68 C10 SBSS build - start to finish

[Vic1947]

By the third week of May, the wiring was complete and all that remained was to install the hood and carpet and finally a test drive. The hood fit just so-so and after fixing the body line mismatch with the cowl, neighbor Mike and I were able to adjust it for a little bit better fit. It's okay, but if I'm ever forced to do any more repair work, it will get a makeover. When Precision Collision resprayed the cowl, I had them re-shoot the underside of the hood also. I'd failed to trim the expanding foam they use to adhere the substructure to the outer skin and didn't like the result when it came out of the booth initially. So out came the Xacto knife, scraper and the mini DA sander. After the respray, it looked much better.

When it rolled out of the shop I was planning on just running a LED light bar between the tailgate and rollpan for brake/turn lights. In MO, you have to have a safety inspection every year and mine had lapsed during the build. At the Chevy dealer where they aligned the frontend, they refused to sign off an inspection without "separate" tail lights. The single bar was not acceptable in their opinion. So I cut a small piece of duct tape and placed it in the middle of the light bar, which sort of gave it the appearance of being two separate lights, took it to a different station and they passed it with no complaints. Later, I added a small light on each side because I thought it needed it, but for awhile we had fun watching people search for the tail lights.

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