Br3w City's Project omgwtfbbq

[BR3W CITY]

Ya, for a little while at least. Because its just healing the incision itself, I should be able to work with my hands and such, just no crawling around, heavy lifting etc.
Thats why I'm hustling now, gotta make up for a few weeks at least of non-progress.

The truck still has lots of little imperfections (and we picked up a new power sander) so we started doing some light sanding and spot-filling. We got sidetracked, so we didn't make it to sanding today.




I've been working to figure out some paint options, so I decided to spray a test panel. Since we used the blue on the engine, engine accessories and interior accessories, we figured a blue would be a great exterior color. This medium blue is light enough to show off the body lines, and similar (but not the same) as some of the lighter blues available on period trucks.
I wanted to see how it would lay down over black and over gray, so I did a side by side spray on the panel. The color looks nice, and clearly it doesn't care what color it lays down over.







The final treatment of the paint needs work, but so far this may be our color.

[BR3W CITY]

We started some work on the doors, which yielded less pictures than usual. This was caused by WAY more hammering and tinkering with the panel than we EVER expected. The panels we got from Classic Parts SUCK. The stamping is wide, and is off enough that it fits well OVER the old panel. We had to cut it down to just a base strip to make it usable. We had to do some pie cuts and tons of beating on the front and rear ends to get them to sit properly. The door patch was on and welded in place by the end of the day, and even after that we had to hit it with the hammer n dolly's again to touch some areas up from the heat of welding. This one still needs to be ground smooth and will require even more smoothing on filler and skim coat. Way more work than we have had to deal with on any other patch panel so far. The outside of the door has to get touched up as well now. The plus side, we test fit the door and the panel gaps are sweet with the trim.

[mcbassin]

Hey the carpet looks great. I'm with you on the patch panels. I'm about to put some on my doors. I hope it goes smooth. Good luck with your surgery. Glad to see you with the respirator. Paint fumes are bad mojo.

[BR3W CITY]

Well, I survived surgery, as they took a tumor the size of a golfball (Along with my tailbone itself) out.

Now its on the healing train, so I'll be spending plenty of time ordering parts and keeping things real on-line. I'm trying to get images from surgery to post up....whether yall like it or not.

[Tazfink]

Nice job on the truck and good luck on your recovery!!! Take a load off and get healed up! Looking forward to seeing more progress AFTER you're healed.

[BR3W CITY]

Well, I'm stuck around the house, but I figured I'd post a couple photos I forgot to put up earlier.

With those 15x12 year wheels, we ran into an issue of internal clearance. The barrel of the wheel narrows a bit more than a stock steel or aftermarket alloy wheel would, bringing the internal clearance to less than 13". Because of this, almost no regular disc conversions will fit, and even the Aerospace Eng. "pro street" disc setup needs nearly 13.6 to clear. While the long term plan will be to still get discs in the rear (I have discussed it with Captain Fab, but it might be more work than its worth)...in the meantime I wanted to see if I could get ANYTHING to work.

Our solution? chuck up the drums on a lathe and see if we can't get them to fit. We needed a drum at about 12.2" to give us sufficient clearance for wheel weights etc. Despite the o.d. of the drums being nearly 13.5, the internal "wear" surface dials out at about 11.8 or so. We machined back the cooling fins, leaving the wear surface, and as much of a reinforcing ring as we could so the structure of the drum would still be sound.


Here you can see the drum set into the wheel (notice the barrel of the wheel narrows about 1/3 of the way in, creating the issue)


And the drum mounted onto the hub setup. The drum sits about even with the backing plate, and gives us about 1/8 +/- of clearance all the way around.


While modifying braking and safety systems isn't recommended for everyone, having rear brakes back on the truck seemed like a "safer" option than continuing with my prop valve cranked forward all the way. Add in the Wilwoods up front and this thing would have been a "spinout" machine.

[502ms]

Read this whole thread today...hope health is moving up! Congrats on winning in KY last year! Nice truck!
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[BR3W CITY]

Thanks 502ms. I'm ahead of schedule on recovery, so hoping to keep things moving the right direction.

Placed another order with LMC, and should have lots of misc seals and weatherstripping to start to bring some of the smaller details into order.

[BR3W CITY]

Was feeling good enough to get my brother to stop in, and we set to do a little work on the truck.
Started with the patch on the driver door, which after doing the last one, was not planned to be fun. It was still a sum*****, but went on a bit smoother than the other side. We cut the panel smoother and in less cuts, so we had a better seam to weld and let gap to fill.





We trimmed the carpet edges back to fit the sides, and tossed the seats back in. Tossed in a replacement rearview mirror (slightly different shape than stock, not sure how I'll like it on the road). Decided to also update the dome light, by painting the case to match the trim, and installing the clear lens. I need to get an led bulb for it but havent motivated yet. With a quick wipedown, the interior gets closer to DONE. Still need to carpet the back wall and do the center console, but things are back in motion.

[McMurphy]

Forgive me if you already posted this and I missed it, but do you have a link for the carpet you got?

[BR3W CITY]

Originally Posted by McMurphy

Forgive me if you already posted this and I missed it, but do you have a link for the carpet you got?

I ordered it from Classic Parts, they backordered it on me for a while though. Its ACC carpet, available from a number of places. I think stockinteriors.com sells the same type. IIRC Classic had the best price, I'd have to check the invoice but i think it was around $180

[McMurphy]

Awesome man, thanks !!!

[mcbassin]

Glad you are making a speedy recovery. You have made some good progress on your truck. I am about to tackle the same door repair you just did.

[king-918]

Definitely a inspiring build
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[BR3W CITY]

Still lazy, but slapped some mud on the lower doors. Doesn't really show much till ya sand it tho haha.



Took the bumper and cowl off, and made it out to the medial blasters to have them clean them up. The bumper will be oxide, and the cowl will get plastic blasted.



Going to upgrade the trans cooler also. I have a fin straightening tool, and this one really doesn't have more than about 20k on it and is a 4 pass, but since I'm running a 4l80e with a stall, I'm looking at a fan cooled 8-pass unit, which is on its way.



Also picked up some light square tubing. This will be combined with some sheet and We'll be making a new version of the bed, to replace the stop-gap wood.


Had some Alpine 6x9's laying around, need to test them but the used to work good.


Since they had this crappy box...and I needed a 6x9 mdf ring I decided to cannabalize the boxes for a pre-cut solution. Free parts are the best parts.







Picked up some more loop carpet for the back wall and kick panels. The edges all need to get clean finished, and the rear carpet needs fasteners, but it was quick work on a REALLY hot day (92* in WI is hot)

[BR3W CITY]

Took the truck over to my pop's house to start the final thrash on bodywork.
Since the bodywork has been done in stages, we wanted to do some final filling and dressing on all the panels, and sand them down again. We also finally bought a new sander.....worth it.

[BR3W CITY]

The start of something for a bit later, cutting some board down for a "lower door card". We are making an upholstered door card/speaker surround, to somewhat compliment the regular door card and clean up the installation area around the speakers. Doesn't look like much but it will make sense a bit later.



Got my cowl back from plastic blasting, and the front bumper from oxide media.


I showed you the worn tranny cooler in an earlier post; the new good-good showed up and it was time to put in work. Its a Derale Performance 8-pass, fan cooled tranny cooler. Should work nicely with my 4l80e for street and staging lane situations.




For 97 and newer 4l80e's, you need a special set of fittings to convert to AN fittings. The lines exit in a different place than the earlier models, and the rear fitting is extended. Without this, it WILL NOT WORK THIS IS ESSENTIAL. These came from sweet performance, they sell them cheaper on their ebay store.



Alright, lets get this done....A little comparo.


Start by getting these old guys out. We removed the clamps and hoses so me could drain them and slide the old cooler out the front (we already unbolted the 3-mounting points).



Then we pulled the old fittings and hard lines out, cleaned the surface lightly and installed the new AN conversion fittings. Its hard to get pictures of them, but you can see the front fitting being installed.



Because of the way the fan mounts, I wanted to have it centered the best I could, and I needed to make sure there was adequate room above the coil for airflow, yet mounted high enough so it would hang and become a hazard. This meant I also needed to switch it to Pusher configuration. This meant pulling the blade and flipping it, and the wiring.




Then it was time to fab up some mounts; I recycled the old mounts and made one new one out of some scrap.



Then it was time to fit the cooler in place, and hook up the lines. You can see in the end pictures, we made some standoffs to hold the cooler in place at the desired height, and offers some adjustability. The cooler fan moves CRAZY air, and controls with the pcm fan control, can't wait to see how it performs on the street.

[68GMCCustom]

Ooooo thats nice....I need to upgrade to one of those. Having a shroud below should help keep that cooler from getting as beat up as the other one.

[BR3W CITY]

Not much exciting to see, just more toil on the bodywork. Got some glazing putty which really helps on those pinholes. Both rear fenders are worked and mostly skimmed, hood is ready to go, ds fender is spot on, and pass side fender just has a little shaping left on the front. One door bottom has made tons of progress in smoothing out, but still needs a light coat and then a skim. Tomorrow should be more of the same.

[1enick72]

Looking good

[CRGRS 66]

subscribed, read the first few pages, will have to go back and get caught up, nice work that I have seen so far, looking forward to catcjing up and following your future progress

[BR3W CITY]

More sanding, and skimcoating on the doors.


Its like 96* here in WI and the heat is making it tough to get some stuff done. We did take a little time to dodge in and out of the A/C and make wrap up some interior loose ends. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we cut the carpet for the rear wall, and now we wanted to get that taken care of. I picked up some heavy screw snaps, and we set out measuring and drilling pilots for the snaps, then coming back in with the screw-in heads. Next move was to install the button-head part of the snap, by using the supplied tool to secure them. It was then just a matter of installing and trimming some loose ends. The bottom of the material actually tucks under the floor carpet, but this was just the initial fitting.







I also picked up some Hide'em, a cool sort of edging material you can use to hide staples and stitches and the like. I applied to the finished edge of the kick-area carpet I cut. For the unseen edges, I used a heat gun to clean up the edges and help slow any fraying or seperation. (Yes we are going to clean and paint the kick area above). The carpet actually comes straight across, the groove in the panel makes this look very wavy, although in person its not)




Also got an LED dome light bulb for free from some Chinese company who was giving stuff away on LS1tech

[BR3W CITY]

Still a million degrees...only thing I did was put the LED dome bulb in ...yay.

[El Campo]

Looking good. Curious how the drums work. Are you concerned about heat buildup since they are going to be cocooned in the wheel and so close with no air space?

[BR3W CITY]

We are hesitant about the lifespan of those drums. With them being that cut down, and hidden inside the wheel, heat is a concern. Since the Wilwoods up front will be doing most of the work, I'm hoping some careful tuning with the prop valve will give us a functional bias.

There has yet to be a disc kit that fits in there, so for now they are the best option I have.