Thanks for asking.....here is project: Patina'd

[STOCKISH]

Lookin' good. I like it too

[texanidiot25]

Sweet truck. Can't wait to see the 4 speed madness.

[northern 85]

We need more pics,please keep this going.

[FRENCHBLUE72]

Sweeet ride....

[Hart_Rod]

Missed this one. In!

[prostreetC-10]

Ah yes.....I didn't fall off the face of the Earth. Time to work on this build thread a little. This is kinda hard to do because I'm not doing this as I go. the truck has been done with phase one for about 2 years now and I'm starting another phase. The question I am ALWAYS getting asked is "how did you get those tires under that thing?" This all started when I was laying under it, looking at the relation of the end of the fender well to the side of the frame. What I noticed was how the spring and shock were really under the truck and the only thing in the way of huge tires was the fender wells themselves. The first thing I did was realize that I was going to go low enough that I would need to C notch the frame. The first thing I needed to do was get the bed off and I didn't want to wait for my friends to get off from work to help. I decided to get creative with tie down straps and my engine hoist!!!

Please note that most of the pics you will see in this next section acutally has the 15.5's on it.....the 18.5's came later and are on the truck now.

[prostreetC-10]

The one thing I want to repeat again and again is that I don't have "mad fab skills". Some of the crap I see on this website blows my fricken mind. We have some real Rat Fink/Chip Foose kinda guy on here!!

I didn't feel comfortable fabbing my own C notch so I decided to go with a bolt-in kit. I chose the McNaughton kit and was really please with the strength and quality. Granted....it's not nearly as clean as a custom one but I thought it would be good if my frame didn't break in half going down the road. The kit fit great and went in pretty easy because I did the old "measure twice and cut once". I acutally measured about 10 times and cut once.


















You can tell by this last pic that it didn't take me long to realize that there was enough room that I should have gone with the 18.5's. What you see here are 15x12 wheels with 15.5 M/T Sportsmans. The 18.5's came later!!

[prostreetC-10]

This is kinda funny. These are the things I used to do before I got ahold of my drinking problem.

"Honey...are you done?"

"Yeah...I'm just going to pull the truck in (and do a burnout in the garage)"

Doing a burnout with no bed on is not easy. Lots of wheel hop. Notice I have to back out of it before I can give it more gas!!

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[IMG]http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o182/agent...

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[northern 85]

Nice!! this truck is bad a$$.You are doing a great job!

[prostreetC-10]

I'll tell you what Northern....you have a keen eye for excellence!!! Thanks!!!!!!!!

This truck is fun and a great project to practice on. At some point I'm going to look for a cab to start doing final work on. I wanted to get this to a point where I could drive it and have fun. I don't like to work on something for years and not get to enjoy it on the road. This way, I'll be able to completely do all the body work and paint and then simply do a fender/bed and body swap. I will pull the motor and trans so I can do the frame too but at least I won't have huge down time.

It amazes me the heads this thing turns in its current "patina" state......and I'm also talking before the motor hung out of the hood.

[my67chevytruck]

And you call me a SHOW OFF....

....

[prostreetC-10]

ah.......touche!

[prostreetC-10]

And now onto the bed. All I needed to do was take off exactly one more row on the bed floor. I'm not sure exactly what they are called but I needed to end up on the low part of the bed so I took off one more ridge and stopped on the low part so the fender well would sit flat. Nothing special here. Just a good ole cut-off wheel and goggles. This picture is of the 15.5's not mounted up. I just set them in there to give me an idea of how far I would need to go.

P.S. You'll notice the bed floor has been fully restored!!! lol

[prostreetC-10]

The tricky part of this whole thing was getting that last high row in the bed to be tapered so it looked like the other ones. I wanted it to look at factory as possible......so guesstimating I went! The last pic is before the welds were really cleaned up. I must say that they turned out way better than I thought they would. Once the fenders were put back on they looked like it came that way!

[VA72C10]

Nice work!

[*Dylan]

Need more pictures!!!

[northern 85]

Please dont take this the wrong way,if you want a fully restored truck with a frame off resto build another truck. This truck is the perfect build to enjoy! Imo you have built a classic muscle truck,one you dont have to be afraid of setting a beer on the hood,all your friends leaning over the bed rails of the rear body shootin the $hit imo this truck is perfect as is!

[prostreetC-10]

I'm curious What gave you the impression that I was going to fully restore this truck? I just cut a great big hole in the hood and cut the bed all up! I don't really like these trucks fully restored. They look like grampa rigs when they are cherry. This is giving me a great platform to teach myself different skills and it will never see paint. The hood is often an extra workbench for me (as I think you were refering). I can't stand number's matching vehicles and I have made a ton of money selling correct casting numbers to people who are doing just that. I sold my original BBC short water pump crank triple pully for enough money to buy the long water pump, all the pullies and brackets to convert it to a left hand alternator setup.

If you click on the link in my signature that say "67 fastback project", you will see what is going to get all my money. That Mustang has the factory tags on the motor, trans and rear end. I'm going to jerk the motor out and store it....then I'm going to build a nasty roller motor for that thing. What will make you really sick is that I paid $2,700 exactly one year ago and it runs, drives and stops. I'm the 5th owner and it has 73,000 original miles.

P.S. Please don't think I took any offense at all. Believe me, I always see guys putting tons of money into cars and trucks and think "why in the heck are you trying to polish that turd!!!" LOL

[northern 85]

Cool, i thought in post #35 it sounded like a full resto and i was bummed, cause it looks great the way it is now!

[chevy_mike]

Okay, less talk... more pics!!!

Looks good. Keep up the good work.

[prostreetC-10]

Originally Posted by northern 85

Cool, i thought in post #35 it sounded like a full resto and i was bummed, cause it looks great the way it is now!

Got it! that's talk about way down the road. What cool about this truck is that if it never gets finished.........it's finished!!!!!!

My opinion is biased but it's one BAD little shop truck.

[STOCKISH]

Looking great. Keep it up.

[prostreetC-10]

And now onto the fender wells. Basically, what I did was take about 2/3rds of one and 2/3rds of another and weld them together. First you have to get an extra set of fender wells. If I had to do it over again I'd try to find either 4 cherry ones or buy 4 aftermarket ones. Was in a hurry to get it on the road 2 years ago so this is what I would up with.

First thing I did was to take what would be the outer wells and cut it as square as I could, just taking off the part that would bolt to the side of the bed. next, I put the original fenders in their original place and set the other fenders on top of them and move them out to where they would be on the low part of the bed floor. I simply took a sharpie and drew a line on the inside well using the edge of the outside one I just cut. I took the inside ones and cut them the same way with a cut off wheel. When I put both halves back on the bed floor. I was please with how well they fit together.

[prostreetC-10]

Finally, I took each half of each side and set them on the garage floor. If I had to do it over again, I would probably weld them in the bed because my garage floor is flat but my bed is not!!! lol

The trick is to get both ends lined up where the wells have a factory bend to them and tack them in place. Then I tacked the center in. After that, I just worked my way around the fender making spot welds about 1 inch apart. I'm sure if you start and one end and work to the other, the fender lines will not line up. I set the newly mated halve in the bed and was jacked at how my hillbilly tub job came out! Go Bo and Luke Duke!!!!


When I took the pics above, I used one half for both pics. This is why you now see yellow paint that you didn't see in the last posting.

[prostreetC-10]

The only other thing I had to do was mark the holes to be drilled in the bed with a sharpie and drill. Got some new stove bolts and after hitting them with a DA for a little bit, I bolted them in for now and moved on to the next area of the built.