“One of the more popular upgrades in the classic truck world is to relocate the gas tank from inside the cab to a safer, more user-friendly location. C10 Chevy pickups are no stranger to this modification, and we caught up with Danny Days at Strange Daze Rods and Customs in Forney, Texas, as he was gearing up with said modification on Joseph Dowling’s ’70 Chevy.”-ED
The first thing that we are going to start with is the gas tank filler hole located on the driver’s door. We are moving our gas tank to the rear of the truck, so we have taken out the factory tank located behind the bench seat and tossed it into the trash bin. The filler spot remains, so now it’s time to delete the open hole.
We turned the truck over to Danny Days, who let us follow along as he started on our metalwork.
The ’67-’72 truck has a slight bend and curve in the gas filler area along with a small amount of crown. So to make sure that our body’s lines still match, we will use a flat sheet of 18-gauge CRS (cold rolled steel) metal and work it over using a hammer and dolly to fill the void. CCT
The work area is prepped down...
The work area is prepped down to bare metal using a Scotch-Brite pad to clean the area of contaminants and rust.
The bottom of the gas filler...
The bottom of the gas filler hole has a small indention from the factory, so this area will need to be rounded out to make a circle.
Danny placed a 36-grit sanding...
Danny placed a 36-grit sanding pad on the 3-inch angle grinder and began to round out the area.
A hand file made clean work...
A hand file made clean work out of the roughed-out circle.
Now we will need to make our...
Now we will need to make our filler piece. Danny grabbed a piece of 18 gauge metal and cut a strip approximately 6x9 inches. We need to give the metal some shape, so we started by running it over an English wheel to give it a slight curve.
In order to raise the center,...
In order to raise the center, a slapper tool over a dolly is used to give our form a crown.
In order to finish off our...
In order to finish off our form we placed the top part of the cut piece over a metal tube and used the slapper tool to give it a slight downward bend.
Now Danny placed the formed...
Now Danny placed the formed piece over the area to see if we needed to make any adjustments. Our piece is a perfect match to the original body lines. We will use this form to cut out our filler piece.
Blue machinist dye is applied...
Blue machinist dye is applied to the form and the outline is transferred using a metal scribe with the form in place over the hole.