A ton of pictures, sorry it has taken me so long

[super72bb]

I am starting a new thread on this. I am sorry for not getting back asap to all the questions. I have been busy with the family and havent had much of a chance to answer back. I have also been busy with my zinc plating kit getting to all the odds and ends.


Since my last post with the pictures I have had some Pm's asking some questions so I thought it would be best to just put it all in a new thread with photos.


The finish on the exhaust manafolds is por's high temp paint. In person it looks fantastic, hopefully it maintains the same look when I get some heat into them. They recommend to bead blast and just paint it on, I did that with just a foam brush after they were bead blasted, what a great product!

The size of tires I am running in the photos are 275/60 15's. The pictures with just the frame are 255/60 15's. I found when I put the body on that the 255's didnt fill the wheel wells out like I had hoped so I brought them back to the tire shop and had the 275's put on.

The finish on the frame is all powdercoat. I went with a semi gloss finish, the frame was sand blasted to white metal and then we used an orbital sander to smooth the outer side of the frame rails to remove the factory tooling marks and imperfections.

The body has mostly all new NOS panels on it. The Truck shop in Crossville Tn. had a pr of NOS box sides that I was able to buy from them years ago. The only thing I kept from the original truck was the hood, doors and of course the cab. The rest is all NOS GM tin.

Countless hours were spent correcting the factory flaws around the door and panel gaps. Although the cab was solid the guy that did the restoration on the body elected to remove the rockers and cab corners because he wanted to start from square one. We focused on correcting most all of the factory flaws on the body. We even corrected the of inside stake pockets in the box sides, along with most all of the fitting issues that we had in the front clip. The metal man that did the work cut both NOS fenders along the tops and reseamed them to get the hood/fender gaps correct. The paint has yet to get the final polish. In most of the pictures you can see a light haze in the paint, all the painter did was knock down the orange peel and buff it a little. It wont be until I get most of the reassembly finished before it is buffed to it's final shine, it is killing me a little because I am eager to get the upper chrome, the lights and everything on.

Hopefully that answers the questions for now, thanks for your feedback. My goal was to build this truck so that it appeared all stock with the exception of the 2 inch drop and some of the accents on the chassis in the color grey to show some workmanship. Inside the factory looking engine and trans is far from stock also but that is another story.

There is still many hours of work left before it is finished, considering that the truck was just a bare frame and no one bolt was left unturned in the restoration, it feels pretty good to be this far. Thanks again for all your help and kind feedback.

Pictures.... some of these may be what you have seen before but I think most of them are new.