The summers in Ottawa are very humid. I didn’t want to do too much sandblasting and then painting on a humid Ottawa day, so I tried to put off this process towards the end of summer, the end of August to be precise.

I had entertained doing the sandblasting myself. Did a lot of reading on it, and pretty much everyone who’s done it, recommended paying a pro. I bought a 25lb pot, tried to do one fender, and promptly returned the blaster the following day. The blaster constantly clogged, I couldn’t maintain pressure, and the mess was unbelievable!

My inlaws offered up their land to do the blasting on. They had an acreage where I didn’t have to worry about over spray sand, and the dust that would be kicked up. There was a local pressure washing company, VANS Pressure Cleaning  that has a mobile sandblasting service. For about $500 (taxes in) I got the whole truck blasted, frame, cab, wheels, everything.  It took these pros about 3.5 hours to do the job, and it was money well spent.

These guys made it look easy, but they had been doing this for a while.  There were two guys, one running the compressor and hopper, and the other would blast.  Unfortunately there was some slight warping with the cab roof and cab back, but nothing that can be fixed with some metal shrinking techniques.

The blasting also made more evident the rotted out cab corners.  This was no surprise as this rot is common, and I had planned to replace the corners.  There was also rot in the center rear window frame and front window frame.  Some careful work with the MIG and these places should be fixed up.

After the blasting was done I used and air blower, and some acetone and a rag to clean all the metal before applying .

I will be using a Dupont paint system, so I chose a Nason epoxy primer sealer to seal all the sheet metal.   As I wont be getting to the working on the body for a couple of years at least, my goal was to seal it up so it would be safe in storage.  For this reason I put on two good coats of the epoxy primer.