Canadian Hummer Club Forums

Hello old friends, 
 
It has been a while since I have been out wheeling with the Alberta guys. I have been a bit busy with metal work on the H1. 
Thought I would post some of the progress thus far. My H1 suffered from the rust above the rear wheel wells and I figured I should address that before it got really bad.
 
It was much worse then I thought and also the job was much larger than I anticipated. I gave myself 2 weeks and it ended up taking 10 months. Although the scope of the job also changed from, I`ll just repaint the top, to I`ll paint the whole thing, including door jams, remove the full interior, sound proof the whole thing, replace the front windshields, and take out ever dent that myself and the previous owner put into while off road.
 
I also had to teach myself how to do body work, and not just fill it with bondo metal work. On the good side I got to buy tools like spot welders for dent pulling, and a full set of body metal hammers and dollies. 
 
At the end of the day all rust has been removed and precautions taken to ensure that it doesn`t come back in the next few decades at least. 

Wow hell of a project, as you started digging ,did it get worst? To make ya go all out or just figured keep on going?

I had to cut up about 3 inches to get all the rust caused by the galvanic corrosion. So that part wasn't too bad, but the whole rear interior needed come out so i could weld and cut. Then the paint job was original to 1995, and there were dents here and there I wanted to fix. I didn't have to cut out more then I initially thought, but how little structural metal was still there in the bottom 2 inches was way less then I thought was there. 
 
To be honest it did take me a long time to marking the cut line and then looking at it before I got up the nerve to take the angle grinder with a cut off wheel to the side of the truck. I knew that was going to be a point of no return and wasn't sure if wanted to cross it...

I am very impressed! I did not have the nerve to cut it myself. (or the bodywork skill)
 
Clearly you have both.
 
What did you put on for paint?
 
Great work!
 
Derek.         

Paint was a big debate for me. I painted the hood first about a year earlier and did a 2 stage paint process. I was happy with the results and it was mainly to test out to see if I liked the color. The whole truck is painted BMW Alpine white. It is very close to the original color but has a little more depth to it. 
 
I ended up going with a Shirwin Williams single stage paint. The reason being is that if I scratch it off road I can polish out those scratches easily as it is full color the whole way through and it`s a pretty thick paint. If I went two stage it would be harder to correct scratches and other issues down the road. I believed that the single stage was really just the old way of painting but looking into it a little further realized there are new single stages like what I used that are pretty advanced and will work well for this application.

Man, you took on a big job.Good job with the wagon body.

[quote="nitrous"]
Paint was a big debate for me. I painted the hood first about a year earlier and did a 2 stage paint process. I was happy with the results and it was mainly to test out to see if I liked the color. The whole truck is painted BMW Alpine white. It is very close to the original color but has a little more depth to it. 
 
I ended up going with a Shirwin Williams single stage paint. The reason being is that if I scratch it off road I can polish out those scratches easily as it is full color the whole way through and it`s a pretty thick paint. If I went two stage it would be harder to correct scratches and other issues down the road. I believed that the single stage was really just the old way of painting but looking into it a little further realized there are new single stages like what I used that are pretty advanced and will work well for this application.
[/quote]
 
Good plan. I did something similar with the black. I went with an semi-industrial non-metalllic on the body to be able remove scratches and block off and redo sections if repaint was required. I did the underbody and chassis with a combination of black industrial 2 part epoxy and powder coating on all the protection and bolt on stuff. 
 
Your truck will be like new...likely better.
 
Nice work,
 
Derek

Oh and the truck body was fully painted with an epoxy primer / sealer - 2 coats before it was painted with the top coat.