This is one of the journeys down the rabbit hole. With the entire drivetrain removed, I finally had the chance to work on the part of the truck that has always bothered me, the underside of the cab. Back when the project was underway, the cab was repaired with the floor and half of the back wall from a donor cab. The donor was in good shape but nothing was done with the undercoating or the ugly heat shields. I wasn’t going to have another opportunity so under the truck I went with sheer determination and elbow grease. It was the hottest days of summer and this is when I started. It took several days to scrap all of the tar like coating from the cab and get it down to clean metal. It definitely qualified for hazardous duty pay. Imagine being fully covered in a Tyvek jumpsuit with an ambient temperature in the high nineties with the humidity index in the seventies and eighties. Fortunately the 4′ shop fan moves a lot of air.

After several days of hard labor, it was finally ready for painting. I did not want to use ‘normal’ paint and I opted for a roll on bedliner product for durability and performance. Plus it just looks great. While I was under the truck, I was able to install rivet nuts for the transmission hump cover and the heat shield in order to use stainless steel hardware for securing everything. The results were worth the work. I’m pretty sure the truck only took second in the Best Engineered category at the Springfield, IL 4Wheel Jamboree because of the condition under the cab.