Projects Broke down and hired help to work on my Unibody

Great thread. I enjoy so much seeing you and the boys doing so well on this project. The memories will be there for life. HAPPY BUILDING GUYS!! Mikey.

 

Hey thanks! We took about four weeks off because I had other commitments. I still need to get the extra photos posted from before that.

They came over last Sunday, but it was very cold in the shop, even after having the heat on for a couple hours. It had snowed the night before and I just didn't feel like laying around on the cold floor lol.

We came in the house, cranked up the fire and I put The Boys of Bonneville dvd in. If you haven't seen it the movie is about Ab Jenkins. If you are a salt flats guy, heck even just a regular old car guy, you will dig this movie.

When it was over I asked them what they thought. Both said it was really cool, and neat to see how it started out at Bonneville. Wyatt said he put Abs name in his phone so he wouldn't forget it .. LOL, good kiddos.

Prolly have it back on the road real soon. Dalton has his drivers permit now and he's chomping at the bit to get behind the wheel. I have to be better about working on it even when they aren't there. To me its just a fun hobby project to putz around with. They have the same mentality I had when I was a kid ... C'mon, lets get this going so we can take it out and be seen lol.

 

Well we are plugging along on this project. Obviously I haven't updated the pics. Looked through them and just nothing really sticking out like some of the earlier easy to see progress. So I haven't bothered to post any up.

I did contact Bomonster here on the board to do some artwork for me. It was supposed to be a surprise for the boys but their dad accidentally leaked it out. Ill frame the original and hang it in the shop, and Im going to have T Shirts made for the boys ... they are pretty pumped!

 

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Some recent pics. We've been wringing out some of the bugs, the boys are digging it =)

Might darken up the spokes some, they seem a little light. We left all the wires long until we were sure everything works well. Im going to order some nice connectors and pretty up all the wiring.

Also need to get rid of the steering column and wheel. Its all custom fitted, but I really hate the look of it. I took off all the extra junk ... tilt, cruise, and key. I still dislike it, and the wheel is a little too small.

 

Looks like you and the young help are doing a bang up job. the oldest one is going to be all grins when he get to drive it.

 

Great, now I want a unibody... Great job! And extra kudos for getting the kids involved. My daughter (14) is helping me work on restoring her non-HAMB friendly first car. She's right in there with me dismantling and scraping crud off it. Then I just have my 2 boys to go

 

We are going to leave the body alone until probably next summer. But I do want the interior fixed up. They are anxious to try out sewing, should be interesting lol. Probably going to keep the same seat, but sew it up with a diamond pattern. Might keep the headrests if we can figure out a way to keep em 60's looking. Also going to get some older Stewart Warner's for the dash, and probably a few to hang under the dash, 60's style. I want to do a bed cover, leaning towards snapped down version. Whatever we do I want to keep it in driving condition.

We have another project to pull into the shop, its a little off topic (69 Chev panel truck with a 68 nose) so I wont be posting pics here. But I will update this thread as the boys do new things.

Thanks again for all the nice comments

 

You should let them start a build thread for the Chevy on 67-72chevytrucks.com, it's a good site and the boys will be welcomed with open arms. If you do be sure and let us know so we can follow the progress. The enthusiasm they have is great.

 

Yeah Ill post over there, I've been a member at that site for over 11 years (same name I use here). 67-72 trucks are another ride I've always liked, and will probably have at least one style of those at all times.

 

Well we had a small set back today. I ran in to the auto parts store looking for some sort of coolant flush system, came up with nothing. Went out to the truck and not even a click. All the electrical seems to working fine and brite. Didn't feel like troubleshooting in a parking lot so I used the ol AAA card and hitched a ride home =)

 

Thats part of the "fun". I had a bad wire coming off the starter to the solenoid on the firewall about 2 weeks ago. Had power every where else but when you turned the key you would here 1 click from the solenoid and nothing else. Good luck in your trouble shooting.

 

So yesterday the boys came over for the usual Sunday work party. I had some stuff I was doing in the yard I wanted to finish up so I gave them direction on where I wanted them to start while I was finishing up outside.

Five minutes later they both come out of the shop .... He isn't helping ... yes I am, I was just doing such and such, No he wasn't. I just looked at em both ... how old are you guys? So we go back inside and start over. I need the starter pulled which requires taking off a lot of stuff just to get the long tube headers off.

We need to weld on the inner fender anyway, and I need the battery box off to make the mounting permanent. I'm also happy with all the front wiring for the lights, horn etc. So I want the grill and surround off so we can make the wiring behind there very tidy looking. I also need the truck back up on the rollers so we can scoot it around.

So it was a big job for the boys, basically take the whole front end off except the left fender, fender well, and radiator support. We got a new bumper too so the old one has to come off.

Not much drama after I was there supervising LOL. Wyatt was taking off the front bumper and told me that one of the bolts was actually impossible to remove ... Oh really, impossible? Who put it on in the first place, you did, remember? Oh yeah. OK then, roll back under there and look at it a little closer and figure it out. A few minutes later he had it out and was all smiles ... good job Wy =)

They were starting to drag by the end of their work time and they still had a few things to get finished. Hey what are those things you guys like at DQ? Blizzards? YEAH!! If you can knock the rest of this out in fifteen minutes we will roll through the drive through and get you a couple of large Blizzards to enjoy on the ride home. That kicked them in the butt, and they finished up lol.

 

Not a single photo uploaded! Not one! Can't figure what the hell is going on with this board anymore, v ery frustrating!!!

 

Hey man Im sorry. Ryan says its a fix in the works, but I found out I can reload them one by one, its just going to take me a little while. The only ones that are showing up for now are the ones posted after the board change.

Here is a pick of the "carnage" after they were through. I need to pick up some period valve covers, I hate the ones on here. I have a few sets of old ribbed ones, just not sure if I want to use them. I really like the Edelbrock repops that have the name in a small arc. The engine bay will be mostly hidden anyway, so this are will probably one of the last I spend money on.

 

Well as you can tell I have been horrible about adding pics or even keeping up with this thread. We had a bunch of problems with hot start and I have a thread on that. We got a new steering column but have not installed it yet. Most of the wiring is right where we want it ... I just need to take the time to edit down and post up some pics. Looks like there is still a ton of missing pics, something they are still working on I guess.

Here are a couple of pics. My grandson (2) last week, sitting on the bumper. He really likes Grandpas Hot Rod Truck ... its noisy lol. We decided awhile back we were going to paint the roof the same as the bumpers, grill and interior accents. Looks like we have two really nice days in a row this weekend and since my truck lost its garage space to other projects we decided to get it done this weekend. Dalton did the painting while Wyatt was working on stuff in the shop.



Now Dalton has driven the truck while he had his driving permit, but he recently got his license and I was going to let him take it for a spin by himself ... but he forgot his license today.

 

Dang you guys kicked that unibody in the head. Good job.

 

Not much of an update, never did get around to sizing and posting the extra pics. But we finally managed to find some spare time to run out to the family farm (all retired folks) and take a couple of pics of the boys next to the truck and wearing the t shirts 396skip was kind enough to send us gratis! We have other projects we are working on now and mostly just enjoying bombing around in the Unibody, fixing little things that crop up now and again.

 

AWESOME !!!!!!!!! I'm going to post 2 of the pictures on our Face book page