More body work

Here are some pictures of the final prep work being done on the doors and front fenders..

Body work and radiator fitting

The radiator fits nice and snug and the body is really coming along.. Here are some recent pictures of progress being made on the truck...

Door gaps are looking really good! We now have about 1/4" gap on the panels on the passenger side of the truck..

Passenger door fits like a new truck! Joe put new pins in the hinges making the doors open and close better. These old doors are really heavy so about every 10 years or so this is something you have to do to keep the doors aligned.

Here is our new radiator being set into place in the engine compartment. After a bit of modification, it now fits perfectly!

This is a sweet radiator... custom built for the truck to meet the needs of the engine.

With the modifications made to the radiator support frame we now have a full inch of clearance! Perfect!!!

This is the drivers side truck fender where the fuel door will be installed..


The passenger side fender has been sanded and primed.. ready for paint!

Prep for AC, Radiator, and Fuel Door

This weekend Jen, myself and the boys took a trip down to Horvath Hotrods to check out the progress being made on the truck.

While Jen and Logan were checking out the truck, Logan said "Blzagabaap!" Which I translated to: "Wow Dad, this is one bad ass ride!"

Joe told us the plan for the week is to put the front end of the truck back onto the frame and then install the radiator and Air Conditioning.

Joe had to modify the radiator support panel so it will accept the larger radiator. The modifications give us an extra inch of clearance for the radiator and fan assy.

Circled in red are the support arms that were removed to give us the extra clearance we need.

Slightly different angle in this picture, but you can still see we have plenty of clearance now for the radiator.

The next challenge will be installing the AC. Here you can see the AC unit and if you look closely you can see some tape on the top of the the firewall.. This is the portion of the firewall that interferes when trying to fit the AC behind the dash board.

The AC unit just won't fit without some cutting.. yikes!

Joe is going to cut out the portion of the firewall that interferes with the AC unit and then weld these pieces into its place giving us more room for the AC unit.

This is what the new panels will look like when installed on both sides of the firewall.

While we were talking about the truck, Zach was having fun roaming around the shop.. Here he is standing in front of our parts shelf..

Then he quickly ran over to the truck to climb inside and check out the truck further.

Meanwhile Joe showed us the new fuel door assembly that arrived from Hagan. This is actually pretty small, about half the size of a normal fuel door and it has a magnetic latch for the door (push in and it pops open).

It also has a push through gas cap with a small opening in the center of the cap for the fuel nozzle so you don't have to unscrew the gas cap when you fill up! Sweet.

The fuel door assembly will be installed on the drivers side fender just behind the wheel opening (the picture above is actually the passenger side fender, but I wanted to post it since its been primed and is now ready for paint).

Bedwood.. Oooh shiny!

After about 10 coats of urethane.. The wood is finally show worthy! Now we just need to lay it out and trace out the shape of the new wheel tubs so we can cut the wood and place it into the bed!

We stained the wood with a natural oak finish which brings out the grain pattern nicely..

Dad's paint gun has come in quite handy.. Hand painting each of these boards 10 times would have really been a chore.. Ok so spraying them and waiting for them to dry between coats hasn't exactly been awesome either... ;-)

After spraying the boards, we let them air dry over night and then lightly sand them and spray them again.

The boards now have a nice sheen to them. Can't wait to see what they look like when we have them polished!

Boards are ready to go! I need to put a sign on them that says "Thunder pig or bust!"

Its Hot Rod time!

Quite a bit of progress has been made on the truck the past few weeks.. Check out the pics!

We now have the new starter mounted.. Looks like a good quality starter. Thats good because I can't wait to fire this bad boy up!

New steel braided fuel lines installed (shown with new fittings, fuel filter, fuel pump, and pressure gauge)

The fuel system is now ready.. Today we installed the final piece of it.. the fuel sending unit in the tank.

The new steering column is installed.. Joe and Steve from the shop had to modify the firewall slightly to allow clearance for the mounting brackets.

The new instrument cluster fit perfectly, and as you can see the steering wheel looks awesome.. The steering wheel is not fully put together yet because we were only using it for fitting purposes. (Not shown is the leather half wrap and a bowtie horn button)

The new roll pan is going to look great! It will be reinforced and then installed with LED lights.

These are the LED light strips to be installed in the roll pan (The red lenses will be flush with the contour of the roll pan).

The inner fenders are now in place.. Quite a bit of custom work was required to get these tubs to fit the way we wanted them to.

As you can see, the inner fenders look great on the truck and give us plenty of space for the wheels. Now we just need to paint and fit the new bedwood and we'll have ourselves a pickup bed!

Inner Bed Tubs

The past few months or so I've been searching the net trying to find a good set of inner wheel tubs for the truck.. The problem is that almost all of the wheel tubs you find online are made of two pieces and are pretty boxy looking.. We really wanted something more rounded out.. Well Joe came up with the perfect solution..

He had an old '61 Ford pickup in his lot with bed tubs that were exactly what we were looking for!

Joe cut out the tubs, media blasted them and then had them cut to the dimensions we needed.. I think they'll look great!

Dad helping cut out one of the fenders to make room for the new tub.

Joe mounting the new tire and checking to make sure we have the 2" clearance at the rear of the tire...

We have plenty of clearance now!

Attaching the tub and fender

Wow.. check out how huge the tire is compared to the old one.. lol!

2" clearance from the outside fender to the tire as well.. perfect! The back tires used to rub all the time on those fenders.. Not any more!

Recent Truck Updates

Its been a few months since I last posted.. The truck is still at Horvath Hotrods.. They've been working on the fuel system and wiring for us.. On Monday they should get the steering column parts and brake/accelerator components. I'll do my best to get some pictures on here..

Here we are looking under the truck.. making sure everything looks right.

Sarah and her husband Nick were able to drop by the shop with us to check out the truck.

Fuel lines look good.. Nick and Sarah both gave a collective nod of approval..

Lots of loose wires inside the cab.. Trying to figure out where everything will run and to make sure we have all of the wires needed to power everything.

As for whats up next.. In a few weeks we should have a new custom built radiator coming in from Be Cool.. It's supposed to be able to cool up to a 700HP engine which is plenty of cooling power for us. Here are some pics of what it will look like.. This is for a Ford set up, but ours should have a very similar setup with the same dual fans & brackets.. On our radiator, the inputs/outputs (the tubes shown with the red tape) will be on opposite sides of the tank and it will be polished.. We can't wait to receive and install it!



Also, the AC (Vintage Air) has been ordered and should be here the following week. I'm a bit worried about putting in AC in the truck as it didn't originally have AC and requires some "fitting" as I've been told. We'll see.


I've also purchased new oak wood and trim for the bed and a sweet billet style dash assembly with Autometer gauges.. The dash assembly and gauges are the same as below.



The next few weeks are gonna be fun!