Last winter, while I was first building my shop, I had a neighbor stop by to say hello and see how things where going. After a few minutes of chit chat, he asked what I was going to be using the building for. I informed him that we were a performance / restoration shop and that I had a passion for motorcycles and older vehicles. He looked at me and said, "Uh oh, I better stay away from here, I'll end up spending too much money." Fast forward a few months and he has come to be a good customer and a great neighbor. After a lot of discussion and planning we have finally started building his 1970 C10 short bed pickup. Plans are to build a modern truck with a classic street truck appearance. The motor will be a GM based LS 5.3L with a 4L60E. Suspension will be all new from hotchkis. All new interior with A/C from Vintage Air. For safety we will be changing the fuel tank to a rail mounted cell, and installing disc brakes all around. For now we have stripped the truck down, blasted the frame, and powder coated it and the rear end housing. In the next few weeks we will be setting the motor in and getting some of the drivetrain lined out. In the next entry I will explain the motor mounts and headers.
No words can explain this...
Luckily the motor and trans were already pulled by the previous owner. This was a non a/c cab and it is a little too far gone. We are looking for a decent a/c cab now.
Once everything was stripped off, we put the lift up on the frame and checked it for square.
Once we verified that the frame was true and square, I burned in all of the braces and subframes that would remain. This truck will accelerate, brake, and handle much more aggressive than originally designed. These old frames are all riveted together and the rails and theoretically move independent of each other. After all of the welding was finished, we loaded it on the trailer and so that we could take it to be blasted and powder coated.
I also wanted to strip the rear end down and have the housing coated at the same time as the frame. I was please to find that there was a clutch type limited slip already installed. However we will be replacing the 3.08 gears with a set of 3.73's
After a 5 hour wait at the powder coater, our frame and rear end had been thoroughly blasted and powder coated satin black.
Thats all for now. This week I will go over the motor, trans, mounts, and headers in more detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment