sneak preview for the

[454HO]

holy cow... 1000 posts!!!!

Anyway, this is a peak at what I am working on this weekend.

[babyJay]

keep spillin those beans, that's gonna be sweet!

[79widestep]

one peice front end should look sweet .. gonna make it a tilter?

[454HO]

Yes, it's a tilt front end from http://www.usbody.com/.



I can already see that the '86 front bumper is not going to work out. I plan to hit the pick-and-pull in the morning to see if I can find a pre-80's bumper and a few other items I need.

[flamingbig10]

nice

[trenchwarfare]

can't wait to see more.

[jdurant]

Before you do anything to the bumper, would you please post a couple pics from the front. Call it morbid curiousity, but I gotta see what that looks like with the late model bumper.

[Captkaos]

You are going to find this out anyway, but I would suggest MOVING the current core support mounts for when you cut the rad support down.

[old Rusty C10]

looks real nice.... perhaps you could do a write up on this and include lots of pics

[silvereagle07]

Looks cool!

[454HO]

Sorry to disappoint, but not much progress today. I only got to go to one junk yard this morning and the only thing I came home with is a tailgate. They did not have any front bumpers that were straight and in good condition. So until I find one, this project is on hold.

Joseph, here is your pic of the front end with the '86 bumper.


From that view it actually looks pretty good. But that pic does not tell the whole story. Check this one out.


You can see here that the '86 bumper has a slight V in the middle which does not conform to the shape of the pre-80's front end. So part of my problem is not having a good reference point with the '86 bumper to line up the front end to.

Here is a pic of the tailgate I picked up. I think this is off a '75 but not 100% sure. Not too bad for $25 I think.



And finally, since I could not work on the front end like I wanted to, I finished up a few loose ends from the cam swap I did last weekend. Here is a crappy vid so you can hear it. This is a $35 billet roller that is a take-out from a Mercruiser Magnum MPFI engine. It's 225/225 at .050 with .483" lift and a 115.5° LCA. Now don't say anything about the battery strapped to the bumper or else I'll come lookin for ya!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnFQ-H4LmO0

[Pyrotechnic]

Sounds good. Nice touch on getting the correct tailgate too. How would you rate the quality of that front end ?

[jdurant]

thanks man.
That answers the questions I had.

[454HO]

Originally Posted by Pyrotechnic

Sounds good. Nice touch on getting the correct tailgate too. How would you rate the quality of that front end ?

Thanks. This tailgate is actually in better condition than the original.

The USBody front end is definately not a bolt on show quality piece. You can see from my pics the casting 'flash' from the multi-piece mold. They leave this for the customer to sand down, fill and finish. Also there are numerous places where there are 'bubbles' in the fiberglass layers. They do not use a chopper gun from what I can tell, it's all hand laid glass cloth. They use various weights of fiberglass cloth and roving but some places the edges are not smoothed out.

And honestly I have had this front end for about 5 years. The first few years it was stored in my garage on sawhorses. The last couple years it has been out in the backyard standing on the nose leaning up against the fence. It has taken some abuse and has some hairline cracks in the gelcoat because of that.

If anyone is considering spending $2k to buy one of these fiberglass front ends, my recommendation is to be ready to install it as soon as it is delivered. The quicker you get it on the truck, the less chance of it getting damaged or warping from incorrect storage. And the less overall work.