Project '57 2WD

[GRIMSS]

Good deal. Can't wait to see some pics of it on the road.

[blackdiesel]

bled the brakes. got it moving under its own power now. hooked up the steering and threw on the hood. need to put in the grill and latch tomorrow. may wire up the lights, blah blah blah. Soooo ready to be driving this. Also have to put dad's 396 back in his 56 bel air tomorrow too. Ready to get all this junk out of the shop so i can roll some more stuff in. ohhh yeahhhh haha

[blackdiesel]

Front end is too low. actually the rear is to high but i'm not notching the frame and lifting the floor of my bed. so i'm ordering a set of regular spindles and ditching these 2" drops. that will give me more clearance in the front (it scrubs a touch here and there...) I got the interior put back in. well, more like the seat. thats all that was really out of it...

need a new set of latches and strikers. i was recently up at the mid-america street rod nationals and talked to one of the representatives from trique indistries about the bolt in bear claw latch kit. it was priced to high ($350) but i was ready to bite the bullet and get them. i happed to look in the instructions and they are not a legitimate "bolt in" kit. you had to notch behind the original latches to add clearance. well the window track is right there and the rep said that "you have to clean the rust off the back of the track and grease it good" because apparently there is no extra room back there. Well this will not work with our one piece glass kit and the way we install them in order to work properly... so nuts to that

i have the headlights, park lights, obd II port, temp and oil gauges, torque converter unlock wire and fan wire left to hook up. slap on the bumper, get the front end aligned and exhaust (this thing is LOUD) and i will be D-O-N-E. Yessir, done!

Well.... at least untill i tear it apart and make it into something else. So continues Project X

['58Patch]

[blackdiesel]

Originally Posted by '58Patch

Haha, ill snap a few tomorrow and post them up. Y'all will see the massive rake I'm talking about...

[my67chevytruck]

Where's the pics?

[blackdiesel]

[Kim57]

Looking good.
Kim

[my67chevytruck]

Nice work Bro!

[blackdiesel]

[OKGMC4]

I like it!

[LEEVON]

Voila! that was easy, at least from my chair...looks great!

[blackdiesel]

Thanks guys. That's with the regular spindles on it. It sets a lot better now, not raked so much. Need to make an appointment to get the front end aligned and exhaust put on. Then its *almost * ready hahhahaha

[blackdiesel]

If anyone wants to know the difference in a 57 and a 58 frame, it can be seen in the front of my truck. This is the frame I got with the truck when I bought it years ago. Since I put it on a 77 4x4 frame the first time I built it, I didn't check it out. As you can see it's about 3" to long. I checked the # on it and it started with 58, so I will be cutting off some before I can put the bumper on.

[blackdiesel]

Got my A/C completed with the help of the 5.3 adapters from Docs Blocks. allowed me to hook my vintage air to the offset outputs on the vortec's compressor. also got the accelerator pedal position sensor box mouned under the hood. and the truck was setting half an inch up on one side vs the other, so i crawled under it and jacked around with the ladder bars untill i got it level. all i lack now is 6 or 8 wires (fan, obd II port, tq verter unlock, temp gauge, yadda yadda yadda) and the mechanical oil pressure gauge hook up, and mounting the front bumper and i will be DONE. Monday i take it to town for exhaust and a front end alignment. ohhhhh yeahh.

[OKGMC4]

What flavor muffler are ya thinkin? I'm still leaning towards Dynomax for mine. I'd hate to put a Flowmaster on it and it wind up sounding like all the Mustang GTs around here!

[blackdiesel]

I'm probably going to go with some turbo style mufflers. Cheap knock offs. They sound like the real deal anyways. we put a set on dads '56 belair and '57 pickup and they sound pretty good. We'll see what a EFI sounds like through them

[yukon ratrod]

lookin good!! mine not so much! tree landed on the box and destroyed the right boxside.I sure like the way yours is turning out!

[blackdiesel]

Originally Posted by yukon ratrod

lookin good!! mine not so much! tree landed on the box and destroyed the right boxside.I sure like the way yours is turning out!

MAN! that SUCKS!! however, i do indeed have you beat. (I hate telling this story but in order to make you feel like you got off easy, i will.)

A couple years ago when we were building dad's 57, we had it in the shop between our two post lift. It wasnt on the lift, just setting between it because we needed the space elseware for one of my other projects. Earler that day we were working on the carburator trying to get it running right, but it would still idle high. Also working on the latches, so the doors were left wide open. We were close enough to being done dad went down THAT DAY and bought insurance and tags. Well we had recently got it running (through open headers of course and it sounded great) Dad had been working on the gauges and in order to get the cluster out he pulled the shifter out of park and slid it into reverse. Slapped the gauges back in, left it in reverse. One of my buddies came over that night and i was like you need to hear this. I reached through the window to crank it so i could still controll the throttle on the carb (didnt have the spring installed yet, didnt want it to overrevv....) well it sure enough popped right off, choke was set, so it was idling at like 1500 freakin rpm.... still in reverse.... cherrped the tires and went backwards at like mach 2, the lift caught the doors just as i gathered enough sense to shut the key off and it pulled the doors into the front fenders, pulled the hinges out of the cab. the doors wouldnt even get within 3 feet of the latch. there were creases in the fenders about 2 inches deep. Ohh yea, it was painted too....

I set down and cried.. Made me sick for months. Didnt work on it again for over 4 months. It still hurts to talk about it.

Well hope you feel better now. Dont give up. Get back after it once you quit throwing up...

[OKGMC4]

If that happened to me they would find the body with a ruptured heart and a full load in the pants! I think that tops all the stories I have. Worst that happened to me was an engine swap in an 83 Z28. We had it done and running in about 5 hours (wouldve been quicker but crossfire injection sucks) and I told my buddy to take the car off the jack stands while I called the guy about picking up his car. He didn't look before lifting and the jack slipped. The jack head went through the oil pan and we spent another 3 hours tracking down and installing another oil pan. THAT pissed me off, I can't even imagine how you felt.

[blackdiesel]

LOL, dad did that to my 55 belair, He put the floor jack thought the oil pan. He said "well I thought it was on the crossmember".

[blackdiesel]

I've got another. I really do hate tellling all of these because it makes me sound like a freakin retard, but what teenager isnt??

Another story on my '55 bel air... The front left studs on the hub were not the same size as the rest of the car. Well, i had a set of wire baskets on it, the ones where the lugs went into the wheel. The lugs tightened down, only because the wheel held enough pressure against the threads to hold it on once side of each lug. Now this car has a built 400/400 with 4.10's out back. Needless to say it was very quick. i was running down our county road at about 40 miles an hour or so and i started hearing a WHOP WHOP WHOP WHOP. so i slowed way down, and before i could get stopped the wheel came off, lodged under my perfect fender, threw the car 3 1/2 to 4 feet in the air, then slammed the rotor back on the asphalt. Didnt have glass in the car, or even the seat bolted down so it nearly threw me out of the car (after bashing my head against the roof...)

The lower quarter of the front fender was ruined, had to cut it out and replace it. That was stupid carelessness on my part. i got to excited and should have checked it better...

Everybody has done (or will do) something stupid, weather they will tell us about it or not. Could be due to an accident, or carelessness. However i can say that i am much more careful now!

[Steve@OldSub.com]

The passenger seat in my Corvette does not sit flat because someone (me) got careless and didn't set the jack right before lifting the car once. I missed the special place the jack goes and cracked the fiberglass floor under the seat mounts.

At first I was sick. Now I mostly don't think about it. Someday I'll pull the seat out, bang it back down with a hammer and then soak it good with resin and make it truly a thing of the past.

['58Patch]

Man, these stories definitely have that "cringe" factor...

[blackdiesel]

Well, monday i did get my exhaust on. took it to the alignment shop and my 17" wheels are to big, when he puts his machine on it the extensions hit the fenders. so i have some 15's to put on it for alignment purposes, which i will have done friday. Took it to get the windows tinted today. i really like the way it turned out. i need to take my bumper guards off the front, it just dont look right on this truck. ill put some pics up in a few days.