If anyone needs a builder in the central Iowa area....

[gmachinz]

....in the spring I'm looking to expand on my harness business by offering to take on a few large scale builds....I'll be finishing my 86 K10 first but here's a couple recent builds of mine....keep in mind I'm as big into Gbodies as I am squarebodies!

[gmachinz]

Did I mention I like building Gbodies...? In particular Monte Carlos...? Here's a quick 4-pic presentation of this 86 SS build....

pic #1...

[gmachinz]

pic #2....

[gmachinz]

pic #3...

[gmachinz]

Pic #4....all done....BC/CC PPG Onyx Black, 5 coats of clear, buffed out to 3000g and a Phoenix Graphics decal kit on it. Car originally had 56K on it and the reason I took the project was because the body shop in Illinois had it in prison for over 6 months without even touching it. The story goes the guys wife drove it to work one nice Friday and a deer decided to jump across the lane in front of her. Needless to say, the front end was destroyed-narrowly avoided a bent frame. He brought it to me here in Iowa from Illinois along with a parts car and a lot of NOS parts-most of which he bought from me originally.

[68shortwide]

Originally Posted by gmachinz

....in the spring I'm looking to expand on my harness business by offering to take on a few large scale builds....I'll be finishing my 86 K10 first but here's a couple recent builds of mine....keep in mind I'm as big into Gbodies as I am squarebodies!

I assume those are the ROH Impala SS look alike wheels? I'm guessing you didn't convert the car to 5x5 just for a set of wheels.

[gmachinz]

Originally Posted by 68shortwide

I assume those are the ROH Impala SS look alike wheels? I'm guessing you didn't convert the car to 5x5 just for a set of wheels.

Yep they are! Actually, ROH made a small initial run for GM and then GM outsourced them. So these are "knock-off GM" but made by the the original supplier lol.

As for the bolt pattern, I converted the car to using B-body spindles w/Hotchkis uppers a-arms, and I went with the 5 on 5 Impala SS rotors because they were thicker than using 1LE Camaro ones. I then had the stock rear axles re-drilled for 5 on 5 and had new, longer 1/2 racing studs pressed in at all four corners. I did several other suspension upgrades but with the wheels I did NOT want to run any kind of wheel adapter-this way the wheels bolt right up like stock.

[gmachinz]

At the time, OE Wheel Distributors out of Canada sold these wheels for $650/set delivered vs me paying $550 each for "GM" wheels new from the dealer. The only difference is with these wheels you get a black adhesive center piece instead of an Impala center and obviously there's no GM part number on these rims-but they are built by the same company that was supposed to build them for the SS until GM pulled the rug out from under them-which pissed off ROH Wheels-and GM didn't own the rights to the design-ROH did. I've compared the GM wheel to the ROH wheel when Infirst got them and the ROH "GM knock-off" is much nicer-the machine polish surface is nicer than the GM wheel on the inner section-GM went with a slightly dull finish-prolly just different enough that ROH couldn't sue.

[Tynee]

My dad had an '86 SS with T-tops when I was in HS. I really liked that car. Would like to have another some day with a modern drive train in it. That car snuck around corners. It was long and sleek, and comfortable. Nice work on that one.