Built by a 14 year old (with some help from my dad)

For what its worth, the clear is fine at that age, the hardeners are only good for a year or so once they're opened. It may fail, but it will be easy to sand and recoat. Also, adhesion promoter is for plastic parts, what you need for aluminum is an acid based etching primer. Unfortunately though, they dont make it in clear. I am only aware of one clear product that is safe for bare metal, and that is PPG DAU75 with DXR80 hardener, but it does require an Aluminum cleaner (SX533) and conditioner (SX503) prior to coating. Build looks great!!

 

We got the bed protector pieces on and the bed caps:




And got the fron inner liners in with new retainer pieces:




The front of the liners were already trimmed and drilled for zip ties, this holds them pretty good so we did the same:

 

we got the fuel filler thing rivieted back in and put in rivnuts for the door:

 

What adhesive do you use for rivnuts? I typically use contraction adhesive but am attempting to find something easier to use.

 

we don't use an adhesive, the black stuff is POR15 on the freshly drilled holes.

 

Its pretty common to put a bit of adhesive on rivnuts along with squishing so they don't spin when you use them. A spinning rivnut will drive anyone crazy.

 

Never heard of that, and IIRC my riv nuts have a cerration to them to prevent that exact thing from happening. I imagine the adhesive would actually reduce the mechanical connection in my case. I also don't use riv nuts where heavy amounts of torque are applied to them either.

 

I Just binged all 15 pages of this while looking like a productive employee at work. Wish I was half as mechanically inclined as you and your dad-- thinking about what my 7 year old son and I will nerd out on in a couple more years...

 

Just break it up into smaller projects.

 

He is seven, so you have at least nine years before his license.

 

Never thought about making a muffler. I can think of a couple of opportunities when I should have. Very cool. Great work!

Your Dad has a gift and from what I can see, and clearly more than one from all things he is teaching you. Your opportunity to work with him and learn how to work with your hands and with tools, and how to innovate and plan to make things happen is going to serve you well. Most importantly he is showing you how to "get it done".

Great thread

 

We got the fender flares on along with my aftermarket TRD off road badges:


Then got the tail lights polished with Novus plastic polish. Hard to see in the pictures, but it made a huge difference:


And got them mounted with the tail gate:

 

Wow. I am so impressed…your dad doing it right. Raising a son the right way. What a great bonding experience.
Kudos to the dad of the OP!

 

Then we started mocking up a rear bumper out of a pizza box:

 

CAD, Cardboard Aided Design!

 

This is an awesome build. Can’t wait to see the finished product!

 

Nice build, sub-a-dub

 

we got the bumper pieces cut on the shear at my dad's work:

 

Beefy. Nice.