My 64 Build and work in progress...

[PatJ]

Hey guys this is my first official post and I thought I might as well give back a little since I have learned so much from this Board. So here goes.

After coveting 60-66 trucks for several years I finally found what I was looking for. I really wanted a big window short fleetside, with a V8. Thats a tall order for the budget I had but I found one on CL that looked like it might be the one. Made some calls and decided to drive 6 hours to have look.

It wasnt perfect, it has rust, bondo, several colors of paint and lots more but it was pretty cheap and it fit the wishlist. I also wanted a project and plan to learn welding at some point so the rust didnt scare me away. It ran and drove, the brakes were terrible but it made the 7 hour drive back home with no problems.

As it looked when I got it home the first day.

[PatJ]

The plan was a budget Porterbuilt Suspension and static drop until I can afford bags, disk brake front kit and 5 lug swap. Wide whites and drive it as soon as I can get it all together.

I few things to mention, I will be doing this whole thing in my driveway since I have no garage and also no air tools, I do have a small shed to do some painting in but thats about it. Let the fun begin.

I started out trying to acquire the few parts needed for the 5 lug swap, after reading I decided a newer rearend and steel wheels, found on CL from an 85 chevy truck.

Wheel clean up.

[PatJ]

The next step was start taking the truck apart. I had my orders in to CPP and Porterbuilt so I had plenty of work to do in the meantime to get the truck ready for new parts.

Not so Egyptian bed removal apparatus.

[losthope]

Right on !! good looking truck! Glad you are starting a build thread, I also dont have a garage or air tools and built my truck in my drive way along with my 54 ford car,heres my truck build if your interested nothing fancy:
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=485977

[PatJ]

Next was rear frame clean up. This was the usual fare with lots of wire wheel work. And then on to the dreaded rivets. I had done my homework on the forums for this task and was fairly well prepared. I bought myself a nice big chisel and had a nice hand sledge, lots for drill bits and cut off wheels.

Man what a pain in the ass. I did the x cut with the wheels and then proceeded to grind and drill and beat the hell out of those things untill I had them all off. Thank goodness I wasnt doing the trailing arm crossmember. An Air chisel would have been really nice but i pulled through.

As my cnotch came in I stared to fit it up. I never could find anyone that did the PB cnotch by itself and ran in to a bit of a hick-up. I noticed that all the pics online I could find showed the notch with the upper shock bar and none with only the notch. By this time I already had removed the crossmember so after talking to Nate we realized that they had sent me the notch that requires the PB crossmember. Since my crossmember was already out I decided I deserved that PB one for all the pain and suffering I had gone though with those rivets

I had a bit of a time getting the notch plates to line up. I ended up getting a bunch of clamps and a big c-clamp to really squish the plates together enough to start drilling holes with confidence.

[PatJ]

After I got the notches clamped it was on to the front for some brake work and cleaning up the front end. This was the typical old ass truck with gobs on greasy muddy dirt. After a few hours I excavated the necessary hardware and got the old shiz off. Cleaned up and painted my A arms, new balljoints and put the brakes together. Also got around to painting POR15 on the rear frame.

My kid posing, I was so happy to see the wheels and tires on the truck.

[PatJ]

Back to the rearend for more painting, painting of parts and new rear end mock up.

[PatJ]

The rear end required some welding so I had to tow it off to a shop to have that done. While there we couldnt figure out an issue with the brakes. I towed it back home and went over everything again. Turns out one of the problems was with the calipers. Apparently I had installed them on the wrong sides and they were upside down. Oops. I felt a little stupid but was also a little pissed that with an over 1k brake kit came with zero instructions. O well, live and learn.

With that solved I got the bed back on, solo I might add, and made myself a new wood bed. Bled the brake a few times and Im now back on the road.

I bought the truck 6 months ago and it was under construction for 3 months. Not bad for a few weekends and evenings, all done solo in the driveway.

Big thanks go to everyone on this board, there is no way in hell I could have done this with out all of the information available here. Thank you all so much.

[markeb01]

Welcome to the forum! Nice looking truck and excellent progress.

[hopped up]

Truck looks 100x better with that stance and wheel/tire change.bet it rides and handles a lot better too!
Posted via Mobile Device

[PatJ]

Push thru bullet caps installed, had to grind the wheel centers a bit but it was pretty easy.

[PatJ]

Wow, its been a long time. I feel like Ive learned so much from this site over the past 10 years I owed it to folks to post more about my build and hopefully others find it useful.

Since this last post I have been slowly building towards a bagged truck with an upgraded engine and over the past year I really got moving on it. I wanted to post up some of the process over this past year.

Id also like to thank everyone who contributes to this board. So many people showing their work and helping solve problems. Ive learned so much and been motivated so many times here that we kinda lost over the years with things like Instagram. My favorites are older builds mostly like Dino's and Delmo's but so many others Ive forgotten over time. My favorite build from the Forum has always been that of Coulter. Maybe partly because my truck is also black like his but I loved that he did so much of the work himself and in his own garage.

Ill try to kinda pick up where I left off with the photos I have.

Here is where Im at now with the truck after just finishing up the major work and getting it on the road again.

[losthope]

Back from the dead ! Looks great !!! I too barley get on forums anymore, lost in the new world of technology and always on Instagram so easy to use...do miss the social aspect of the forums and friends I've made here ....still got the old red rocket sat for along time only drive it few times a year. But been driving it every few days past month. Nice hearing from you again!

[PatJ]

Ill try to list all the changes here before the big dump of photos and a break down of the past year or so.

The overall goal was to get the truck as low as possible but still have a very usable truck. I didnt want to lose my entire bed to a deep step notch. I want this to be a crusier but I can still haul **** around. 60s style and learn as much as I can thru the process.

Suspension is a Frankenstein of a lot of parts. When I started I was on a pretty limited budget and over time the budget got better and I could afford more high end parts.


Pancaked stock crossmember
Cupped lower control arms
Porterbuilt front shock relocators left over from phase 1 build
No Limit rack and pinion
Rear is a combo of a weld in step notch and an Ekstensive 2 link kit.
GSI center crossmember and trans mount crossmember
ididit column
Accu Air CVT with E level... rip
Boyd tank
Aeromotive in tank pump
Chevy Performance Crate 350 dressed to look like a 327
Holley Sniper EFI and ignition/dist



The first piece of the puzzle was to really get going on the front crossmember. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy with a 68 C10 who bought a full Porterbuilt suspension so he hooked me up with his crossmember as the test rat for my welding and pancake attempt.

The 68 as I got it, time to get busy.

[PatJ]

Started to clean up the crossmember and mark out the pancake. Again thanks to so many people here on the forums I was able to figure it out pretty well. This was my first real shot at welding and whole lot of grinding.

[PatJ]

And then onto the arms, ordered some cups off ebay I think.

[PatJ]

I wanted the front end to stand out so I decided on a hammer finish grey. I think it turned out pretty nice overall. In retrospect I think I might have just went with black.

[PatJ]

Because I had done so much research on the front end and had a donor crossmember to work on this part went really smooth with no real surprises.

Once the front was done I knew that starting the rear was going to be the serious step because the truck was going to come off the road and be in the garage for some unknown amount of time. I was confident but also a little worried I would get in over my head. At this point in the build I was planning to keep it pretty low budget. The plan was try to keep as many original parts as I could and modify them if needed to keep the budget down. I planned on keeping the original trailing arms and only doing a mild step notch, again to save as much usable bed as I could. I never plan on running huge wheels so I thought this seemed reasonable.

Needless to say the rear is when things got really difficult and the plan started to change. It was a really tough decision on where to pull the trigger on the depth. Ive always wanted it slammed but I was torn on how low to go. Its really hard to find any mid sizes step notches out there, most people go C notch or all the way. This is also the decision that made it difficult to source a kit or parts that would work since all the nice rear half kits are a deep notch.

[PatJ]

With the notch in I could lower the truck and get an idea of what was next. This is where I hit the first snag in realizing that my trailing arms where going to be the limiting factor. To get the truck as low as I wanted they where hitting the frame and it just wasnt gonna work, I thought about trying to modify them but didnt think that was going to be the right call. I was going to have to find some other solution.

After a lot of research and choices of 4 links, relocated trailing arms, different rear bag setups I found 2 examples that looked like the where pretty simple and effective. The trucks that I had seen them on I knew were well done. Its a 2 link style with an exterior rail mounted bag. One of the was from Hales Speed Shop and it was very similar to the later model kits that Ekstensive makes. With some good reference photos of those trucks I had a good idea of what to do so I purchased a rear arm kit from Ekstensive.

This kit has no rear adjustment on the 2 link so you have to be dead nuts on where you weld everything in and I can assure you my anxiety was sky high that my truck would be dog walking down the road. I measured everything about a million times from a million different points on the truck to try to get this right and it was by far the hardest part of the build stress wise.

It also didnt really have a specific location for the rear bags and no solution for the rear shocks. but after some modification to the brackets and studying photos I worked out the bag position and fabbed up my own rear shock location. In the end I feel pretty good about how it worked out.

[PatJ]

Shock mounts on the rear of the 2 link. I really had a hard time working out a better solution for the shocks. I see a lot of them at odd angles and I couldnt find any reason for them so I settled on this. I dont love the way the upper mount is but it works pretty well so far. Without a lot of extra fab work this is the best I could come up with.

[PatJ]

With the rear of the truck pretty worked out I was now at a turning point on how far I was going to go. I was debating just doing the suspension and driving the truck on the tired ass v8 that was in there or pony up for a new engine and take this build to another level. I mean Ive got to replace the old crossmember with the fancy new one I rebuilt so I might as well do the motor while its all out right?

While trying to decide what to do I ran into a few other issues. I was hoping that I could just modify the trailing arm crossmember and get enough clearance for the driveshaft but in reality there was no way, it was bottoming out and I needed to figure out a plan B. GSI has a sweet crossmember but how the hell am I gonna get the old one off and it on under that cab?

Decision time, button it up and get back on the road or go for broke and take it to another level? Wisdom prevailed and I knew I would regret taking any shortcuts so the call was made. Pull the cab so I can access everything better, order a GSI crossmember for the rear. This was scary because I never really intended on pulling the cab and completely tearing the truck this far apart. The upside was obvious, now I have full access to the entire frame, I can clean it, paint it, run all my lines etc. We have a winner.

So time to pull the old motor.

Something that was interesting to me is that my truck and firewall was originally Red, seen at the bottom, but the upper part was Fawn. I had never seen another Fawn firewall but Im pretty sure this was original paint. But it gave me an idea of repainting it similar.

[1971 GMC SHORTY]

Sweet Builds Can’t Wait to see more

[PatJ]

I wanted to address my tired steering situation so did some research on a new steering box. After reading a ton of what felt like horror stories on people who bought new boxes for 500$ I was kinda weary of of going down that road. The next logical step was to think about an upgrade to a rack. I had read a lot here about the No Limit rack and decided that even tho it was pricey steering box it was a good upgrade to invest in. So a call to Rob and I was on my way to the next upgrade.

Because my crossmember was pancaked it threw off the dimensions of things a bit. The NoLimit bracket was a little big but I was able to modify it a bit and get it mounted up nicely. The new rack exposed the fact that my column wasnt in the best condition and I really needed to also upgrade that as part of the steering redo. Rob recommended a Ididit column as the way to go.

[PatJ]

Once the steering was sorted it was time to address the trailing arm crossmember and pull the cab. Im pretty much doing everything solo on this project and wasnt sure how the hell I was going to get the cab off by myself without destroying anything. I found some examples on Youtube of folks who built a boom on top of an engine lift and surprisingly it worked pretty well.

Some details of the frame cleanup and GSI crossmember.
POR 15 on the whole frame.

[PatJ]

Some shots of the rear bags and panhard bar setup. Sensors on rear and front.