The Right Tool For the Job

Greetings once again!  I am happy to report that I am having troubles keeping up with the progress on the truck. This is good because #1 - It means I am actually continuing to make forward progress, and #2 - I continue to write!  I plan on writing more often, and perhaps in slightly smaller chunks, in an effort to stay up to date on all of the activity while it is fresh in my mind.

When last we left our stalwart heroes, they were deep in the throws of dealing with the recalcitrant Foam from Hell, so that's where we will pick back up.  If you remember correctly, I was using a heavy duty scraper and manually trying to prey loose the caked on foam from the metal cabin of the truck.  I had hit upon the trick of using some acetone to denature the old adhesive, but it was still a long, tiring, slow process.  Well, it turns out I was going about things all wrong, and what I needed was the proper Tool for the Job.  Imagine, if you will, that I am a lone Infantryman in the Line Company for the Imperial Car Destroyers compliment of marines.  Imagine further that I am being faced with a large tank bearing down on me, intent with my destruction.  My heavy duty hand scraper and acetone was the equivalent of being armed with a sharpened spoon against the oncoming armor.  Okay, with the addition of the acetone, I'll give you a sharpened spork, but no more.

I'm calling in Air Support!

What I needed was some serious fire power.  What I needed was air support.  Specifically, a nice Variable Speed Multifunction Air Tool from Harbor Freight.  This thing is basically just a small hand held wand that vibrates at up to 17,000 oscillations a minute (don't get too excited now Grrls).  It has a simple single allen bolt head that takes a variety of attachments, transforming it from a cutting device, to a scraping device, to a sander.  I had already purchased a 25 gallon, 5 HP air compressor on eBay from a local bloke in Scotts Valley, so I figured I would give it a shot.  Boy, was it the right thing to do.  I bought a 1-3/8" Multi-Tool Plunge Blade for it that was technically for wood, but it looked like just what I needed.  This showed up in the mail mid week, and by the weekend I was ready to rumble.  It should be noted at this point in our story that my wife is starting to freak out a little bit about how many boxes of tools and parts are arriving at our house.  Daily.  Twice a day even.  When she suggested I might have a problem, I might have laughed maniacally and went outside to play with my air tools.  I couldn't really tell you for sure, I was still riding the high of my mighty power - I no longer had a sharpened spork, I had AIR POWER!

This took minutes, I shit you not!

So, early Saturday morning - no, I lie.  I wasn't early at all, it was something like the crack of noon.  So, early at the crack of noon, armed with my new power, I fire up the air compressor, attach my new multi-function air tool, with plunge blade attached, and go to town.  The thing fires right up, vibrates like hell, and cuts right through the foam like it wasn't there.  The metal blade glides through the foam, cuts through the nasty adhesive, and skitters off the metal underneath.  Sure, I scored the metal a little bit, but it got the job done!  In less time than it took to write this paragraph, I had the first section stripped and done.  What had taken me hours was reduced to the mere effort of minutes.  I was astounded.  I mean, I had hoped it would be easier, but this was ridiculous.  Not that I was complaining mind you, I just felt a little foolish for having suffered through the lame manual way before, but I figured nobody would know.  It could be my little secret, that I had wasted days of effort in vain because I was using the wrong tool.  I mean, it wasn't as if anybody was going to post it on their blog or anything, right?  Right?

Well, after the initial euphoria wore off, I got down to business and went to town.  Nasty old foam was flying left and right.  It didn't stand a chance.  What had once been a rebel hold out of opposition was annihilated in no time at all.  I was giddy with excitement.  I followed up the operation with my newly purchased shop vac and sucked down the offending bits of left over foam that were too small to simply toss out of the truck.   I then came back and attempted to sand the sections smooth, but discovered that many of the roof panels had a severe angle in them, and were in tight spaces, so this became untenable.  Instead I went back with the multi-tool and the plunge blade and used it as shaver to get rid of the remaining foam.  This thing can do anything!  Well, okay, maybe not anything, but it was certainly the Tool of the Hour.  Soon I had all of the upper foam sections out of the cabin, in fact I had all of the bits of foam I had targeted for execution out and done with.

Not wasting a moment, I busted out with some rust resistant primer and coated the now bare metal surfaces with some paint.  I was planning on painting the entire interior of the cab anyways, but I wanted to make sure no bare metal was left unprimed.  Luckily primer dries pretty quickly, and I didn't have to be too picky with its finish, as I was planning on putting foam over these sections anyways.  Not to be stopped, I went ahead and added the remained of my DynaMat to the newly exposed and primered cabin panels.  This process basically entailed taking measurements, not screwing them up, cutting sections of DynaMat (see my previous posts for this Wunder Product), removing their adhesive sticky backing, and putting them in place.  It took me a while to do it, but as I did not run into serious difficulty doing so, and I have covered it before, I won't bore you with all that many details along the lines of and then I put on another piece after having cut it, and then I tied my other shoe, and then...  etc etc.  Needless to say, it turned out well, and I could have bought a lot more DynaMat (with an unlimited budget, let's lie and say I did, okay?).  It was starting to come together!

This was the unmitigated success I was looking for after last weeks mostly useless effort.  It felt good to be one of the Good Guys, riding high on my success.  Next post I will cover prepping and actually painting the cabin's interior, and installing some sound insulating foam.  Until then, soldier on mighty Spork Warriors!