'67 shortbox stepper, frame off rebuild.

[sdotrivers15]

A little background, picked this truck up for $2500. I put a transmission in it, drove it down the road and said to myself, "I need to just tear it down and rebuild it how I want it."

I'm not looking to get too crazy with it(I'm sure a lot of people say that at the beginning). It's going to be a slow and steady build, as of now I'm only able to work on it about 6-7hours a week. Anyways, enough talking, some progress pictures and where I'm at.







Stay tuned...

[jim-bob]

..Ima hanging..can you give us your initial plans..whether you stay with them or not??

[sdotrivers15]

Originally Posted by jim-bob

..Ima hanging..can you give us your initial plans..whether you stay with them or not??

Yep, was going to post that up. Stripping it down to the frame and rebuilding from there. Overall vision for it is I want to drive it, but not daily. It'll be a cruise every so often type of truck with a lot of ass. Not looking to make long trips with it, I'll trailer it for that. It'll be nice enough to put into shows and maybe win some hardware, definitely not looking for something to be immaculate though.

Frame/Suspension: Powder coating the frame and components. Looking to get it as functionally low as possible, pretty sure I want to stay away from air. Although it's a toss up between coil overs and just a static drop right now(still have a little time to make up my mind). Upgrading to disc all the way around. New steering box with a better ratio.

Sheetmetal: There's some previous owner patches on the truck that were bandaid fixes, will have to fix all of that the right way along with some other rust. Luckily, from what I can see it's not that bad. Looking at shaving the drip rail as well, it has some rust so has to come off anyways.

Drivetrain: Toss up between a 383 & 406. I know it's the expensive way to go, but probably going to hook up a 4l80e behind it (really think it'll be worth it). Looking at 500+ hp. Was originally thinking of putting 15's on it so I had plenty of meat on the tires, but been flirting with the idea of 17s lately.

Paint: Going to get some samples of the original color sprayed and see if I want to go with those. Otherwise, I'm thinking a silver/grey color, although baby blues are nice on these trucks.

I only can work on it limited number of hours a week right now, so I still have some time to hash out some details. I'm sure I missed some stuff, feel free to ask questions. I just pulled the bed this past week, next weeks project is to get that torn apart and off the lift (PO really rigged it up with silicon and a metal plate for the bed). I'll keep the progress pics coming as I take them.

[sdotrivers15]

Got the bed pulled apart today, lots of rusted bolts that ended up getting cut off. Fender bolts kept spinning on me as well, but had to cut all of those too.

Picture of what was done to the bed, gonna have to patch in new metal or replace the bed sides. We'll see how that goes when I get a chance to really see if it's worth the hassle repairing the damage.





Picture of the front of the bed, should be an easy fix welding in a new bottom piece for this. Will have to get some measurements of the overall height from somewhere.


Picture of the fender bolt holes, anyone have a suggestion for a fix? I was thinking I'd have to weld on something to hold the new bolts in place.


All torn down. A previous owner decided to put in this metal plate and silicone it all the way around. Was a pain to pull apart.


Also, at first I was against putting the truck on air, but I'm slowly figuring out the stance I want & a good ride is only going to come with air. Either the budget for the truck just went up, or I'm not going to build as strong of a motor for it. Still going to go with a 406. Now just need to figure out how much I want to do with the air suspension. Being a stepside, it's going to be tricky fitting everything under the bed without raising it or putting any of it in the bed.

[jim-bob]

....Subscribing...

[sdotrivers15]

Got the cab ready to be pulled off the frame tonight. Some shots of some cancer spots as well, cab is gonna need some sheetmetal work, but what do you expect for a near 50yr old truck.

[sdotrivers15]

Have made a little progress, PB stage 2 is ordered, boyd tank is in & the accuair tank. Need to trim the frame rails in the back a little bit for clearance for the air tank, so will be mocking that up soon. Plan is to put the tank between the gas tank & rear bumper. If I can't make that work, I'll end up having to raise the bed a few inches to get it to fit up front.

some pictures of a rough mock up, I'm thinking I may use their exo mounts, depends on how tight it's going to make it. Otherwise, I'll just make a bracket.




Built a cart for the cab to sit on, should do the trick. Moves around nicely, locking casters so it won't run away from me when I'm working on it.


Also finally got the cab pulled, still need to finish stripping everything out and prep it to be soda blasted. Whoever did work on this truck before did the whole lets just slip on a new panel over the rusted cab corners & rockers. Also riveted in metal to fix some inner rocker rust along with floor rust. So gotta sort through that mess.


Still a few more things to strip off the frame, then I'll pressure wash it to get all this sand off it. Since there's a lead time on the PB stuff, I might get into some rust repair on the cab before getting the frame notched & prepped for powder coat.