More paint and progress

Now that the cab is enjoying a nice new coat of paint, its time to start putting things back together on the chassis! Today was a busy day at the shop! :-)

The cab and firewall looks awesome next to the engine..

I love how the firewall turned out.. It adds a custom touch to the truck and hey its practical too! Just enough room to work around the engine!

This is one of the inner fenders that will be mounted in the engine compartment.

While Joe's son Eric was busy prepping the fenders and a few door pieces for paint, Dad set out to work on the radiator core supports so the radiator will fit just perfectly after its all painted and installed.

First coat of paint on the cab!

This weekend we got to see the cab of the truck painted with the new color we picked out! We were really happy with how it turned out.. It'll be a deep redish-maroon color.. Check out the pictures!

Cab sitting in the paint booth..

Checking out the color.. The paint has dark red metal flakes in it that really look awesome when you shine the light on it..

Interior shot of the drivers side door jam..

close up of the front of the cab and smooth firewall

I caught Jen looking through the doorway of the cab.. She liked seeing how the truck is starting to shine!

Glen, Zach and Dustin stopping for a quick generation shot..

This is under the cab of the truck.. its hard to tell but we've sprayed the underside with rhino lining a rust inhibitor you usually see in the bed of trucks.. it also should help slightly with insulation..

Here is the view from the passenger side of the truck looking in.

The floor and step of the cab looks pretty good! When we first started working on the truck, this floor was mostly rusted through..

Rear drivers side door jam.. This has been cleaned up a lot and looks really good now.

The inside of the cab looks amazing.. The dash has been cleaned up (unused knobs removed, etc.)

Headliner will eventually be covered in leather so it wasn't sprayed

Jen, Logan and Zach hanging out by the truck.. can't wait to see the rest of the truck painted!

Latest progress on the truck

The truck has been taken apart again! :)

The cab of the truck has been removed so Joe could finish the firewall (to make the adjustments necessary to fit the AC, and so he can make any additional modifications to the cab before we paint. Also, the chassis has been wrapped so it doesn't get any overspray or debris on it.. We probably should have done that months ago.. but hey.. we've never done this before.. but we're learning! :)

This week the doors and cab will have one last sanding to make sure everything looks good, then it will be ready for paint. Next up, is the bed of the truck.. We need to finish the fenders, mount the roll pan bumper and lights and secure the bed mounts (currently the bed mounts are too far back leaving too large of a gap between the bed and the cab of the truck).

Once the bed is ready, the wires can be run so we can do what we've all been waiting for.. to fire up the engine!!

The truck looks pretty funny with the cab and front section of the truck removed..

All wrapped up! Is it christmas already? Oh thank you Santa!!

Hand sanded, to make sure the truck is free of any low or uneven spots..

This is what the new firewall looks like. Wedges were put in the center to allow room behind the firewall for the AC unit and hoses.

Close up of the new firewall design. We still have plenty of room for the engine!

Here you can see the back side of the firewall with the wedge in the center. Also above you can see where the dash was cut in an attempt to fit the AC (removing the hinge for the glove box. Now with the new modifications to the firewall we decided to put the glove box hing back in place so we can still have a shallow but somewhat functional glove box.

Another view of the inside of the firewall behind the dash. If you look closely you'll see a bolt that Joe welded to the inside of the firewall to mount the AC unit.. He did it this way, so we didn't have to mess up the smooth firewall seen on the engine side of the firewall.

Dash has been sanded and the steering wheel has been covered to prevent damage.

Inside of the door jams have been sanded and a light coat of bondo has been applied to clean it up.

The doors look nice and smooth.. This upcoming week Joe is going to work on the edges to make sure they're consistent and smooth.. Any flaw's not taken care of now will show up during final paint.

The rear fenders had to be extended down to the steps.. The cuts and welds you see in the picture are to correct the geometry of the inside edge to make it look original and to make sure all of the edges and lines are smooth.

The inside edge of the fender has been shaped and smoothed to align with the hood.


Here is the front end after it was removed from the chassis. There is still some work that is needed to the fenders where they hook into the cab that will need to be done this week, but its really coming along!

We have Air Conditioning!!! Now thats cool! ;-)

One of the largest obstacles we've had to overcome is how to get the airconditioning unit under the dash.. Because we replaced and modified the original firewall (to make room for the Doug Herbert 454 big block engine), we lost the spacing we had to fit the AC behind the dash.. We've discussed cutting the firewall out, cutting the dashboard out, extending the dashboard, you name it.. But what Joe came up with was a new firewall design which allowed enough space to fit the AC unit without taking away from the look of the engine compartment. He made this possible by cutting out the inside edges of the firewall and welding in new panel recesses.. See previous blog: Prep for AC, Radiator, and Fuel Door

The new AC unit is actually pretty large.. And wouldn't you know it.. not that flexible. :) In this picture you can see the masking tape marking the section of firewall Joe had to cut for the access we needed.

It aaaaaalmost fits.. but not quite.. There are just too many obstacles to get around.

With the modifications made to the firewall, Joe was able to get the unit to fit in place! Whoohoo!!

AC unit welds to the inside of the firewall so we don't have to run bolts through our nice smooth firewall engine compartment.

Fender work

Here are a few pictures of the progress being made on the truck.. Joe at Horvath Hotrods has been finishing up the fender work on the truck (fixing a few gaps between body panels and betwen the front fender and the hood of the truck). Its coming along really well!

Creating the new edge.. maintaining a nice 1/4" gap along the edge of the hood.

Welding the new edge to the existing fender.

Blending the new weld with the fender.. Looks great right? After its sanded down further and a with a touch of paint.. it'll look awesome.!

Touching up the passenger side front fender edge.

Joe had to cut the rear fender and re-weld it to continue the curved edge down to the step.

The truck is really coming along!

New Drop Spindles installed

We've dropped the front of the truck down about 2" using a new set of Camaro drop spindles. I think the truck sits a lot better now. Before the truck looked like it sagged in the back and the front tires looked too small because of the gap from the tires to the wheel wells. Dropping the front down gives it a better stance.

We still need to raise the rear slightly, but it's adjustable so we'll do that after we're finished modifying the rear bed of the truck.. Making progress!! Hopefully a few more weeks from now we'll have the AC in and the wiring complete! Then we can finally fire up this bad boy!

Hope to have more pictures up this weekend! Stay tuned! :)

Truck is look'n good!!!

Saturday my family and I drove to Spanish Fork to check out the truck. My brothers were amazed at how much progress has been made on the truck. The last time they saw it was when we were tearing it down to begin the restoration process. Since then we've rebuilt the truck from the ground up giving old Thunderpig a new chassis, firewall, cab floor, fenders, and much much more. With the truck pretty much put back together it was fun for them to see how different but yet the same the truck is. Styling wise the truck looks the same, but performance wise it should handle like a 2010 hotrod! And speaking of hotrods...

Heeeeeeerrrrrrrreeeeeee's THUNDERPIG!

The truck is so close to being finished!!! I can't wait to fire up the engine and hit the road!

Before I get to far ahead of myself though.. here are some earlier body work pictures.

When we first arrived at the shop, Joe and Eric were finishing up some body work on the doors. We've had to do a bit of custom work on the fenders. This is because of the way the rear of the new chassis was built. It has a pro-style rear end which means that the rear end sits higher than the original frame to make room for the wide rear tires.. The problem with this is that it makes it difficult to mount the bed flush to the chassis. We had to raise the bed a few inches to clear the support arms on the chassis. This placed the fenders and step boards higher than the original truck so we decided the best way to correct the issue was to drop the step boards down and extend the fender down to align with the bottom of the cab. This should also give the truck more of a custom look when its finished.

Here is a close up of the rear fender work being done. Notice the extension of the fenders and the new custom fuel door assembly too!

To get a better idea of what the truck looks like with the recent body work, they sprayed the truck with a black primer. Looks good huh!

The truck sits down too low in the back so we'll either need to raise the rear up, or put 2" drop spindles in to drop the front down.


This is how the truck should sit. "Family Approved!" :)



We couldn't resist holding the new chrome grill up to to the front of the truck.. it looks really nice and appears to fit perfectly!