have something new in there…

I’m trying to drive the Road Ranger as much as possible to make sure it’s ready for Carlisle Ford Nationals. The stage three clutch is killing me.

 

[Things2do]

Yesterday I brushed a little primer into the spots where I gashed through the paint and into the metal of my rocker panels on a trail in April. My roommate had a little primer left in an aerosol can so I sprayed that onto a piece of chipboard that I cut out of a cereal box and then used a small brush to get it into the gashes. The top of this one, the passenger side, is probably visible to short people standing next to it. Otherwise you'd pretty much have to bend down to see the spots. But if anyone has ideas for rock sliders that don't cost more than I paid for the truck I might be interested. I don't have access to a welder at the moment.

Then today I merged a couple of STL files that I found on Thingiverse to make a one piece volume knob for my radio. When I pulled the head unit from a rolled Explorer in the junkyard I couldn't find the knob, so I've been adjusting the volume with the little shaft in the faceplate. That naturally means that I accidentally enter the menu every time I hit a bump while trying to adjust it. And considering that about 1/20 of the total mileage accrued since I bought the truck last May has been in 4 low on trails... I hit a lot of bumps.
I installed a leveling probe on my 3D printer the other week and I still didn't have the offset settings set quite right to make the first layer look the best that I can get from that old Ender 3, so between that and the shaft being too short in the file for the knob itself it took me a few tries to get a good usable example. Instead of making my own from scratch I used a file that I found for a Pioneer knob for the base and then I shrunk down a Ford gas cap cover thing to fit it, but I had to extend the part of the knob that goes over the shaft in the faceplate to get it to seat on the radio. I may have made that part a little too long when I extended it, but I was getting tired of reprinting it by that point. I also had to wrap a single layer of masking tape on the shaft to take up the slack and keep the knob from falling off. It isn't perfect, and since it has an unlicensed Ford logo on it uploading it here might not be the best idea given the history that I've read about, but here are the two files that I started from. Using Cura I kept the knob the same size (22, 22, 17.3428), shrunk the gas cap cover to 33.34% (30, 28.9179, 8.3338), and then centered both at (0,0) with the gas cap at z = 0 and the Pioneer knob at z = 1. Those are all in mm. I extended the shaft on the knob by about 5.5mm compared to the file on Thingiverse. By my calipers the OD of the shaft on my radio is a hair under 6mm.

After I had one I liked I taped off everything except the logo and sprayed it with some metallic silver paint that I swiped from my roommate. After it dried I used some 400 grit sandpaper, which I also kind of swiped from my roommate since he left it under the kitchen table in the living room, to knock the paint off of the high spots in the logo. That left the blue a little hazy, but a few kisses with an open flame took care of that. The blue filament also came from my roommate's stash. And I used his Zippo since my lighter has disappeared again.

Knob:

Pioneer car radio volume knob by CR1ZLY

a replacement volume knob for pioneer car radio's.

www.thingiverse.com

Gas cap:

Fuel Cap Grip with Ford Logo by DanielBull

This design is a customisable ergonomic grip which can be placed over the existing metal fuel caps which are common on the custom filler necks used in dragsters and modified vehicles such as those made by Jaz: http://www.jazproducts.com/fc_fillerneck.htmlThis should NOT be used to seal a fuel...

www.thingiverse.com

Since I hate finding long-dead links on old forum posts, copies of both of those pages should be available on Archive.org if they quit working in the future.

I went and filled its tank tonight in case I, as a currently jobless bum on summer break, go camping in it tomorrow night. I walk to school since my place is closer than both the "on campus" housing and most of the campus parking lots, so that 11 gallons was almost a month's worth. Including driving an hour each way to do a trail on which a volunteer SAR guy that went with us in a heavily built up Gladiator burned 13 gallons. That was the trail that took some of the paint from, and left a couple of big dents in, my rockers when I took some hard lines that I shouldn't have tried. That's quite the difference compared to my dad putting a little over 50,000 miles on his Grand Marquis in one year a few years ago.

 

[Rick W]

Yesterday I brushed a little primer into the spots where I gashed through the paint and into the metal of my rocker panels on a trail in April. My roommate had a little primer left in an aerosol can so I sprayed that onto a piece of chipboard that I cut out of a cereal box and then used a small brush to get it into the gashes. The top of this one, the passenger side, is probably visible to short people standing next to it. Otherwise you'd pretty much have to bend down to see the spots. But if anyone has ideas for rock sliders that don't cost more than I paid for the truck I might be interested. I don't have access to a welder at the moment.

View attachment 142599

Then today I merged a couple of STL files that I found on Thingiverse to make a one piece volume knob for my radio. When I pulled the head unit from a rolled Explorer in the junkyard I couldn't find the knob, so I've been adjusting the volume with the little shaft in the faceplate. That naturally means that I accidentally enter the menu every time I hit a bump while trying to adjust it. And considering that about 1/20 of the total mileage accrued since I bought the truck last May has been in 4 low on trails... I hit a lot of bumps.
I installed a leveling probe on my 3D printer the other week and I still didn't have the offset settings set quite right to make the first layer look the best that I can get from that old Ender 3, so between that and the shaft being too short in the file for the knob itself it took me a few tries to get a good usable example. Instead of making my own from scratch I used a file that I found for a Pioneer knob for the base and then I shrunk down a Ford gas cap cover thing to fit it, but I had to extend the part of the knob that goes over the shaft in the faceplate to get it to seat on the radio. I may have made that part a little too long when I extended it, but I was getting tired of reprinting it by that point. I also had to wrap a single layer of masking tape on the shaft to take up the slack and keep the knob from falling off. It isn't perfect, and since it has an unlicensed Ford logo on it uploading it here might not be the best idea given the history that I've read about, but here are the two files that I started from. Using Cura I kept the knob the same size (22, 22, 17.3428), shrunk the gas cap cover to 33.34% (30, 28.9179, 8.3338), and then centered both at (0,0) with the gas cap at z = 0 and the Pioneer knob at z = 1. Those are all in mm. I extended the shaft on the knob by about 5.5mm compared to the file on Thingiverse. By my calipers the OD of the shaft on my radio is a hair under 6mm.

View attachment 142601

After I had one I liked I taped off everything except the logo and sprayed it with some metallic silver paint that I swiped from my roommate. After it dried I used some 400 grit sandpaper, which I also kind of swiped from my roommate since he left it under the kitchen table in the living room, to knock the paint off of the high spots in the logo. That left the blue a little hazy, but a few kisses with an open flame took care of that. The blue filament also came from my roommate's stash. And I used his Zippo since my lighter has disappeared again.

Knob:

Pioneer car radio volume knob by CR1ZLY

a replacement volume knob for pioneer car radio's.

www.thingiverse.com

Gas cap:

Fuel Cap Grip with Ford Logo by DanielBull

This design is a customisable ergonomic grip which can be placed over the existing metal fuel caps which are common on the custom filler necks used in dragsters and modified vehicles such as those made by Jaz: http://www.jazproducts.com/fc_fillerneck.htmlThis should NOT be used to seal a fuel...

www.thingiverse.com

Since I hate finding long-dead links on old forum posts, copies of both of those pages should be available on Archive.org if they quit working in the future.

View attachment 142600
View attachment 142602
View attachment 142603

I went and filled its tank tonight in case I, as a currently jobless bum on summer break, go camping in it tomorrow night. I walk to school since my place is closer than both the "on campus" housing and most of the campus parking lots, so that 11 gallons was almost a month's worth. Including driving an hour each way to do a trail on which a volunteer SAR guy that went with us in a heavily built up Gladiator burned 13 gallons. That was the trail that took some of the paint from, and left a couple of big dents in, my rockers when I took some hard lines that I shouldn't have tried. That's quite the difference compared to my dad putting a little over 50,000 miles on his Grand Marquis in one year a few years ago.

I joke about the rust oleum all the time, but it really is an incredible product to protect metal.

Understand what primer is for. If you have bare metal, primer is designed to adhere to the bare metal and provide an interactive surface that will provide a much better grip for the paint you use over it. While primer will offer some rust protection, that’s not actually what it’s designed to do. Raw paint on the open steel will actually provide much better protection, with the best protection coming from applying primer to the clean surface, and then putting the appropriate paint on the top. Think of the primer kind of acting like a glue between the slippery steel and the slippery paint, what the glue you use on a floor tile on a concrete floor.

And yes, if you’re taking your truck through the mud, scratching it up and such, rust oleum wears like iron, but it’s also very easy to fill in scratches and such. And never the rattle can. Rattle can paint just does not give you the adherence and coverage you can get with a little paintbrush. Always painted it on with a brush.

I don’t know what your whole truck looks like, but it looks like you have a metallic green kind of color. Unfortunately, there’s no metallic in rudtoleum, but if Google a little color matching, and you buy two or three of the right colors, you can probably blend a color that pretty closely matches your truck. Certainly better than gray primer stripes.

Not trying to be critical nor lecture, just trying to provide a helpful hand. I’ve been using rust oleum for over 60 years, and a lot of the stuff I used it on 50 or 60 years ago is still sitting around. Almost rust free (but I don’t bash it around on the trails).

Hope it helps

EDIT: afterthought

When I was driving those old vehicles up north, I would clean up the running boards, the quarter panels, about four or 5 inches up from the bottom (usually even with the bottom of the door), and I would just paint them satin black, whether they needed it or not. It always looked OK on the trucks, looked like it was supposed to be there, but then if I scratched or drained it or found a little bit of rust, I could just wire brush it and then slap on some more wrist oleum. Why don’t you post a picture of the side of your truck so we can get a better idea?

 

[Things2do]

I joke about the rust oleum all the time, but it really is an incredible product to protect metal.

Understand what primer is for. If you have bare metal, primer is designed to adhere to the bare metal and provide an interactive surface that will provide a much better grip for the paint you use over it. While primer will offer some rust protection, that’s not actually what it’s designed to do. Raw paint on the open steel will actually provide much better protection, with the best protection coming from applying primer to the clean surface, and then putting the appropriate paint on the top. Think of the primer kind of acting like a glue between the slippery steel and the slippery paint, what the glue you use on a floor tile on a concrete floor.

And yes, if you’re taking your truck through the mud, scratching it up and such, rust oleum wears like iron, but it’s also very easy to fill in scratches and such. And never the rattle can. Rattle can paint just does not give you the adherence and coverage you can get with a little paintbrush. Always painted it on with a brush.

I don’t know what your whole truck looks like, but it looks like you have a metallic green kind of color. Unfortunately, there’s no metallic in rudtoleum, but if Google a little color matching, and you buy two or three of the right colors, you can probably blend a color that pretty closely matches your truck. Certainly better than gray primer stripes.

Not trying to be critical nor lecture, just trying to provide a helpful hand. I’ve been using rust oleum for over 60 years, and a lot of the stuff I used it on 50 or 60 years ago is still sitting around. Almost rust free (but I don’t bash it around on the trails).

Hope it helps

EDIT: afterthought

When I was driving those old vehicles up north, I would clean up the running boards, the quarter panels, about four or 5 inches up from the bottom (usually even with the bottom of the door), and I would just paint them satin black, whether they needed it or not. It always looked OK on the trucks, looked like it was supposed to be there, but then if I scratched or drained it or found a little bit of rust, I could just wire brush it and then slap on some more wrist oleum. Why don’t you post a picture of the side of your truck so we can get a better idea?

My paint code is KE. It's a metallic light blue, and when I looked it up a while back I believe it was Lapis Metallic. I was planning on putting some paint over the primer eventually, I just did that for now because it's what I had handy and I figured that it would be better than the exposed bare metal that I had. There's no rust anywhere except for the flaking spring hangers and I think I only drove it on salted roads twice last winter. Granted it was an unusually warm and dry winter for around here.
I probably also have some scratches that went all the way through to the metal on the frame and skid plates. But I think I have a partial spray can of Rust-Oleum roll bar and chassis paint somewhere and my roommate has a little can of brush on Rust-Oleum, both in gloss black, so I should be able to take care of that. Painting the bottom of the body black seems a little overkill though at least for the moment.

The lighting isn't the best right now, especially since the glass over the camera on my phone randomly shattered a while back, so here's one from before I scratched it in April.

 

[Rick W]

Nice truck. Another thought for nicks and scratches, it’s going to sound crazy, nail polish. If you go to one of the bigger stores, you could probably get a color that’s pretty damn close to your truck. And the stuff the nail polish is made of is kind of bulletproof.

And, of course, then you could do your own nails the same color as a cute little accent!

 

[Things2do]

Nice truck. Another thought for nicks and scratches, it’s going to sound crazy, nail polish. If you go to one of the bigger stores, you could probably get a color that’s pretty damn close to your truck. And the stuff the nail polish is made of is kind of bulletproof.

And, of course, then you could do your own nails the same color as a cute little accent!

I hadn't thought about nail polish.

Yeah... No. I already have an unusually high voice for a guy and enough hair to pick up a guitar and fit right in with an '80's metal band, save for the fact that I've never learned to play a guitar and my wardrobe consists almost entirely of t-shirts, plaid button up shirts, and jeans. I don't need to get any weirder. Especially living less than half an hour from Boulder, CO.

But I have saved a lot of money by not having my hair cut for the last 4.5 years. As it stands I could lop off and donate about 15 inches without increasing the risk of sunburns to my neck. Between regular haircuts, pomade, and whatever else my roommates last year were probably both spending about as much on their "normal" hair as I am for the insurance on my Ranger. And women actually stop me on the street from time to time to ask about my hair care routine. They're always disappointed when I tell them cheap shampoo and good genes, but aside from the ones that I already know who need something fixed that's about the only times girls walk up and talk to me.