Don't worry, Bee Happy

With no place to work on my truck, I did what any sensible novice would do...I started by cleaning the truck.  After all, maybe some of that rust would just "buff out" with a little elbow grease?  Yeah, right. 

My first order of business was to kill all the wasps that had taken up residence in my beautiful new truck.  Yes, you read that correctly....wasps!  Let me tell you, this truck was completely colonized.  In


fact, it seemed like every nook and cranny had a wasp colony nesting in it...the wheel wells, cowl vents, glove box, tubing of the chrome grill, and even in fence post-holes on the truck's bed.  Let's put it this way, if I had a nickle for every wasp living in my truck, I'd have a shit load of nickles.  After taking inventory of this situation, it quickly became evident this was going to be a 3 or 4 can job...its a shame wasp spray doesn't come in a six pack.

After a few near misses, I was finally able to pronounce the truck safe and start working on cleaning it up.  I was told that its a good idea to leave the old nests, otherwise the wasps will re-colonize the same area.  Since I wasn't planning on getting started anytime soon, I figured it couldn't hurt.  Here is a photo of one of the wasp nests a few weeks after getting bathed in Raid (look in the fence post hole):

Once the wasps were gone, I started by cleaning out the truck bed...its amazing how much crap can accumulate in a truck's bed over the course of 4 or 5 years while it sits in a salvage yard...apparently, trucks are perfect places to store old rugs and beer bottles (the can of Raid and "Idiots Guide to Restoring Collector Cars" were my addition to the haul.)

What also is not evident from the photos above is the 2 inch layer of sediment covering the bed and a delectable junk yard aroma emanating from the damp rug buried beneath all the rubble.  On the upside, sifting through all this crap and cleaning the truck up required absolutely zero skill--a perfect job for someone clueless like myself. 

I don't want to brag or anything, but when it comes to working a broom I'm pretty much a bad ass.  Within 30 minutes, I had the bed cleaned out and had a chance to take inventory.  To my surprise, several parts of the truck that appeared missing initially were actually in the bed....specifically, the running board for the passenger's side and several smaller hard to replace items.  Obviously, these finds will come in handy down the road as they will save me from having to buy reproduction parts.  After throwing out the garbage, here were my keepers:

In a nutshell, this was a pretty good day.  I found some key parts to my truck that I didn't think I had and I managed to evacuate all the wasps without getting stung.  Now, if I only had a place to start working on my truck....hmmmm.