Halfway through my long-weekend at home and I’ve already tackled a bunch of stuff out back on the Ute.
Rear floor pan (beneath the wood) has now been cleaned, scrubbed, rust-converter-ed and top coated with underbody paint. Side panels in the cargo tray have been hammered straight and the backs of them primed & painted. Fish oil is soaking into all the nooks and crannies as I type. Rear wiring harness completely cleaned, returned to it’s original routing via the factory tabs, overhauled taillight assemblies refitted, an earth wire added to the no. plate light and the taillight globe holders repaired & wire brushed ready for another 57 years of service.
I also scored a cut-to-size plank of decent quality 12mm thick plywood to replace the splintered tongue-&-groove boards that occupied the tray before. A little massaging with a file and some sandpaper and it has slotted in perfectly. 12mm is just the right thickness too it seems, sits pretty flush.
One coat of oil based Cabot’s flooring vanish has gone down, a couple more to go I reckon. I’m not fussed about originality here, so I’m just using left over paint from a repair in the floor of my bedroom that I topcoated. Looks good so far.
I’m going to scrub the original metal cargo tray strips... then work out what to do with them. I’d like to clear coat them somehow, but not sure what would be tough enough... maybe I’ll end up using Hammertone metal galv style paint. We’ll see.
I have a tin of rubberised Ute-liner paint on the way too, which I’ll brush on. I couldn’t decide what to do colour wise, so I decided to stick with the existing dark blue.
Tomorrow I hope to drop the shocks, diff & springs out, diagnose & order parts needed, then hammer those inner wheel arches back into slightly better shape. Should be fun in the heat
might just hit the beach instead
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I think mine had been cleaned with thinners or something worse. Oh and a big crack through one of them also... no hope. My blue slip guy is pretty thingy about good lenses/lighting so I had his voice in my head also. I want this thing to sail through rego! 
