New Gauges Installed!

Check out Thunderpig's new Auto Meter gauges! They look and work great!  

Thanks Dad and Marc Schmuhl for your help getting them installed! 

New Gauges!

The gauges in ThunderPig have never worked all that well.. We've had trouble with the fuel and oil pressure gauges since day 1.. and recently we came to realize that the water temp is reading high as well.. I made a call to the company I bought the original gauges from and told them, I don't want to use their junk gauges any more and would like to find out what the size of each gauge was so I could order some new Auto Meter gauges..

The guy didn't even skip a beat and said, "Oh we've had a lot of customers contact us with gauge issues. The company we used to buy from went out of business.. Let me send you some new Auto Meter gauges."

I was pretty excited! Because they're not cheap! Now I just need to install'em!

Keep your fingers crossed for me in hopes that the issues I've been having are gauge related and not something else ;-)

The Latest Finishing Touch for the Bed

Originally the plan was for Joe to weld up a few angle strips in stainless steel to match the stainless bedwood strips on the bed. However welding with stainless is really tough.. Even after bringing in a professional "stainless steel" welder to give this a try, the decision was made to scrap this plan and instead go with steel angle strips 

The steel proved to be less prone to warping, deforming, and pitting as you can see from the stainless strip above (this strip has not yet been ground or polished.. so you can see how much work went into the metalwork just to fill it in enough to produce a smooth surface that could be polished)

Here is a steel angle strip after Joe welded and ground it down.

Next a thin layer of bondo was applied to each radius to smooth everything out before being painted.

New bed strips installed and ready to be tightened down. The angle strips will keep the wood in place better and reduce vibration on the road and from debris from flinging up into the bed (yes its happened.. not fun)

So there you have it!  Honestly, I think the bedstrips look great painted and tie in perfectly. Great job guys!

Fields of Green.. and Red?

This afternoon, Dad, Zach and I took a ride in Thunderpig.. It was an amazing day with hardly a single cloud in the sky. We pulled off the side of the road and snapped a few pictures of the truck with nothing but fields of green and Mt Timpanogos in the background.  We had a great drive and I couldn't have asked for a better time.

Thanksgiving Point UVU Car Show 2012

Today was the UVU car show at Thanksgiving Point. My Dad and I have been looking forward to this show all year because last year we entered ThunderPig before the truck was finished and one of the judges told us that if it would have been finished we would have won an award!!!  Oh that hurt.  So this year we made sure we were ready!! 

My Dad came to Utah to help me out with the show. We arrived at Thanksgiving Point at 6am to snag a primo spot at the show near the main pavilion. Then we finished shining the truck. It looked great!

My son is such a ladies man. I told him to go stand in front of this Camaro for a quick picture while there was no crowd and he said "Can I take a picture with her?" LOL.. The car was at an airbrushing booth, and the girl at the booth overheard his request and of course ran right over and stood next to him. I was laughing pretty hard.

We even saw batman at the show! I told Zach he could go take a picture with him too and he said "No".  He absolutely loves Batman.. So I'm not sure why he wouldn't stand next to him, but we definitely spent a lot of time checking out his ride!  :-)

Zach also entered a coloring contest.. He ended up taking 2nd place, but only because the entry submitted by the winner had a bit of help by a parent.. Either that or somewhere out there is a 4year old Picaso. heh heh..

After walking around the show we went back and Zach helped me polish the truck some more...

Great job Zach! He's a great helper and loves to go to the shows with us.

After a long day, it was nice to relax with Zach and Grandpa while we wait for the judging.

And the votes are in and we won!!!!!!! The Thanksgiving Point UVU show gives out jackets instead of trophies and we won a sponsors jacket!  Wear it proud Dad! :-)

Lets go see a movie!

I've taken my oldest son to the movies a few times in Thunderpig. He gets a huge kick out of it and now every time we say we're going to a movie, he squeals with delight and heads straight over for Thunderpig. I admit, I love it to.

Today I took him to see another movie. We had lots of skittles and even more laughs together. Thanks Thunderpig!

Autorama 2012

This weekend was Thunderpig's first show of 2012!  My Dad was in town for it which was awesome because not only have the kids missed him like crazy, but we had a lot of prep to do to get the truck ready. Thunderpig hadn't been driven much over the winter because of the weather, so it needed a little more attention than usual.  We drove it down to Spanish Fork for Joe and the gang at Horvath Hotrods to do some touch ups on the paint and some work on the bed actuators..

They also did this for us!  Eric Horvath painted a new display for Thunderpig! Dad and I were really impressed and are so grateful for everything the Horvath's have done for us on Thunderpig.

On the day of the show we woke up to wet roads and a potential for more rain, so we decided to trailer the truck to the show to minimize the amount of work that would be required to clean and polish it again at the show. This was the first time we've had to tow the truck since it was finished, and I was pretty nervous.  I was able to rent an enclosed trailer, but they wouldn't let me leave the lot with only my 4-runner to pull it (probably a good idea, but at the time I was a bit peeved)   ;-)  Luckily we were able to get my cousin Neil's flatbed trailer at the last minute which saved our bacon.

Joe talked to one of his customers at the shop who had a huge pickup and he agreed to tow Thunderpig for us to the show. Pretty nice of him.

When we arrived at the show to setup the truck and display, there were already hundreds of cars ready for display... and no crowds! We were able to walk around, take pictures of the cars and talk to their owners. It was pretty cool.

This was Zach's favorite car. He found it almost immediately when we entered the building. It wasn't his favorite because it's a sweet muscle car, but because it was his favorite color GREEN! Hah!

As usual, Thunderpig looked awesome all 3 days of the show. After several days of polishing, cleaning, and preparing for the show it was finally time for us to put everything on the line.

 

All of our hard work paid off! We won Best in Class! Thanks Joe!

Not long after we won Best In Class, we then won Outstanding Interior - Truck!

 

Wow! What a night!  Two Awards! :-)

The look on Dad's face says it all. We had a great time and we were exhausted. This was one heck of a fun show.

A couple of happy, but tired boys.. It was a long 3 days, but well worth all of the effort!

 

Check out our awards!  "Best in Class - Street Machine Truck '49-'64" and "Outstanding Interior - Truck!"