Hey everyone!
i started this project because my roof was getting rusty and bothered me, the truck was my old roommates and he got it from his father, used to go take it out on the freeway when he was 16 years old (without his dads permission of course) but he was 44 when he took his own life, and out of respect for him and all he did for me, i have spent far too much money making this truck something he would be proud of.

When i got the truck from his mother, she had the tow truck at her house ready to scrap the truck and another car for maybe 75 bucks the driver said. I offered her 200 for the truck. She accepted. The truck no longer had the 20r factory engine. It had a 22r motor swapped in, it didnt take anything to get it started. New battery and some gasoline and she fired right up! But after driving it for a month, i could hear just the lightest knock knock knock and my mechanic friend said, if you drive it easy you could probably get a few more years out of it before it blows. I looked at him and said, im not easy on this truck? This is my fast truck, which i should say quick truck because it had smaller wheels on it so speedo was always off 5mph but it did feel quick for a little truck.. so i ended up ordering sunwest automotive supreme 22r long block, which has 9.3:1 compression and 1mm oversized valves and ported and polished, 272 cam. I also ordered LC ENGINEERING pro street distributor, FAST ignition box and coil, electric fan kit, weber 38/38 offenhauser intake manifold and fuel pressure regulator, a crank scraper, and a lighten flywheel (steel one not the super light aluminum flywheel( and clutch kit, master cylinder and slave. the truck already had a triple Y header and full exhaust.

But the truck looked like a beater.. both fenders were beat up pretty good, the paint job was faded and lots of dings and dents. So about a year ago a friend of mine started renting this shop that had a infloor lift, a full paint booth with ventilation and lighting. And we stripped the truck down and started sanding and bondoing the dents.. if i could go back and do it all over again.. i would have removed the cab and bed from the frame and painted the frame and be able to paint things easier, i instead had to work around the engine when i painted the firewalll. But i have never painted any car or truck previously. Ive rattle canned some mini bikes and i did use a hvlp gun to paid a equipment trailer but all that required was spraying it on as thick as possible with no care about finished look

So i wanted to insulate the cab some, i used some FATMAT sheets on the roof, the entire floor and inside the doors. I also sprayed the bottom of the cab with some sound deadening heat resistant undercoating to help with road noises, i had new headliner and carpet installed, i had new door panels made and the sun visors rewraped. There are still some things i need to finish. I was a little rushed towards the end. So it could be sanded and buffed out better, but overall it looks 1000x better. I think my old roommate would be happy.

Now i just gotta get it charging correctly and no smoking voltage regulators..

 

That looks great! Nice job and a nice place to work.

 

Very well done, thanks for keeping another piece of history on the road.

I got a long way to go before paint, but we are together in dumping $$$ into a nostalgia project.