Projects The Official "Chop Sewage" Build Thread Start to Finish?

THanks holmes, It's been a labor of persistance....seems that latly due to the issues I've been having (IE the rotor issue) and a couple other issues that keep popping up seems like it's one step forward and two back.....seems like everyone else has the same issues....

and as I've eluded too....don't matter how long it takes it's gonna get done right...

 

any updates?

 

WOW! great build. Tons of work in that body. It is looking good!

 

Sorry for the delay in the update!

We been busy with the whole Life thing and trying to squeeze in some quality time on the truck seems to have come up a bit short as of late.....

And Quite honestly? I've been fighting a funk...you know the one where you been at work at the project for so long you just about lost sight of where you've been and where you're going...yup, I'm there...or at least was...

As of today, hopefully I've broken that...Cause I hit a MAJOR milestone today!!! The Rolling chassis is DONE yup DONE (well cept for what you'll see in a minute, I'll explain that....)

Basically I've been layin pipe....Trans cooler lines, brake lines, fuel lines air lines and finally exhaust....as well as making everything nice and tidy as I go along...thise kugel components stainless line clamps while not cheap sure do work and look GREAT. heckofalot better than adel clamps.

Long story short, I've been taking my time running all these lines and trying to out guess the truck and the engineering therein...shoot, I'm sick of flaring brake line thats for sure....

I'd been looking for a muffler for some time and havent really found one that I'm willing on plunkin down some dough on (that I actually like the sound of) SO a few years back I bought 4 new cherry bombs at a yard sale for 5 bucks...still in the box!

They've been sitting in the attic for a few years and when it came time to assemble the mandrel bent 2.5 inch tube from the puzzle it was to the system you see I still hadnt decided on a muffler....SO while I didnt like the sound of single cherry bombs I figured....what the heck! why not weld two of em together and see how I like that?

Bottom line, if I dont like it it's easy enough to drop the muffler assembly and make the appropriate modifications as I engineered the exahust system to be modular (5 removable pieces to be exact, the H pipe and mufflers are one system, the the two rear pipes and the two pipes off the manifolds) My whole point? I wanted to be able to change a transmission without removing the engine (that was the way it was set up before)

The H pipe was a not easy, lotsa angles to contend with as well as the fact that I'm LOW, gotta keep things tight as far as clearances are concerned....seeing as the pipe I was dealing with was non-aluminized I sanded everything down and shot it in the high heat ceramic paint I had left over from the engine....hope it holds up, if it doesnt, oh well....the pipes off the manifilds were ceramic coated in black by my local powder coater....stainless steel band clamps were used to hold the slip joints together and lotsa rubber mounts used to keep things in place....I probably overkilled the mounting system, but it's pretty close to the drive shaft so better to be on the safe side. The rear tubes that will go under the roll pan are done but seeing as I have not determined the actual height of the pipes in relationship to the bed I left them long as to figure that out once the bed goes on....fear not the pipes will go all the way to the back...The H pipe and the full length out the back exhaust system coupled with a really long flow through muffler will hopefully be as quiet as I think it may be....we'll see, for the lack of money I got in it, I'll take my chances.



This pick is just a little different angle on the frame mounted brake booster assembly and brackets that DW provided from Welders series...and all the spagetti of Brake lines....I used an under M/C prop valve....worked out quite good and nice and tidy, nothing goes below the frame rail.




The next two pics are proof that you can NEVER engineer out all of your issues....I had runn all my fuel line on the outside of the frame rail as to get away from the exhaust heat, I also ran the carb feed back from the mechanical pump to the rear of the engine to feed the 3 duece set up from the back so I wouldnt have to deal with all the junk on the front of the engine....welp, while I was squirting paint on the pipes, I tripped over the sway bar and realized I was sick of tripping over it and cleaned it up and shot it as well....upon installation you can see the major clearance issue that I will have to rectify.....oh well....thats the only thing I have to re-do....I'm still calling the chassis done as that job will only take me a pair of hours to fix....



And the last pic....the board from hell....this is what keeps track of the carnage...hard to tell due to alot of the stuff that was crossed off the list was crossed off using the same color marker BUT when I started....I had three long lists of stuff to do....the are all about 65% crossed off, more in some cases...



Tonight I seam sealed the cab, tomorrow, I insulate all the lower stuff (lizard skin) and lay black chassis black on the underside of the floor....then it's time to tackle my super secret idea for the headliner while it's upside down as I need to build a mold (hint hint) I may as well build the brackets for the (gasp) A/C condenser as well (it's Florida....sorry I been driving this thing for 13 years with No A/C.....and Florida is HELL in the summer)

 

Really enjoying reading all these. Thanks for taking the time for such a full description.

 

Thanks James,

THese posts not only keep track of methods and ideas used in which we can all learn from BUT it also keeps a record of what exactly went into these steaming hunks of crap to make em nice....

Hopefully I do this one justice...

Back to the garage, I'll be picking spray on insulation outta my hair in a few hours....

 

Lookin good! One of these days I'll get back on mine

 

sweet build ...keep it up

 

I love to see full builds detailed like this. You could see this at a car show and never truly realize all the hard work time and passion that goes into making such a nice ride. Keep up the good work bro, This is truly inspiring!!

 

wow, nice work.

 

salty, truck looks good. lots of hours. I have a 49 4.5 inch chop 4 inch sectioned we worked on it for 8 years its been on the road for 11 years now looking at your pictures brought back lots of memories.

 

I was going to separate the different folks that responded into various quotes for ease of reading, but I'm tired....

Bottom line, I'm over my "funk" and hard chargin at it again...

Dont know if the members of the board really realize what kind of drive you all give to the standard at home garage builder that just wrenchin outta the carports and 1 and two car garages....I'm lucky that I have a two car but it's still tight...

What I meant to say is...ya'lls responses is what keeps us slackers wrenching and sanding....that and the light at the end of the tunnel...

Nova-cane...

Your right, I have about 1 year 6 months up to this point from the beginning of the thread to present....had I not run into the rust issues I'd likely be getting ready to fire it right now...

I project 8 more months before it's done....I wanna say 6....but we shall see...more to follow.

 

Aight.....Minor update,

Due to work I only have a few (read 3) days off this month....I aint complainin, least I gotta job, but jugglin the family and such doesnt leave a ton of time to get any quality work done on the project...

First, after the work I brewed up a rockin beef jerky....I mean who doesnt like beef jerkey? Plus I'm cheap and cant see spending 6 bucks onna few oz's of chock full of preservatives store bought product....mmmmm tasty!



Next a pic of the pygmy rattle snake That my boy found right out front as I was workin....figered out the little buggers are just as dangerous as the big ones and you cant hear em as much (sounds like a bee) and they are super aggressive...luckly my boy came in and taped me on the shoulder and stated "daddy, there is a snake with BIG hair right over there and he's MAD" (dunno where the big hair comes from, but he listened when I taught him to run away from snakes) I quickly installed him in the house so he would not witness his dad playing with the snake (IE catching it....) hey I like snakes, they keep the vermin down and try not to kill em....seems I was goin to the firing range the next day which is out in the sticks....took him bout 15 miles outta town and relocated him to a marshland preserve....



AND prob what your all waiting for, I squirted a .020 of Lizardskin sound deadener on the bottom of the floor as well as the inside of the roof, waited 12 hours and applied .025 of LizardSkin Ceramin insulation on the same locations (after knocking down some of the waves and inperfections) then waited 24 hours, sanded the ceramic coat smooth and squirted chassis gloss black on the bottom of the floor



The roof, seeing as it will be covered full time I dont need to finish coat with paint, therefore I added a matt type insulation on the inside of the roof....kinda a overkill for the roof but not really as I'm using the matt insulation as more of a buffer in thickness for whats to come on my super secret project for the inside of the roof....I dont really need the matt type insulation for the roof seeing as the lizardskin is applied but it can't hurt eh?




The lizard skin takes a bit of finesse to apply, but once you figure it out it goes relativly fast and it is very forgiving....lemme tell ya, the stuff dries rock hard and finishes great.

Oh and for the guys with sharp eyes you'll see what looks like alot of scribble on the foil backing of the insulation in the roof......it is, I wrote down a list of all the mods, the dates, who I am, the specs of the engine/trans/rear and other details that are either done or are sure things in the build....kinda a build sheet.....it'll just be under the headliner for the next caretaker (hopefully my son) to find.

 

Alrighty then! Been a long time scince I posted an update....and quite honestly I almost went through another slump in the build but got through it. Course we had to deal with the holidays, family comin in and the like along with a busy work schedule, lateral transfer at work with more responsibilities (and more pay) as well as attempt to keep the house in one peice and the wife happy (thats the easy part)...

Now when you look at these pics your gonna say....gee not alot got done... but I'm here to tell you alot got done, (not as much as I would have liked but still)

From the top down, I did all the body work on the cowl and cowl sides as well as the firewall and doghouse...lotsa panel beating, cussing, swearing shrinking and in one case streching (first 4 photos) the last two photos of the inside of the cab (sorry the cab is currently upside down hence the reason for the funky photos) Yeah I pealed all of the nails off of my right hand sanding all those little nooks and crannies in the upper cowl/hood hing area....the screwed up part is....all the work I did to smooth stuff out around the hood hinges will likley not be seen seeing as the hood hinge will bolt on top of it...

Oh well....though now would be a good time to pull a heist as I dont have any fingerprints left from all the sanding that went into it...aint she pretty though? I like little details.

So my super secret idea has come to fruition....I've never liked the fabric headliners SOOOO I made my own hard top headliner outta glass....like the section, if I would have realized that it was going to be as much work as it actually was, I prob wouldnt have done it....

That said I think it came out great. I still have some inconsistencies to fix but for the most part it's done other than the final blocking I started by wiring my A pillars with everything I'll need for my ignition and various other vehicle functions as well as my airbag system(other than the headlights....the switch wont fit with the space I have) see I didnt want to have anything in the dash other than the guages so the intent was to create a blister in the hard headliner to house all of my various vehicle functions. Its eay to get to and concealable in the blister (no pics of the cover yet...still fabbin it up.)

I started with a framework of coldrolled steel to support the fiberglass, it hooks into the rear of the cab as well as the front header and has stringers reaching out to the tops of the doors. Basically what it amounted to was the fact that I overbuilt it, I was leary that there would be too much weight hanging there so I wanted some steel to augment it.

I then made a buck for the hard headliner and started laying glass and resin....and remembered how much I hate glass work. Then I bonded it in and sanded everything down...sounds easy right? It wasnt. The plastic bag has a grouping of switches that I already pre-wired so I could get an idea of depth and the amount of room I'll need for the blister. The good part is....the 47-54 AD's have a sheet metal inner liner that goes to below the beltline and up to the top of the roof...therefore all I had to do was from that point to the A pillars...see previous photos to see what I'm talking about (directly above)

Sorry I didnt take more photos of the in work stuff, as I mentioned I kinda was in a bit of a funk and really didnt feel like working on the truck for a period of time so I spent about a month or so just working on it a pair of hours here and there forcing myself to keep going...

NOW I'm gonna get all the body work done on the back panel, squirt some primer on it, flip the cab over right side up so I can insulate and put my sound deadner in the inside of the floor THEN wet sand the firewall and cowl so I can paint them the actual color thats going on the truck (I gotta do that as I already have the engine and trans in and wont be able to get access in the front of the firewall)

Then it's time to plop the cab on the frame and start workin on something else. Now I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and am starting to see results....should go along at a decent rate now....

For those that gave up on my and this thread....dont...I'll try to update it bi-monthly from here on out. Keep following, I need the encouragment...

 

Two thumbs up!

 

looking good! keep at it I can't wait to see it done!

 

Thanks gents....

I dont know how Hot Turkey got through his....but mine has been a test of patience My end date I have in mind is Mid August...we'll see....

 

Alrighty then… Work has been progressing, albeit a bit slower than I would like but progress is progress.

I got the bodywork done on the rear of the cab and got the cab flipped back over to where it’s right side up. I cut the framework I constructed out (that essentially was initially put there to strengthen the cab while it was cut in half for the section but ended up doubling as the cradle to roll it around so I could work on the underside of the floor without laying on my back) .

I took that framework and modified the base to make another smaller cradle to put the right side up cab on wrapped all the steel with a thick felt fabric I had laying around so it wouldn’t scratch the floor paintwork and laid the cab on it…

I then repaired the butchery that I’ve been meaning to fix for years on the seat riser and laid the factory recommended coats of Lizardskin sound control formula in the floor. I waited the 12 hours between coats and sprayed the ceramic Lizardskin insulation in the floor as well. Everything sanded out smooth and looks good. It’s a shame we’ll have to cover it up with carpet.

Next step: I’ll be finishing up the upper parts of the door jambs and the roof as far as the bodywork is concerned and then its time to block the firewall for gloss paint. Once I get the firewall in gloss the cab will be ready to set back on the frame and won’t be moving for the duration of the build…

Pictures 2 and three of the top row from left to right are of the B pilar where the setion occured. I was unable to finish this part of the section due to the strengthening framework being in the way. The widths of the pillar were about a 1/4" different. A well placed pie cut and weld finished this off nicley.

I estimate 2-3 more days before the cab gets remounted…

I really like the lines the section provided for the truck...it's really starting to come together, the hard headliner looks awesome right side up...I was having a hard time getting a visual with it upside down.

 

Have you settled on a colour/wheels/general style for the truck?

 

great build, thanks for including all the little details, All the best and look forward to seeing the finished truck.

 

Color....Yes, Going with a two tone, Tequila yellow with a heavy flake up top and a candy orange on bottom....honestly I dont like yellow or orange and they are two colors that really arnt what they seem and not really yellow or orange...really cool colors....

Wheels....I dunno, I've been flip flopping like a chick and her shoes on them....

I'm open for suggestions on the wheel and tire choice....I was thinking about Radir Tri-ribs but availability on em sucks

 

i really admire what you've done!

 

Hey Cory, glad to see the progress. I'm kinda in a rut on this but I could see it with wide whites and Caddy Sombraros. Might not work with the flake thou, wrong era.

 

that's pretty badass! makes me want to section mine.... NAAAH!! maybe some other time.

 

Thanks for the kind words....means alot especially coming from alot of the members I know personally that I came up with.

Well the paint has a heavy metal flake underlay it's actually not the flake in the clear buisiness....so your idea (Metalman) may be a viable option...one I've considered.

Here's a quick sampling of the two colors I'm using....alot is lost in the translation of the computer screen though...I actually chose them off of color chips cause I didnt like em in the computer. See, if you ask me that orange color on the computer screen looks like a burnt orange....and the yellow, looks like snot to me on the screen, but if you see in in real like view...they're awesome.

 

So Latley I've been working on getting the firewall straight so I can shoot paint and get the cab mounted up the final time and not have to remove it again for paint....

No I know what the book says you should paint all your components at the same time...I get that, however, I'm extremly limited on space and gotta get a big peice of the puzzle put back on it's permenent home....the frame (which is done with engine/trans already installed.) So I've been tweekin and tunin the firewall getting it straight for paint....if the color is a shade or two off, I'll worry about blending it when the time comes.

SO this is my first time messing with these Auto Air Colors water based paints, I expected a learning curve and was using the firewall to cut my teeth on this new to me process. I read the book many many times, did my research, read alot....and at the end of the day....I still screwed it up!

I found if you follow the directions to a T you wont screw it up....If you revert back to your "shooting base/clear" mode your gonna screw it up.

This stuff like to be dusted on in multiple thin coats....I got the first coat dusted on and then reverted to what I was used too.....IE wet coats....this compound doesnt like that and it showed...

I had more runs than a track star....






I walked away at that point, went and played mini golf with my boy and wife and let it dry....

Once I came back I re-read the directions, dry sanded my track meet down and started over, gave it three light dustings of sealer with 10 mins dry time between each coat and at the final coat walked away for over an hour.....

It came out perfect. THe track star had been retired from my firewall. Amazing what happens when you follow the directions....



I gotta add that these paints are extremly non-volitile, I was mixing paint in my kitchen and shooting in my garage and it didnt smell the house up....no complaints from the better half....I like that aspect of these paints.



I then started laying the heavy flake over the sealer (following the directions of course)



While waiting for coats to dry I popped the top on the color coat (Candy orange) and did not like what was in the can....



I wont make a final judgement until the clear goes on cause the candy orange is a transparent paint....that bonds with the clear, so the true color wont show until the clear is applied....I sure hope it comes out like the color chip. This is when the faith button comes in....

I finished the three coats of silver flake base and this is what I got.




Again after that process I walked away and called my Pop in New Mexico to tel him the good news.....shit was going on! (As seen by the below photo) It's 0200 at this point and I been awake for a long time....



I'm pretty pleased about how things are going and scince I started following directions have had NO flow checks (runs) and zero fisheye.

I layed the first coat of candy orange on....



Waited the appropriate amount of time and layed the other two coats on...



I still dont like it....When it was wet it was a safety cone orange...HOWEVER by the time I woke up it had dried a whole bunch and started throwing out color similar to the color chip so there is hope...I'll be leaving it be for the next few days I'll be at work and letting things cure....My first day off it'll be getting clear, buffed and cut....

Here's hoping for the best....

Once you get the hang of it, these water based paints go on super easy...

And this here message is for my Dad.....

Dad, I love ya....

NOW GET THE HELL ON THE HAMB CAUSE I KNOW YOU GONNA BE READING THIS

That is your official call out....Lookin forward to your input on this thread

 

Woo-hoo! Paint at last. Can´t wait to see it done.

 

Just on the firewall but it is progress....

Once I get the cab on this upcoming off cycle (my off days seeing as I work 12 hours shifts) ... Actually... spray the clear, cut, buff and then dig up enough guys to put the cab on the frame... (cab should be on in a few days)

THEN I gotta section the doors (yeah I havent done that yet) and the rest of the truck will remain in a roughed in state until the final fab work is done...

THE GOOD NEWS:

Just went out to the garage after the waterbased paint had been sitting for 36 hours or so....it's curing nicely and I like it a whole lot better...

At least I dont hate it now....

 

man your doing a killer job on this build!!!! you are really making good progress especially in such tight quarters it can make things go alot slower. looks like you've spent alot of attention to detail and it shows!! my hat is off to you salty and keep it up.

 

Amazing job! In the past I haven't been a fan of underfloor brake set ups. I think what you have done came out really nice.

The stuff I see on the HAMB never ceases to amaze me.