My 64 Build and work in progress...

[PatJ]

Hey guys this is my first official post and I thought I might as well give back a little since I have learned so much from this Board. So here goes.

After coveting 60-66 trucks for several years I finally found what I was looking for. I really wanted a big window short fleetside, with a V8. Thats a tall order for the budget I had but I found one on CL that looked like it might be the one. Made some calls and decided to drive 6 hours to have look.

It wasnt perfect, it has rust, bondo, several colors of paint and lots more but it was pretty cheap and it fit the wishlist. I also wanted a project and plan to learn welding at some point so the rust didnt scare me away. It ran and drove, the brakes were terrible but it made the 7 hour drive back home with no problems.

As it looked when I got it home the first day.

[PatJ]

The plan was a budget Porterbuilt Suspension and static drop until I can afford bags, disk brake front kit and 5 lug swap. Wide whites and drive it as soon as I can get it all together.

I few things to mention, I will be doing this whole thing in my driveway since I have no garage and also no air tools, I do have a small shed to do some painting in but thats about it. Let the fun begin.

I started out trying to acquire the few parts needed for the 5 lug swap, after reading I decided a newer rearend and steel wheels, found on CL from an 85 chevy truck.

Wheel clean up.

[PatJ]

The next step was start taking the truck apart. I had my orders in to CPP and Porterbuilt so I had plenty of work to do in the meantime to get the truck ready for new parts.

Not so Egyptian bed removal apparatus.

[PatJ]

Next was rear frame clean up. This was the usual fare with lots of wire wheel work. And then on to the dreaded rivets. I had done my homework on the forums for this task and was fairly well prepared. I bought myself a nice big chisel and had a nice hand sledge, lots for drill bits and cut off wheels.

Man what a pain in the ass. I did the x cut with the wheels and then proceeded to grind and drill and beat the hell out of those things untill I had them all off. Thank goodness I wasnt doing the trailing arm crossmember. An Air chisel would have been really nice but i pulled through.

As my cnotch came in I stared to fit it up. I never could find anyone that did the PB cnotch by itself and ran in to a bit of a hick-up. I noticed that all the pics online I could find showed the notch with the upper shock bar and none with only the notch. By this time I already had removed the crossmember so after talking to Nate we realized that they had sent me the notch that requires the PB crossmember. Since my crossmember was already out I decided I deserved that PB one for all the pain and suffering I had gone though with those rivets

I had a bit of a time getting the notch plates to line up. I ended up getting a bunch of clamps and a big c-clamp to really squish the plates together enough to start drilling holes with confidence.

[PatJ]

After I got the notches clamped it was on to the front for some brake work and cleaning up the front end. This was the typical old ass truck with gobs on greasy muddy dirt. After a few hours I excavated the necessary hardware and got the old shiz off. Cleaned up and painted my A arms, new balljoints and put the brakes together. Also got around to painting POR15 on the rear frame.

My kid posing, I was so happy to see the wheels and tires on the truck.

[PatJ]

Back to the rearend for more painting, painting of parts and new rear end mock up.

[losthope]

Right on !! good looking truck! Glad you are starting a build thread, I also dont have a garage or air tools and built my truck in my drive way along with my 54 ford car,heres my truck build if your interested nothing fancy:
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=485977

[markeb01]

Welcome to the forum! Nice looking truck and excellent progress.

[hopped up]

Truck looks 100x better with that stance and wheel/tire change.bet it rides and handles a lot better too!
Posted via Mobile Device

[PatJ]

Push thru bullet caps installed, had to grind the wheel centers a bit but it was pretty easy.

[PatJ]

Wow, its been a long time. I feel like Ive learned so much from this site over the past 10 years I owed it to folks to post more about my build and hopefully others find it useful.

Since this last post I have been slowly building towards a bagged truck with an upgraded engine and over the past year I really got moving on it. I wanted to post up some of the process over this past year.

Id also like to thank everyone who contributes to this board. So many people showing their work and helping solve problems. Ive learned so much and been motivated so many times here that we kinda lost over the years with things like Instagram. My favorites are older builds mostly like Dino's and Delmo's but so many others Ive forgotten over time. My favorite build from the Forum has always been that of Coulter. Maybe partly because my truck is also black like his but I loved that he did so much of the work himself and in his own garage.

Ill try to kinda pick up where I left off with the photos I have.

Here is where Im at now with the truck after just finishing up the major work and getting it on the road again.

[losthope]

Back from the dead ! Looks great !!! I too barley get on forums anymore, lost in the new world of technology and always on Instagram so easy to use...do miss the social aspect of the forums and friends I've made here ....still got the old red rocket sat for along time only drive it few times a year. But been driving it every few days past month. Nice hearing from you again!

[PatJ]

Ill try to list all the changes here before the big dump of photos and a break down of the past year or so.

The overall goal was to get the truck as low as possible but still have a very usable truck. I didnt want to lose my entire bed to a deep step notch. I want this to be a crusier but I can still haul **** around. 60s style and learn as much as I can thru the process.

Suspension is a Frankenstein of a lot of parts. When I started I was on a pretty limited budget and over time the budget got better and I could afford more high end parts.


Pancaked stock crossmember
Cupped lower control arms
Porterbuilt front shock relocators left over from phase 1 build
No Limit rack and pinion
Rear is a combo of a weld in step notch and an Ekstensive 2 link kit.
GSI center crossmember and trans mount crossmember
ididit column
Accu Air CVT with E level... rip
Boyd tank
Aeromotive in tank pump
Chevy Performance Crate 350 dressed to look like a 327
Holley Sniper EFI and ignition/dist



The first piece of the puzzle was to really get going on the front crossmember. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy with a 68 C10 who bought a full Porterbuilt suspension so he hooked me up with his crossmember as the test rat for my welding and pancake attempt.

The 68 as I got it, time to get busy.

[PatJ]

Started to clean up the crossmember and mark out the pancake. Again thanks to so many people here on the forums I was able to figure it out pretty well. This was my first real shot at welding and whole lot of grinding.

[The Rocknrod]

Looks awesome. Is that a long water pump?

[PatJ]

Yes it is, I run a mechanical fan.

[rudyyloverboiii]

man that looks clean!

[PatJ]

Jumping a little out of order here to post the things I did this weekend.

The doors were driving me nuts. You have to slam them ridiculously hard over and over to get them to shut. I just couldnt take it anymore so I started on the path for some door improvement solutions.

I knew that my pins and bushings were worn so they were first up to bat. I had read and heard that first you want to drill some holes in your hinges to help you align things back to factory when you go to reinstall the doors and that seemed like a great idea. With holes drilled I began to remove the hinge bolts. This is where the nightmare started.

The top hinge came out pretty easy with no real issue but as I removed the bolt for the bottom hinge I noticed that they bolt into a late behind the body that sorts floats around a bit. It seemed a little looser than it should be and as I took out the last bolt that sucker fell right into the body. FUDGE.

I looked online and couldnt really find any info on this ever happening to anyone or what to do about it. The only option I could think of was to cut a hole to access the plate that fell and deal with the aftermath later.

With the hole cut I could get the plate and also hold it in place to reinstall the doors. Both driver side and passenger side lower hinge plates fell so I had to cut a hole on both sides of my inner panels. If the top plates would have fallen that would of been much harder to get to and hold back in place.

With that done I had a pretty tough time getting the pins out of every hinge. None of them would come out and I had to heat then all with a torch and beat them out carefully. Only of them broke in 2 places and I had to spend a lot of time drilling that pin out of both parts of the hinge.

With that all done they went back on the trick pretty well but driver side door closed even worse after the new bushings and pins.

[PatJ]

With the new pins and bushing I was pretty disappointed that my doors still fit and closed like crap. Looking for solutions I had seen a few nice trucks with Altman Easy Latch setups. I didnt really want to break off 375 for new latches but I was really desperate to fix these terrible doors.

I posted in another thread on the main board but here is the same info for the build thread.

I was really skeptical about the latches solving my issues. I didnt find a lot of info on them really and only a few videos online. Turns out, for me anyway these things are pretty awesome. The install went smooth and the finished result is pretty unbelievable. They shut easy and nice and tight. Even my driver side door which was horrible before shuts nice and easy.