"Vacilando" The '68 not worth building

[Sailor?]

Well, my name is Jesse and this is a truck that a buddy, Nate, and I have decided to build for this year's annual Hot Rod Power Tour. Every year I build something different to take on the tour. It usually ends up being something totally thrown together at the last minute and we work through the issues on the tour. This year my wife told me that it had to be different. She gets the last two weeks of May off every year and I ALWAYS end up work 24/7 those two weeks to finish a vehicle. This year I started, what seams to me, way early. Nate and I had a couple different ideas for possible projects but kept coming across the same truck on our local craigslist. It looked to have a great attitude from the pictures and seemed cheap enough. However, we noticed that it had been for sale for over a month. Im sure you all know, if there is a short bed C-10 on craigslist, it doesnt stay there for long. We decided to give them a call and see if they still had it. Sure enough, they did. We drove out to take a look at the truck on thanksgiving day. The owner ended up being a high school shop teacher and this was one of the students recent projects. They had pulled the truck out of a farmers field and worked through all of the mechanicals. The truck ran, drove, stopped, all the blinkers worked, horn, new radiator, battery, etc. You could tell that they had went through all of the general maintenance stuff and replaced whatever they needed to get the truck back on the road. The owner was a great guy, also a local hot rodder with cool stuff. After looking over the truck it was obvious that the exterior of the truck was in terrible condition. Floors were gone, rockers, cab corners, bed floor, well everything needed to be sectioned or replaced. The price was fine but the truck just needed way too much. We actually left with intentions to not buy the truck. BUT.... we just couldnt stop looking at the truck and thinking about just how good the patina looked on it. The truck had been given a second chance by some high school kids and it was just too much to think that we were going to pass up on it. We went back and made a deal on the truck. Loaded it up on the trailer and brought it back to the shop.

Within a couple hours we devised a budget and a pretty solid plan of attach.
1. All new drivtrain. The truck was originally a straight 6, 3 on the tree. We would do a cammed 5.3L with an M21 4 speed.
2. All new suspension and steering. We want to be able to actually throw the truck around and have some fun with it. Needs to be a hotrod, not a lowrider.
3. Maintain as much of the original patina as possible. Obviously a lot will need replaced just to make the truck solid and safe again.
4. Do burnouts.

Here are some pictures of the truck on the first day I brought it in the shop.


Not important but, this is me on the right. Very concerned at this point. "WTF"










We decided to go ahead and get the front end off the truck and start pulling the drivetrain. Btw this is Austin, good friend and a great employee of mine.


Meet Corey. Super cool dude that interns at my shop.


Always a fun dude.


Corey got the motor pulled and the chassis stripped down.




No need for a crazy step notch here. Just a notch to keep the alxe from interfering. We are running Hotchkis 370lb, 6" drop springs in the rear with a set of our 1" lowering blocks. More on that in bit.


Also, a couple of the cab and bed mounts need to be fixed. The bushings had rusted out the metal.


Again keeping with a budget we just flipped the stock trailing arm brackets.


After the frame was wire wheeled and cleaned we moved it in the booth and sprayed it with some single stage gloss black. Nothing fancy, just making it clean again.


Sorry, I didnt get a picture of the frame alone painted black.

As for the trailing arms, the factory arms were totally rusted and coming apart. We had some 2x3" box tubing in the shop that would work perfect! I measured out the factory arms and made a set to the factory specs.




Here is a picture of the arms installed and the 1" blocks as well. I know, I know... yellow Monroes? Yep, we are on a budget and I totally dig the yellow. lol Reminds me of highschool.


This is fast forward a couple weeks. Now, the suspension and steering are finished and the motor/trans are mocked up. Here you can see we put together a watts link using some custom and off the shelf parts. The pivot and links are factory PT Cruiser.




Here is a picture of how it sits currently.


The 5.3 is in using stock mounts and brackets with a set of our adapter plates.




The M21 is looking good sitting on the stock crossmember.


We are also getting the opportunity to use a pre-production intake from Holley. They have made the dual 4 intake for LS engine but this is the first single 4 barrel intake for the LS from Holley.




Thats about it for now. This week we will be getting the motor back out to finish putting together and painting. Thanks for reading.