Remember a couple of weeks ago?  Shredded paint on the wood and a temporary tag in the window.

This week, a nice new paint job for the wood and rails.  Paint stripper, a scraper, very rough sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease works wonders.  Also, I replaced all 72 of the carriage bolts.

The new license plate.

Idaho has a "classic" plate for vehicles over 30 years old that aren't daily drivers.  This truck is over 40 years old and definitely NOT a daily driver!

The back bumper is off and headed for the junkyard.  Thanks to my neighbor Dustin for helping me get the bed back on.  Also, thanks to WD-40 for helping me get the six nuts to fit on the six bolts that I couldn't find replacements for!

All in one piece, now.  You can see the two holes just behind the rear wheel in the fender where the old bumper was bolted.  Sometime in the future, we'll have those welded shut (along with a little bit of other body work).

Since there was still plenty of daylight left, I embarked on the next project: The front bumper was a mess of stickers, white house paint, rust and the original green.

Four bolts and a lot of hard pulling with a wrench later, the bumper came off.  I wanted to get after some of the dents in it, but then, in keeping with the low budget flavor of the work, I decided that I would focus on preserving the metal from rust rather than than do any significant body work.

Stripped, scraped and sanded.  I used a very heavy duty 15 minute paint stripper that not only made really quick (and messy) work of the paint, but also ate through the vinyl bumper stickers like nobody's business.

The four carriage bolts securing the bumper were pretty much hopeless, so I replaced them.

The finished product.  Three coats of gloss white, two coats of clear.  The finishing touch is the 1961 Idaho license plate that I found on Ebay.

What you can't see is a new set of spark plugs, a new distributor cap, rotor, points, condenser and coil that have the engine running nice and smoothly.

What's next?  Good question!  The left taillight isn't working because of the rats' next of wiring from the trailer lights, so I'll need to fix that.  The engine compartment still needs a little cleaning.  But for now, there's not too much more to do that won't cost a lot of money.