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| So how do you get your recently graduated seniors to come work on the truck? Feed them pizza and root beer. |
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| After scuffing the dash and removing all of the last knobs and stuff, we moved on to priming the interior. |
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| This is after the bed liner was sprayed on the interior... |
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| Then we started on the bed, we primed it with epoxy etching primer, then moved on to the bed liner. |
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| Looks pretty good, and seems really tough! |
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| No real big news, but we put POR15 under the bed section of the unibody. We are waiting for the floor stiffeners to come in and then we will make patch panels and detail out the front section before coating it. |
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| That stuff goes on slick! Levels right out even when applied with a brush. It is tough to get into all of the nooks and crannies though. |
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| The rolling frame is fairly complete. We will run the brake lines and install the drive shaft. |
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| The block hugger headers are cool for a mustang or something but I think we will modify some other headers to go outside the frame rails. Why work in so close when there is a ton of room outside the frame? |
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| I like the sparks and noise in our shop. |
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| The underside of the body, inside the cab and inside the bed are now sandblasted. When it is all straightened out, we will POR15 it. Thanks to the guys at Ideal Distributing for their wise council. |
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| The only real rust was these floor supports that were almost gone. |
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| See the air where metal used to be? |
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| Little patch panels here and there to fill the holes. |
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| Vacuuming the rust and dust and sand |
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| This is the passenger side body mount support area. This is the only rusty areas that we found, but it was on both sides. |
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| Patch panels. We will treat the rust before we put the patches on. |
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| Patches and holes filled in the bed. Getting ready for the POR15. |
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| So here is the deal. We have a Ford automatic overdrive transmission, great with the 4.11:1 rear end gears. We built the mounts to fit the period correct Y block engine. To mate it up to a Y-Block takes some serious folding dollars, $850 is the cheapest I was able to find it. We couldn't find a Y block in good enough shape to rebuild. And rebuilding is expensive. So we decided to go with a 289 that I had sitting under my bench which would bolt up to the AOD. Yeah right... |
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| The 1965 289 needs to have a rear sump to clear the cross member, so the kit is ordered from Speedway motors. After I received the kit, I found out the auto shop had a 302 with the rear sump pan on it that I could have had for free....arrrgh!! |
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| Here is the rear sump pick up being installed. Everything looks good, but the dip stick. The one they sent was for a late model block with a hole in the side of the block, so we will fabricate something...oh and the flex plate won't go from the 65 289 to the AOD, so we have to special order one. And so the idea of bolting it up goes out the window...Next thing is to mate the trans to the engine and build the engine mounts and transmission cross member. Oh and I bought a donor truck for the parts and pieces. Yee haw. |
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| Unbolting everything from the frame, and touching up welds |
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| Who doesn't want peace, dude? I turned the students loose with the wire wheel to knock the majority of the crusties off of the frame |
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| Here it is, ready for the sandblaster |
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| Cleaning the rear axle housing. |
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| D&D Auto body in St. George Utah did the sandblast and paint. Satin black epoxy over an epoxy sealer. Awesome. |
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| Spray bombing the suspension pieces |
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| Ignore the big block chevy rocker covers. |
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| Still cleaning the rear axle housing. |
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| Laying down the primer on the rear axle housing. |
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| We sprayed it Dixie high school blue, and put a DHS logo on it. Here my student is peeling the vinyl decal off leaving the white underneath. |
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| They must think this is a DOT job, one guy working... |
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| The rear of the frame |
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| The front suspension is together... |
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| Unmasking the rear suspension pieces... |
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| The logo |
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| We were able to find all of the bolts. Amazingly enough. |
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| This is the rear housing installed. Now for bits and pieces... |
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| Welding the Rear shock mount. We are using a VW bug shock, it seems to be good enough | and small in diameter. |
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| This is a little hard to see. |
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| This is a picture of one of the students putting the wheels on the front. |
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| Here is the front at ride height. Next we start on the front shock mounts. It is coming together. Once we get the shocks mounted, then we will blow it apart and sandblast and paint. Yee haw. |
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Yay, it's like Christmas morning.
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| This is with the airbags squished. The c-notch is barely off of the axle tube. |
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This is with the air pumped up. Now the fronts... |
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| OK so we decided to C-Notch the frame, just for better clearance. |
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| It's a little hard to see here, but here is the C-notch. |
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| So here it is with the C-notch sitting on the axle tubes. The axle will be sitting on the airbags, we just didn't want metal on metal. So it won't be quite as low as shown here, but almost. |
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| Here is the problem. The pumpkin will probably bump into the bed with the frame this low, and we really didn't want to build a bump in the bed for clearance. Also the drive shaft line is getting really close to the cross members. |
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| That brought the rear end down, the frame is just about level to the ground now with front and rear on the stops. Next we need to beef up the C-notch area because cutting it out weakened it quite a bit. And even though we no longer have the leaf spring perches in the rear part of the frame that require the strength, we are planning on putting on a trailer hitch, so we need it to be strong in the rear section of the frame. |
