Project: Slow Build

[Rokcrln]

While working on everyone elses trucks it has gotten me motivated to start back on mine as well. As teh name say's this will be a slow build due to my main focus needs to stay on customers trucks first. Right now I have one current customer and 3 waiting in turn for their trucks to be worked on. But I figure if I put in a few hours here and their it will get done some day. So here we go.

I bought this truck over 7 years ago and it was in great shape but mostly stock. The cab had alot of hidden rust that I did not see untill after I had it for abit. It was a totaly complete great driving solid truck. The first mod was an engine swap from a 350 to a built 327 I had from a past porject. The second thing to be done was the air ride Tech kit. Keep in mind this was 7 years ago and most car guys had not clue what air ride for a car was. Then I decided I wanted to put in a 700R4 and new gears (from 4.11 to 3.43's) and that led to a C notch. This was before notches were made for our trucks. Then I decided I better drop the front some more to match the back so 3" bell tecs went on and that put the front cross member on the ground and the rear still up in the air.

So to fix this I cut off the rear frame and did a 2" or 4" Z-step, its been to long to remember. This is when I started finding all the rust in the cab so off it went and I got a new cab from Early classic. It is a completly rust free cab, but does have a few dings and dents. So once the frame step was done and had the new cab set on it and was all back on the ground I had a problem. Their was a 2 1/2" gap between the gound and the bottom of the cab. So as only a normal thinking person would do I cut up a rust free cab and body dropped it 2". Now this with the stepped frame caused a small problem with the bed floor. It needed to move up 4" or get areal big cut out in the floor. I opped to raise the entire floor up 6" (2" extra for added room) by sectioning 6" out of the sides and the head board. I wanted the tail gate area to be at stock height so I came in 6" from the gate and angled the floor up 45* to meet the raised floor. Oh did I mention I wanted bigger tires out back so I bought a set of Dodge Vipper 335/35/17's and had to do a mini tub job to fit them. So this gave me two strips of bed floor that I cut into small pieces and filled in the bed ribs running up the 45* angel.

Next was the 93 LT1 vette motor and custom built 35 gal SS tank from Fat Fender Hot Rod that is set up for the vette in tank pump with a full sump cavity baffle so I won't runn out of fuel slidding onto the freeway. I slid the motor back 2" tward the firewall for a tighter look.

This is where things were left off about 6 1/2 years ago. I had been throw together twice for a trailer ride to new houses as I moved from a rental to my first house 5yrs ago and then to my current house last year. Since then it has been rolled round the shop (25x45) a few time to get it out of my way for other project but that time has come.

So anyways I have almost everything for the truck now but not much time so it will be a "slow Build" and remember it has not been worked on in over 5yrs now so some of the work done on it is not up to my standards today but is still well thought out and better then mosts trucks coming out today. So if you see a few things that does not look like my normal quality of work just remember we all have to start some where!

I hope you all enjoy as I tinker along.

Kevin