Barn raising

[Mike Bradbury]

This is my barn find that I found two and a half years ago. Well it has sat in my driveway for that long while I spent money gathering parts in my garage but nothing was ever making it onto the truck.
I am in the middle of a two week vacation where I plan on getting a lot done on her. I thought that I would have it on the ground rolling by this Sunday but I think I will have to settle for "close but no cigar". I bought this truck from the original owner for $700 and it is all original except for the crate 350 that has only 14,000 mi on it.

Here it is the day I got it.


After trying to sell the shell on c-list with no takers I finally just gave it away. The tires are off my dads '29 roadster pick up that we are rebuilding, Just wanted to see how different wheels would look


little up grade on the motor

[Mike Bradbury]

I bought a Lincoln 9" rear that came standard with disc that I had completely rebuilt. Nice rear end but I sure did not save any money doing it this way. I could have just bought a complete Strange rear end for the money I have put into this one. The cool thing is that the big Lincolns had 5 on 5 lug pattern.
My plan is to convert from a C20 to a C10.


I have a hoist in my garage so it makes it easy to lift the bed on and off. Probably the cab too but I have not gotten that far.


Little vid of it in action, only trouble I had was the tail light harness got on the wrong side of the frame and I had to re route it.

[IMG]http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo51/1969B...

[OARNGESI]

Pretty clean truck hard to believe it was so cheap

[Mike Bradbury]

Took the entire front x-member off and had it powder coated. I have an oven at the shop so I was able to do some of the small parts like the springs, pan, and spindles etc... but I left the large items to the pros. Here I just sanded down the frame and rattle canned it. Came out better than I thought it would. Also got some of the last Coy's C-55s They have been discontinued and there are not many left. I guess they are going to make a new style

[Mike Bradbury]

Yeah the original owner was going to donate it to a homeless shelter where they probably would have beat it to death. He asked if I could afford $1000 and I said no but I have $700. He died a year after he sold it to me.

[Mike Bradbury]

Wheels came before the tires did so after I had the lower springs and the lower spindles I put a wheel on and jacked up the LCA until the truck lifted off the jack stand. here it is at ride height, there is 6 inches between the top of the wheel and the fender. My side wall of the tires is 5.8 inches. It should look real nice.



Invested in the Early Classics disc brake conversion.



Also had a 700r4 rebuilt. So by the time I am done with it, the oldest part in the drive train will be the 350 crate with 14,000 on it.

[Mike Bradbury]

Borrowed my neighbors tires so that I could turn it around and get the bed off and work on the rear end. Looked like a funny car with the 27 inch tall Burban tires and the tall C20 tires in back.



An hour later this is what it looked like.

[Mike Bradbury]

I was in the middle of building my own set of trailing arms when Nate revealed the latest Porter Built product. Since my arms are going onto a custom 9" rear I was able to weld the brackets in such a way that I did not need to bend them. I am also going to be putting Bilstein coil overs behind the rear axle, so it is going to be a unique setup.



Nate let me know size and brand of rod ends he was using and they are going to work great. Did not like the poly bushings that I had on there first. Thanks Nate they make all the difference.

[Mike Bradbury]

Rather than disassemble the third member after it was just rebuilt to have it powder coated I tried my hand at some PPG silver. It came out pretty nice I think. Three coats of base and five clear. Not that I needed that much but I still had paint left in the gun and did not want to waste it.



Here is the first fit up of the big Lincoln rotors



From the rear you can see the pan hard bracket and coil over bracket. Everything has close tolerances but it all articulates just fine.



Coil overs mounted in the bottom lining up the top bracket placement

[Mike Bradbury]

Here is the beginning of my frame notch, it is an old O2 tank that was no longer able to be certified.









My shop at work is about 7 miles from my house so I did not realize that the frame curved right in the wrong place. had to modify the pipe a bit but it will all work out w/o much hassle.

[OARNGESI]

This is looking good the wheels and drop are changing the look 100x better are the rims 20s or 18s

[Mike Bradbury]

the wheels are 18x8 the tires are 245 60r 18 Diamond Back Black wall smoothies. They finally came in and I had them mounted right away. I like the nostalgic look of the tires, but I have something special in mind for them that I will describe the whole crazy process later on when I can reveal the finished product.

[Mike Bradbury]

The Lincoln 9 was about an inch narrower on each side, 2 inches total. But I thought that the back spacing on the wheels would compensate for the shorter axle. Although I was correct in thinking it would move the wheel out, it only moved it out to around stock width. Looks like I am going to have to get some spacers to make it look right. What brand is rated best? I do not want the cheap kind that throws the wheel out of balance. I am waiting on purchasing them until I get the bed on so I can get the correct width spacer, but I believe it is going to be about 1 inch.

[BGRAFX]

Nice build! I can't believe we have the same name and taste for chevy trucks

[Mike Bradbury]

Got the frame notch done yesterday, as I said before, the frame curved a bit more than I thought it did, but it turned out to be not to much trouble to fab the bend. Came out very clean and simple, Once I paint the frame it will look like it was always there. I welded it inside and out, and boxed the frame 12 inches. I could have gone more but this truck in not going to be hauling anything more than me generally. I left the box short of the cross member because I think that I am going to be exchanging the member for a nicer one.

[kyull67]

Nice build!

[BGRAFX]

The boxed in notch looks good

[Mike Bradbury]

Well my vacation ended so it has been a little slow this past week. Got the arms, pan hard, and caliper brackets painted and mounted. As with any build they have been on and off multiple times as I tweak different geometry sets. Having trouble with the coil overs and their length. I had wanted a shorter shock and spring but was counseled that more travel and dampening the better ride I will get. so I welded the brackets as high as I could get them and it is still two inches taller than I want. The pan hard bar is still at an angle, when I have the bed on it is a bit less but still there. Going to try a shorter spring first then if need be a shorter shock. The coil overs do give it an uncluttered look when you look under the truck and I am still glad I decided on them it is just a matter of working out the kinks.

Also I am a bit stuck on the rear brakes as well. The Lincoln 9" is a bit rarer than I like but I think it will be sweet once complete. I turned in the old calipers for the core charge when I purchased the new ones along with the new hoses. I just assumed that the banjo bolts came with the new caliper or the new hoses. Nope and Napa doesn't have them. So I spent the day digging through junk yards looking for the correct one with no luck. I did how ever find an E-brake cable which I was needing so the day was not an entire loss. I now have to wait til Monday to go to a brake shop to see if they have some banjo bolts. I do not know if there is anything special about them since I did not even take them off the old calipers. Live and learn.

[Mike Bradbury]

After more snags than I wanted or was expecting I finally got the bed on the tires on and the brakes working. Took it to work on Friday to work out the kinks if any and to see how it rode. Still need to get the rear dropped a bit more, but for now it is a 4 & 4 drop. The way the geometry worked out it is going to be difficult to get the last two inches and still have enough travel in the shocks. I thought the bed was going to compress the springs a bit more than it did so now I can probably get one more inch but not two. I am ok with a 5&4 drop if it means a much better ride. Side pipes still to come, which will make it appear three inches lower than it actually is

For some reason my computer is not letting my upload the photos will try later

[Mike Bradbury]

Got it figured, out here she is. My wife calls her the other woman

[FRENCHBLUE72]

How the hell did you do that to the tires they look bad azz...

[Mike Bradbury]

The process of developing and making these tires is one that has driven me a little insane and continues to do so.

I had a vision in my head of what I wanted the truck to look like, I am not necessarily a huge NASCAR fan but I do like the look of the cars and trucks. I have looked on many sites and read many different post of guys looking for the jumbo lettered tires but have not found any. From what I can tell Goodyear stopped producing them decades ago.

Already having the idea in my head of what I wanted it to look like, I really wanted a set of jumbo lettered tires. This process is some what still in development and I am not done with them yet but they do look awesome though.

Here is the process;
First I got a bit map copy of the logo on line and had my graphic artist sister tweak it into an arc. Then that copy was sent to my other friend who is a sign guy and has a really cool laser cutter that was able to cut the 1/16 white nitrile rubber that I purchased from Rubber Cal.



After I had the logo cut out and they looked spot on, I went on the hunt for an adhesive that would not only adhere the logo on but also stand the test of time and the harshness of U.V. tried many different processes from contact cement to RTV and ended up with the urethane that is used to install windshields in newer vehicles. It is pretty sticky stuff and has lasted in the test sample on my Toyota truck for 8 months up to 90 mph at times. Brake cleaner was used to get any urethane off the front of the letters.



Then I had to also find tires that did not have distracting embossing on them. I looked high and low for a set of good years that fit my needs but every one of them has an enormous amount of swirls and zigzags, until you get into the big truck tires then it is just smaller outlines of the good year logo and no where near the jumbo size I was looking for.
I found a company on line called Diamond back tires that specializes in making white walls, but they also can make Black wall smoothies. These tires are made from standard radial tires that have all the distracting embossing removed from the outside sidewall. The price I paid for them was actually cheaper than the price that I could get a regular set at discount tire and then I would have to try to get all the embossing off myself.



I then sanded the backs of each of the letters as well as the winged sandal.
Then using bare hands rather than latex gloved hands I applied the letters to the tires.



Sorry I do not have any pictures of that process my hands were completely covered in black urethane and I was not about to pick up my camera, suffice to say it was very messy. The reason I did not use latex gloves is because they were sticking to everything and I had to remove them because the clock is ticking with this stuff and you don't get too much time before it starts to skin over. After I adhered them to the tire I used a razor knife while it was still wet and scraped the excess off from around the letters. Then I used the brake cleaner to remove any globs of urethane from the front of the letters. In some cases the front of the letters were completely black from pushing the letters firmly to the tire. Then I loaded 50# sand bags to the tires to keep them in place while they dried.



After several hours I removed the bags and the layer of masking tape that was there so any oozing urethane would not stick the bag to the tire. Another wiping of brake cleaner and the result was a kind of dirty patina that I think made it a little more authentic looking



The reason I say that I am still in process is that I think that Diamond Back tire put some really gooey sidewall treatment on the tires so that they look really nice out of the box but in my case the brake cleaner did not remove all of it an I had several letters delaminate on the corners to the point I had to peel them off and start over. My sample never did any of that and it was actually tearing the white rubber in half to try to get it off. The next chemical I am going to try is called poly isocyanate. This is what they glue the crumb rubber together with for the newer playgrounds. It costs $200 for a five gallon bucket (which is the smallest size I can get it in). I called a guy who installs these playgrounds and he said that I can have some of the left over stuff after a big job.

The thing I liked about the urethane was that it was black and any adhesive that did show would look just like the tire. The poly isocyanate is kind of a milky white and a lot thinner of a product but the bond is permanent.

I really like the way the truck looks with the jumbo letters on, nothing like it on the road. I took it to my mechanic friend who cut his teeth on the race track and has been a pit boss for years. He actually went up to them and looked at them real close and said "where did you get these? I thought they stopped making these things years ago" That to me was the true test; a guy who knows what the real ones looked like and was inspecting them closely and did not know that I had made them, and thought they were authentic.

[rodstored-72]

those tires are amazing!!! first thought was were did he buy those... i need some too!! neat right up & thanks for the time.
the truck is looking killer!

[hgs_notes]

The truck is looking great. I was wondering what the color was. In most pics it kind of has a turquoise or aqua look, but a couple pics it looks like regular blue.

On the tires, I know you put a lot of thought and work into them, but was wondering... why not just use the template your sister made to put on the sidewall and spray paint the letters on? Didn't some tires come with the letters done that way? If the color wears or peels off, just use the template to touch it up.

[Mike Bradbury]

Originally Posted by hgs_notes

The truck is looking great. I was wondering what the color was. In most pics it kind of has a turquoise or aqua look, but a couple pics it looks like regular blue.

On the tires, I know you put a lot of thought and work into them, but was wondering... why not just use the template your sister made to put on the sidewall and spray paint the letters on? Didn't some tires come with the letters done that way? If the color wears or peels off, just use the template to touch it up.

Thanks guys for the encouragement, it really has been a labor of love, there are aspects of this truck that as any builder will tell you, it is hard to put a price on because you'll never get out what you put in.

The color is turquoise, It had been very cheaply painted by the p.o. several times but the correct factory color, the paint is pealing in spots so it kind of has that flat look now, but in different light it will grab some of the remaining metalic flecks and change a bit.

As far as the tires go I wanted them to look as close to the real ones as possible. I wanted raised white letters not the painted on kind mostly because the info I was getting on the paint was that it tends to leach the black petroleum through the paint and turns the white to kind of brownish.
I have one more try in me before I get out the paint can. This is why I saved the negative side of the rubber cut out for a last ditch effort, but even at a distance the raised whites look far better than mere paint. Good year used to have raised whites on the race cars but switched to just painting the logo on probably because it is much cheaper and easier to produce and since the tires only last a few dozen laps then are discarded. I wanted the passer by to stop and really look and ask "where did you get those tires" not just "oh he painted them on" It is still not out of the question but it is last on the attempt list.