Kevin Tetz’s Six-Day/500-Hour Family F-100 Makeover
By Kevin Tetz – Images by the Author
I’ve been a professional repair and refinish technician for over half my life. I love my career, and how cars and what they represent are intertwined with family memories from a very early age. My family is from western Canada, south-central British Columbia to be exact, and we grew up around cars. My uncle Herb Pinske’s antique auto wreckers, A&H Used Auto Parts, sold cars and parts from the 1920s up to the 1970s, with a vast array of makes and models. My brother, Blaine Tetz, and I grew up around these cars and learned life lessons along the way.
Here’s our subject, 30 years ago right after a full restoration. Period-correct sawblade chrome wheels, Volare front subframe, 302 Ford engine, and shiny single-stage paint make it a great-looking and handling show driver! But time always takes its toll on a vehicle, and this one needed going through.
My Cousin Wayne Pinske was here in Tennessee for a visit earlier in the year and we were reminiscing about childhood memories, cars, tall tales, and family get-togethers. We (possibly over adult beverages …) hatched a crazy plan to drag my youngest cousin Allan’s truck (that he got from his dad) down to my shop to throw a quick paintjob on it and have a family get-together. Ultimately, that plan escalated over the summer and ended up in a weeklong event that started with Cousin Allan’s ’56 F-100 making the 2,400-mile/36-hour journey on an open car hauler with his brother, Wayne, their nephew, Brandon, and Shane Dacosta (Brandon’s brother-in-law) on board.
Before the trip, Wayne Pinske spearheaded a teardown of the bed and front fenders, since they were getting replaced anyway, which allowed them to get a good look at the cab structure.
My brother, Blaine, and Wayne’s son Steve flew in and met us in Nashville just in time to attend the Triple Crown of Rodding, which is an amazing car show! Once we saw the sights, had a nice visit, and got reacquainted, we got down to business.
After the 2,400-mile/36-hour trip, we unloaded the truck into the Paintucation shop and made a game plan and playbook … a goal like this won’t be achieved without a solid plan.
We had a six-day deadline, so it was GO-TIME! What makes it a little easier is that we used all-new Auto Metal Direct (AMD) fenders, bedsides, braces, and patch panels to complete the repairs and get us beautiful parts that, aside from cab corners and rust repairs, only needed to be scuffed and painted for installation on the truck. This is a snapshot of a once-in-a-lifetime build thrash. It was an adventure that got our family back together again after decades apart and kicked out an outstanding F-100 refurb at the end of a six-day/500-hour week!
The first of many projects are cab corners; they look fine from 10 feet away, but there are clues when you get closer.A look at the inner cab shows oozing filler and lots of crud … not a good sign! We have an opportunity here to correct the prior repair with a new AMD panel.With the AMD (PN 481-4553, left and right) cab corners ready to go, we were ready for whatever we found at the rear corners.Using a cutoff wheel, the cloud of filler dust was a clue as to how much bog was used to make the corner. When this truck was last finished, there were no AMD re-pops for the cab corners.We cut well above the rust and filler and exposed the (also rusty) inner corner, which was promptly removed in favor of new metal.The new inner supports (PN 480-4548 L&R) are E-coated and ready to be installed. The fit was excellent, so we used the stamped shapes to locate the inner panel properly.After a test with the outer and a mockup, Allan’s nephew Brandon Pinske welds in the new lower cab corner.Brandon grinds any excessive weld pool off the surfaces before moving forward with the outer. Even though we have a deadline, there are no shortcuts taken.We use a high-quality zinc weld-through primer for all metal repairs where there could be a corrosion opportunity. Zinc is a sacrificial coating that draws corrosion away from carbon steel.Brandon uses an ink marker to draw a cutline on the cab for the new outer panel.The cut is made with a 1/16 cutoff wheel just ahead of the drawn line. This gives some adjustment room for a final fit.After trimming and grinding for a butt-joint, Brandon uses a MIG welder with 0.030 wire to weld in the new AMD panel. Even though this is a stamped curve and a complex shape, he takes his time and blows the tacks cool before each new weld to avoid warpage.Steve Paul (Wayne Pinske’s son) steps in to finish the bodywork on the cab corner while Brandon jumps on another patch. This was a coordinated project, with many workstations simultaneously moving forward, so we all took on many jobs to move the project ahead.After grinding with 40-grit to smooth the welds level, Steve uses 80-grit, then follows with 180 to blend the metal repair and feather it into the truck cab. This sets it up for filler.After using Evercoat OPTEX filler and OPTEX 4 to 1 polyester primer-filler, the cab corner is ready for final paint prep!The front corners were suffering as well! We replaced left and right with AMD cowl repair panels (PN 376-4553-2 left to right) to fix the front corners. Some of the inner structure had to be replaced, and we used scrap flat-stock 18-gauge to repair the inner structure.The finished result looks factory fresh! Since the inner cab mounts were still very solid, this repair took only three hours per corner.With all four corners now rejuvenated and ready for another 70 years of service, Allan made new pressure relief covers out of aluminum for each side. AMD, here’s an idea for a new product? Let’s discuss!Much care was taken to keep from damaging the new AMD parts. They looked great and were damage-free right out of the boxes. My strategy was to be able to scuff & shoot most of the new panels without bodywork, depending on how well mockups went.The bed assembly took about six hours total to get an accurate fit. This involved cross-sills (PN 716-4553-3), bedsides (PN 721-4553), new front panel (PN 715-4551), and fenders (PN 80-4553), while integrating the original (custom) tailgate. We had to slot a few holes and make minor adjustments along the way to the bedsides, but nothing unexpected. We also used a complete fender bolt set (PN 15783).With mockups complete, we had parts in the booth by day two! The rear fenders were lined with U-POL Raptor bedliner (PN UPO KIT-0822-4-GUN) in black for impact protection inside the fenders. We sanded them with 320, which gets them ready for a Nason XL sealer to spray the color onto.While we were prepping body parts in the booth, Wayne and Steve worked on the doors, repairing some small rust-through at the bottoms of the panels with 20-gauge.The color Allan chose was a mid-’90s GM truck color named Indigo Blue (code WA9792), which looks great on the fat-fendered body of this truck!Day three and another several sessions of painting, priming, and blocking, the bed was assembled for the last time. Spending time on mockups made this much easier and saved us from scratching paint while adjusting for panel fit. It’s prudent to put in the time prior to painting and pre-fit things together! Even great aftermarket parts need finessing to integrate into a 70-year-old body.The bed assembly looks like a million bucks! We could have bodyworked and rust-repaired the originals, but these stampings were amazing. We saved dozens of hours by spending a little money on new AMD panels here.On day four, I finally had the cab assembly and other miscellaneous parts in the booth for coatings! It was an obstacle course between the hang and stacked parts, my fresh air supply hose, and the gun air hose, but it all worked! Painting in the cab saves us from having to mask everything twice but it’s quite a challenge to spray it all at once!!The Nason XL base color covered in three coats, and we used a SATA 5000B 1.3 HVLP gun, and a total of 5 quarts to spray the entire job. Once you add the (2 to 1 ratio) reducer, that makes 240 ounces (1.75 gallons) of sprayable color. That also left Allan almost a full quart of color to spray the running boards (that we forgot to order from AMD) once he got back to British Columbia, Canada.Days five and six were mostly paint and reassembly, and we used Nason XL 438-40 Overall Clearcoat, which is affordable and beautiful! I’m using SATA spray equipment these days, and my 5500X with a 1.2 fluid tip lays down the clearcoat like glass.It’s inevitable that there’s a little dust that falls into the paint, so we nibbed with 2,000-grit paper and used my Griot’s Garage BOSS polishing system to repair any surface defects.Everyone was a little shell-shocked and exhausted for reassembly … we still put in 12- to 14-hour days with seven bodies, which makes a total of just under 500 labor hours all accumulated. We installed a new rear glass, new weather-seals (PN X580-4556-1), and a few other chrome goodies to freshen things up.Seeing this truck come back to life was an amazing thing to be a part of, but it’s so much deeper than that. The last time we were all in one place we were kids, and some of us hadn’t even been born yet. This family reunion was long overdue, and such a wonderful way to catch up, get reacquainted and bond again over what we all share deep down: a love of classic cars. The cars we love are amazing, but even more beautiful are the memories we associate with them.
