Here goes Project: PEARL

[Riveted1]

So I've been posting on this site for a while now, and decided I'd make a thread dedicated to Pearl. I named her that b/c she's pearl white atm, although that will probably change over time. Let me just say that this is the first time I've ever done anything like this (I did "help" some with my first truck, but that was 17 years ago...) so I plan on making lots of mistakes! My plans for her are to build up the chassis/suspension/brakes, fix stuff that is broken, upgrade some things and get her on the road so I can have fun w/her. Down the road she will be taken apart, stripped to bare metal and built AGAIN.
So here we go!

I bought this truck before I even knew what I was looking at, and I paid waaayyy too much for her, but I knew when I saw her that I had to have her. Here is what she looked like when I first brought her home in 2004:





I drove her 1 time before I decided to start updating some of the engine parts. Boy what a mistake that was! I had a couple of different jobs during that time, and neither one of them gave me any time to put her back together. So there she sat neglected in my garage until January of 2008!

First thing I did was put the engine back together so I could pull her out of the garage and give her a good bath. Well, that ended up being a chore b/c I couldn't get her to fire up. I replaced everything I could think of and still had no luck. Finally, I broke down and bought one of those Skip White distributors and she fired right up. I was getting spark before, but I guess it was weak. Anyway, I can tear apart the top half of a SB 350 pretty quickly now.


(pic is before the new distributor)

I bought some bucket seats off of CL to replace the insanely tall van seats that were in it.... I'm a pretty small person, but they put my thighs into the steering wheel!



"New" seats are eventually gonna be recovered. But here's what they look like now:



I also bought some 3 point seatbelts.