Features My Tri-Five Custom Truck Build

Been meaning to start this build thread for a while. Now as we near completion on the build (late July or Early August), I thought I would start throwing some of the pictures up. I really regret not taking more photos along the way, especially in the early stages.

I will apologize up front if I offend anyone, you will see things such as airbags, IFS, and electronic fuel injection. Some might go as far as to suggest I wear gold chains around. I think in the end you will agree it is certainly HAMB appropriate in its final trim. Just bear with me until we get there.

I bought a 55 2nd series out of a junk yard just outside of Shawnee, OK. I don't even remember the year now, must have been around 1995. Plan was to follow along with my high school buddies and get an old truck to terrorize the town. They had old F1's, F100s, and mid sixties Chevy's.

My dad was always going to help me get it together. It sat in our barn for a few years as we stripped the frame and prepped it for a Camaro subframe graft. Well as they say, life happens. The truck sat with very little progress for the next few years as I made my way through college.

Near my graduation date, my father was hit by a college kid that fell asleep at the wheel after an all nighter studying. My father was not wearing a seatbelt and was killed instantly. Fortunately no one else was critically injured.

Shortly after this I enlisted a family member to help me finish it in our spare time. He built dirt track cars and was going to help me with the welding and the fabrication work. The pictures attached were of those first weeks when we started getting everything set.

Rather than going down the road of a subframe, we went mII with airbags to make it easier for install by my helper.

I'll try to get pictures up every few days....thanks

 

for some reason the pics dropped off I think.

 

Good looking start. Keep the pics coming!!

 

Good start! Sorry about your dad. I'm sure he'd be proud.

 

love them trucks! got a bunch of miles on my 57. you will be in heaven once its done!

 

I read a lot of posts from the guys just starting out with their first projects. They seem to mention how their tastes have changed from the beginning planning stages to the final product. I was no different. I started out to build this style of truck. I still to this day like a lot of parts about this truck. The headlights, the different grill, the shaved exterior pieces. But I never really was into pro street and I didn't care for the interior style with the digital dash and the electronic seats etc.

Well all of that was putting the cart before the horse anyhow. I had parts to track down.

Next, the suspension fabrication....

 

looks like you're off to a good start. These things always start slow.

 

Good luck with the project and keep the progree coming, I have a build project I am gathering parts for and once I have acumalated most parts I will start one also. Hope to see you at a event soon!

 

As mentioned before we decided to go with the MII IFS kit and a 4 link rear. Truck was always intended to be a weekend driver, a show and shine car, and hopefully to do something like the power tour. I couldn't get my mind around investing the amount of time and money for a trailer queen.

So these pictures are actually over a few years, the last 3 are of the finished and painted frame as it sits today. Frame mods were the front crossmember, welded and boxed. The rear framerails were raised and boxed to allow similar to a c-notch. Frame mount brake booster, frame mount airtank and pump, rear cross members were strengthened with tube to reinforce the panhard rod.

As you can tell from the rear end, that is not stock so next time donor vehicles....

 

I like Chevy trucks. Keep on working......

 

Parts Car time. had a 95 caprice 9c1 parked and left for dead at family members house. Bought my truck originally with no engine and no trans anyhow, figured let's go with EFI. Measured rear end width and driveshaft length, and was in luck, both were close enough to use without hacking stuff up. Got a quick set of inner fenders fabbed up, going to clean this engine bay up a lot from here. Hoping to get it to the point where it sorta looks like a mechanical rochester injection.

For those of you that have sensitive eyes and weak stomachs, look away now....

last warning....

 

Good start!

 

I decided to have a local shop do a rendering when I was down in Houston. They were more of a street truck shop instead of a hotrod shop but a friend had paint done there and thought they were good.

Good news is that it didn't cost much, bad news, well wasn't what I really wanted.Tailgate way too flat, LEDs, monster billet wheels, spaceship looking interior. I had sent over pictures of various westergard customs and this is what I got back. So needless to say, I kept on looking.

 

Found out a little over a year ago that I would be moving from Houston back to Oklahoma for work. My truck was still in Oklahoma in the initial project stages. I knew I would need some help to get it finished so I started checking around and got introduced to Cody Wentz. After a few phonecalls back and forth it seemed like we were on the same page. I am a younger guy and Cody is younger than I am but we liked the same cars and trucks, primarily customs. Cody had this drawn up:

Decided to move forward and let Cody handle paint and finishing up the body etc.

 

So first step was to fix the flat rear end that we welded up. Here are the pics of where it was started. Last one was right before the structure was welded back in. I'll post the structure and framework for the rear of the bed tomorrow probably.

 

Rad truck man. It looks as though it will be a reliable driver, Now that rendering that cody did.....I swear I just yesterday saw that truck in a pic here on the HAMB. At least the front of it anyhow. SHOW US MORE PLEASE!!!

 

Looks real good keep it up

 

Yeah it's mine. Was at salina and Louisville. more to come

 

Forgot one thing on the rendering post above

Before I turned the truck over fulltime (2 kids, a job, a wife, etc etc), I had wanted to use a 47 olds grill in it. Cody decided to make something in that vein rather than cut up a perfectly good 47 grill. He used to work for custom classic trucks, and he documented this grill for the Aug11 tech section. Hopefully is ok to link to it here:

http://www.customclassictrucks.com/techarticles/1108cct_fabricating_custom_grille/index.html

Given that the truck was going as a mild custom, the stock bed/tailgate was needing to go, but I could not decide what to do with it. We ended up taking a shape similar to the kopper kart. The fascia under the grill we used influence from the rear of the lil coffin.

 

Is this your truck at Salina? I really like it.

 

Used conduit as a skeleton to skin sheet metal over. Here you can see the rear of the truck coming together. Used caddy tail lights turned sideways for something different.

We had made a frame for the tonneau before dropping it off to Cody. He modified it to fit the curve.

Truck will be a full on driver once it is done, so license plate is there, will also get AC, seatbelts, etc.

I expect there's going to be some more tech articles done in CCT in the upcoming months, probably one on this step pictured.

 

That's me sitting behind it in the ballcap and my wife next to me. But you stole my punchline

 

Woops...

 

For the front, liked the look of the olds grill, already put that info up previously, and the bottom was like the lil coffin rear pan.

Here is how it started and turned out. Shaved turn signals too to clean it up. Shots and metal and shots in filler.

If you look closely at the shots of the cab on the cart versus the others, you can see how the cab was chopped just a little. Came out to about 3" in the rear of the cab and 1" in the front. I'm pretty tall so that's about all we could take out of it and still ride comfortably. Don't think I have any shots of the chop itself. I'll post them if I find some.

 

Ok, paint time. Shot 3 or 4 different mixes of blue, pearl, and flake and got to this. Hard to see the flake, but some real variation in the blue from light to dark.

 

Very nice! I love the sculpted bed and front end.

 

Interior shots. Naug done by Walt in Kansas. Some sweet seats pirated from a mini-van of some sort and chopped up a bit. Was pretty happy with how the seats turned out relative to that rear glass. Wanted the tops to sit just under the glas level so you wouldn't see them from the back of the truck.

Steering wheel is impala, used some drum wrap for the dash covered in plexi and trimmed out with welt. I have some new knobs and stuff coming to replace the "street rod" ones that are on there for now.

 

Now is when I should have jumped in.

Again, I really think your truck turned out great!

 

Here are some pics from Salina this year. We were awarded "most spectacular leadsled" and the Hub Harness HOF pick.

Truck was 99% complete, still have to hook up the AC, some music via a hidden stereo unit, and the fuel tank.

We were approached by Trace while in Salina to bring the truck out to Motorama, so we will be there.

The truck was also at the Street Rod Nats in Louisville. While out there Rod and Custom stopped by and will be shooting it in September for a feature at some point. Custom Classic Trucks will be running more tech articles in the upcoming months and will also feature it at some point in the future.

The response has been really good. I never set out to build a truck quite this wild, but it sort of morphed as ideas started to develop. I will start driving it around Tulsa after some of this other stuff runs its course.

If anyone has any questions feel free to post or send me a PM. I'll try to get some more pictures in the next few weeks on some of the smaller details.

 

i seen it at starbirds and i got to say that is one awesome truck!