FULL REBUILD: 1949 Chevy 3100 Truck with a Hopped Up Straight Six and Patina Paint

today we're starting a brand new project we've got a classic 1949 chevy 3100 and by the time we're done it's gonna have a great retro look and be powered by chevy's vintage straight six but we're starting off with a road test to see what the 60 year old design has to offer it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks well today is a good day because we get to start on a brand new project check out our 49 chevy pickup now this thing's in great shape especially considering it's 60 years old this thing's still largely original still has the factory straight six engine and three on the tree manual transmission now this thing's obviously been gone over at one time or another it was freshened up with some paint that wasn't easy 10 or 20 years ago [Music] a pardon us sir but would you tell us what business you're in well certainly i'm a farmer powered by several versions of a bulletproof inline six the advanced design series trucks were little more than tractors with doors these vehicles were made when trucks were a single purpose vehicle and had to be tough and that's why they're still around today now it's pretty interesting with just a little bit of research will tell you about a vehicle we picked up this history guide from motorbooks which incidentally is available from the truck's website a little bit of reading told us that although this is a 1949 model pickup truck these vent windows didn't come into play until 1952 so evidently somebody along the line has done some part swapping on this truck now by the time this truck rolled off the line there was nearly three million chevrolet trucks on the road this particular body style spanned from 1947 all the way up to mid-year 1955 and gm refers to it as the advanced design series pretty modern styling for the day so if you're thinking about a classic looking pickup truck to restore or to modify an advanced design series chevy well there's plenty of aftermarket support and tons of replacement parts available now like we said this thing's in really good shape because almost all of these trucks were actually used as trucks and hauled stuff around and it shows in the bedside it's got a little bit of damage but the bed front panel is nice and straight now the wood planks i'm sure they've been replaced a time or two but take a look at this tailgate doesn't show any signs of abuse it only has a couple of dings a little bit of rust where the paint's flaked off take a look at that heavy duty bumper no that sucker's not original now inside here it's pretty obvious it's been upgraded as well for instance all these trim pieces well they're really nicely painted the seat has been recovered and it's hard to tell whether the rubber floor mat is original or not but the ultra trick cassette deck well that's not original that's an upgrade as is the steering assist knob now the headliner it looks like the original piece but one thing that's not original are these seat belts now under the hood we've got the stock 216 inline six rated at 92 horsepower our factory oil bath style air cleaner is missing a few pieces but someone has upgraded to the 12-volt alternator instead of the old-school six-volt generator now our horns look a little out of place and we're not real sure if they're factory or not our wiring well it could use a little help overall we got a real solid truck we're not planning to do a restoration so it's an excellent truck to hot rod up now it's big fun to check out a new project vehicle and it's always interesting to wax poetic about the history of a classic truck but we've got some cool plans for this thing and we're going to change it around just a little bit but like it is it's practically a time capsule so just like we do on a brand new truck we want to give this thing a thorough driving test except one small problem now that noise you heard was a faulty water pump but like kevin said parts for these old trucks well they're not that hard to find a quick call to o'reilly auto parts we had a remand pump in our hands so rather than risk damage to our half century old radiator we're going to replace this pump before we take the road test now today must be our lucky day because all the bolts came out pretty easily and didn't break off in the block making this pretty straightforward r and r [Music] all right with our new water pump cleaned up we're going to hit the mating surfaces with some loctite spray adhesive that'll hold the gasket in place give it a little extra insurance against leaks [Music] now the reason i didn't paint the water pump or even bother to throw on a new v-belt well this water pump is just a temporary fix to get us through the test drive because part of our plans involves yanking this engine back out anyway [Music] all right fire this thing up man that sounds much better now we can finally put a few miles on this thing [Music] up next we'll get out on the road for a new truck test 60 years in the making and later we'll show you how to restore vintage stainless steel trim stay tuned [Music] we got our flat foot here we go baby wide open out of my leg our classic chevy is a time capsule and it's great to be able to drive a vehicle that reminds us of days gone by but it also reminds us how nice we have it now with today's modern trucks that quite frankly ride like cars now whether you're driving down a windy two-lane road or a plain old plowed gravel road you feel the road and not in such a good way the highway not much different there's a ton of road noise and wind noise and chassis noise and vibration and it almost feels like you're literally driving in a tractor testing out these tires huh so after hogging the wheel for most of the day i decided to let ryan give it a shot now this is by far the oldest truck i've ever been behind the wheel of and i was really curious to see how it performed and first things first was a horsepower test and we barely won that one now with just a three speed the straight six was really humming just to maintain highway speed and these paved roads we're riding on well they're a luxury and something they didn't have way back when stepping into a classic truck like this gives you a much different perspective even though this truck was ahead of its time when this model debuted in 1947 you know you don't appreciate it until you ride in something like this and and this is a full load vehicle this got wipers and two of them two beers we're rolling in style by 1949. now on the country roads the skinny bias fly tires well they did okay but on the highway they were a little loud and the taller profile well it didn't help with steering response either now the old-style crankcase vent was definitely working as you can see on the bottom and on the top too and i don't know if it was the road noise or the blow-by in the cab but rhyme got a little forgetful your uh your turn signal's on [Laughter] well there's no indicator dude how am i supposed to know oh well at least it's only been like five miles so i don't look like the stereotypical 88 year old man driving this thing we're back at our favorite race track u.s 43 raceway park in etheridge tennessee so we can set up a closed course and not get any tickets now just for kicks we decided to do a straight line acceleration test knowing this is not a performance vehicle but it actually did pretty good but stopping well that's another story [Applause] [Laughter] now with leaf springs at all four corners it actually handled okay but there was one persistent problem these shift levers hang up it gets hung in the middle of the no man's land and transmission world go ahead try that all right we're good okay that's one reason to go to an automatic man oh gosh oh you piece of crap yeah baby up next we'll show you our plans to restyle this classic and later a little elbow grease can save you a fortune on bright work stick around got it hey welcome back well that was a boatload of fun man and it kind of brings you back to a time to where everything was just a little bit simpler including the vehicles and the truth is blowing the cobwebs out of this thing well it did it more good than anything because it ran perfectly and there was just a few tiny little things we had to complain about yeah our little trip back in time was the most fun i've had behind the wheel of a truck in a while now like kevin said this truck did great but there are a few areas that could use some improvement just for the sake of safety and daily drivability now the only thing that really stopped us in our tracks was the shift linkage getting hung up in between gears and if you think about it that's a whole lot going on in that one mechanism here's your first gear in and down second gear third gear and then in and straight up is reverse now after 60 years of hard driving and constant shifting it's no surprise that the square machine corners are going to get rounded off and sooner or later you're going to get stuck in between gears now for us the best way to repair the 60 year old transmission and shifter is to simply replace it we're going to use an automatic type possibly even an overdrive to help us out on the highway speeds now as far as power plants go well this 216 is obviously a durable engine this one's taken plenty of abuse but it's way down on power i guess we could freshen it up a little bit but it's got an antiquated oiling system among other drawbacks now you've seen guys swap v8s into almost anything but there's just something to be said about a hopped up straight 6 that can keep up with those v8s and if we play our cards right well it should live a long life too now drum brakes in theory are actually more efficient than a disc brake setup but you guys saw what happened at the track when we did our braking test throw in a rainy day and you guys that have swapped ends in a drum brake vehicle like this well you know what i'm talking about so a disc brake upgrade it's in order here now take a look at the suspension it's a parallel leaf spring straight axle that is one step above the horse-drawn buggy we passed on the road so we're swapping the suspension as well we've done a bunch of research and settled on a mustang two-style suspension but instead of throwing a bunch of cash at it for a turnkey bolt-in system we've got something in mind for you diy guys with a bit of welding skill so keep watching and uh might catch your [Music] interest [Music] like tommy said we're going to replace that transmission with a later model automatic and a traditional u-joint equipped drive shaft so that means the torque tube and the axle that's attached to it is going to hit the scrap pile but check this out it's got a pivot point built into the rear suspension so the torque tube doesn't bind up as the suspension cycles we're also going to replace these old-school skinny leaf springs with some sort of link setup it's got some adjustability built into it that way we can dial in our ride height and our pinion angle without too much hassle but before this stuff hits the recycle pile well check this out the shackle and leaf spring eye bolts have a grease fitting built into the bolts it's probably one of the reasons these trucks last so long now in the interior we'll get rid of the speed knob on the steering wheel and throw in some self-cancelling turn signals to help ryan out and we're going to relocate the fuel tank from behind the back seat and get rid of the fumes now we love the classic styling of this truck so we're not going to reinvent the wheel but we're going to incorporate some custom techniques from the 50s and 60s into the bodywork for the paint we're liking the aged look so you're going to have to keep watching to see exactly what we do but trust me the paint job is going to be cool and since we're keeping an inline six in our classic truck we've decided to name this project class six and believe me this is one project i can't wait to get started on build on a budget truck projects that save you time and money one of the cool things about these older vehicles is that some of the trim pieces in brightwork are made from stainless steel which has got a really nice luster and it stays shiny forever but the problem lies when it gets dented up like this headlight ring well the cheapest way to fix this short of somebody giving you one is just to fix it yourself now there's a couple of tools that you're going to need to do this repair the first one is a body hammer with an end that's small enough to get to the back side of your repair you're also going to need an anvil or a piece of steel like this one that we've got something to hammer against you don't push the metal too far risk burning through during the course of your repair [Music] now you've heard me say this before but you want to ask the metal to move rather than telling it to move that means soft hammer blows and letting the metal respond to it just like a lot of the fender trim and moldings from the 50s and 60s this stainless steel headlight ring allows you to see the progress on the front while you're actually doing the repair from the back side when it looks like you got your shape back take a fine-tooth draw file and gently file over top of the peaks that you've created with a hammer from the backside and here you can cleanly see the low spots that the file teeth have not touched this tells you where to place your next hammer blow a couple more well-placed hammer blows with a pick hammer and a quick test with the file shows us that we're right on track ready for the next step yep right there and the next step is 180 grit sandpaper on a soft block while you're doing this be sure to keep your repair small don't sand into the undamaged stainless now if you take a closer look you can see that the file marks have been repaired but the 180 grit scratches need to be repaired as well so we'll step up to 220 for the next stage after 220 we step up again to 600 grit and we'll follow it again with 1500 grit this time using water so that the ultrafine sandpaper doesn't load [Music] now even though it's pretty shiny after the 1500 we're going to polish it up in two steps starting with a coarse pad using a stainless steel buffing compound to rough out the scratches keep your work piece between the three and six o'clock position with the buffing wheel rotating towards your body [Music] now that's got the gloss up nice but it's a little inconsistent so now we go to the last stage a white rouge compound on a much softer buffing wheel finishes the job up nicely once the repair is buffed back to gloss you can buff the surrounding area to blend it in the last stage is a high quality metal polish with a microfiber towel this makes this piece look like it was stamped out yesterday now on the back side you can kind of see the repair but when you flip it over all you see is camera guy rob today it's project class six and we're folding up automotive origami we're making our front crossmember from flat stock and building up our front suspension from a budget kit it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks well today we're back on project classics our 49 chevy half ton pickup now a while ago you saw us take this thing out on the road and blow the cobwebs out of it and the truck did great and it was a blast to drive we had a lot of fun on the road however there are some things that we can make some improvements on one of them being turning up the wick and making a little bit more power now another area we can make major improvements on is the overall road manners of this old pickup now we can't expect a whole lot from a truck from the 40s but there are some areas we can make some definite upgrades this steering is kind of vague the drum brakes are less than stellar and it rides kind of rough so we're going to get rid of the leaf springs the solid axle drum brakes steering setup and these tall tires that look more at home on a green tractor than they do on a green pickup and we're going to do it all without spending a ton of cash so today we're going to show you guys how to install a suspension system that stops great rides nice and steers very precisely and like ryan said is not going to cost you an arm and a leg and break the bank we're going to use something that the street rodder guys have been using for decades the mustang 2 suspension system which debuted in 1974 in surprise surprise the mustang 2 shown here in this guide that we got from motorbooks that's available on the power block website although the car didn't really get that great of reviews sorry mustang 2 guys the suspension system is still raved about mostly due to the fact that it has a front mounted rack and pinion steering system available in power or manual now on top of the rack and pinion the geometry is nearly perfect and these systems are available in any suspension configuration this one's for a coil spring and shock now the truth is you could spend as much money as you want on a turnkey hub to hub bolt in mustang 2 system but that's not what we're talking about today what we're going to show you is something that if you've got some welding skills and you don't mind a little bit of hard work you can save big money check this out this is a paul horton's welder series mustang 2 cross member kit this flat stock actually is this cross member here paul horton's has hundreds of different products including this cross member kit and here's how it works the laser cuts along here with the little joining tabs allow you to fold up your metal pieces just like automotive origami once you've got it folded up into the correct shape well then you weld it in we're going to walk you through every step of installing and building this crossmember kit but before we do that we've got some prep work to do on the chassis to make it ready to install although there's a certain nostalgic coolness with a straight axle setup like you saw on our street test it just didn't perform very well so we're saying goodbye but you got to admit this system is nearly bulletproof and lasted 60 plus years one thing's for sure that lubrication system did not fail that's pretty cool now we're completely stripping our front end down to the bare frame rails but the exhaust system is also in the way it's rusty and it's going to get replaced anyways but when we put it back look for more than one pipe like an open road titanic most of the frame components are riveted on and they take a little finesse to remove [Laughter] now we're boxing the front frame rails for a couple of reasons first and foremost is to provide a mounting location for our new cross member and the metal we're using to box in the frame is eighth inch plate it matches the thickness of the oe frame it should work out pretty well [Music] now when we went shopping for a new project we made sure we picked out a truck that wasn't chock full of rust and it paid off big time right here so all we had to do was buzz the paint off the edge of the frame rails and weld in our new boxing plate now we don't have a frame jig but we do have a flat concrete floor and some jack stands and that's all it takes to set our desired ride height which gives us a base to build our new front end from all right good on this side that's a little bit better that's a little lower i kind of like that 11 and a half at the back 12 at the front so we're kind of the opposite of a nice rake we'll fix it now we're going to set the nose back on the truck and using a generic wheel we're going to set our axle center line since our jack stands weren't short enough we're using a four inch riser to compensate for our ride height now here's a trick that paul horton showed us with the rod in the lowest part of the wheel it naturally centers itself so you can use a plumb line hang the line from the top and mark your center line now we can't stress enough how important it is to make sure everything is square and measured properly because your entire suspension geometry is based off of your measurements what do you have 20 and 15 16. i got 20 and seven eights i mean that's real freaking close that's a 16th inch there right there i've got 20 and and 15 16. okay let's mark that although we used a permanent marker ryan's using a permanent marker so the mark doesn't get washed off [Music] now those tires and wheels we were using for mock-up well they're late model mustang takeoffs from some power block project and while those 17-inch wheels look pretty good well we think they look a little bit too modern for the direction we're taking with this old truck so we wanted to go with something a little bit more traditional not to mention at least smaller wheels more affordable too up next all these parts makes this and later we'll finish updating our front suspension stay tuned hey welcome back to trucks well today if you're just joining us we're installing a mustang 2 modern front suspension system on our 1949 chevy pickup project class 6. and we're doing it with a twist literally check this out this is the paul horton welder series mustang 2 crossmember that comes flat stock but look here it's laser cut as you can see by these lines you fold it up and weld it in and it starts like this [Music] armed with a square table edge a couple of c-clamps and a bowl full of wheaties all you do is fold the parts until they measure out to be perfectly square we're looking for 90 degrees here yep there's 90. the crossmember comes in two halves once you've got both pieces bent to 90 degrees they clamshell together and locate with the tabs now first things first you want to put several solid tacks in different locations to keep things locked together and from shifting when you fully burn in the welds now one of the great things about the welder series design is that it leaves you with a perfect gap to weld where you're going to get great heat penetration and when you grind it off for aesthetics you're not going to sacrifice your weld's integrity one look at the heat affected zone and you know we're pouring the coal to it this weld has to be strong so we're jumping around to keep things cool [Music] another high-tech metal fabrication tool that you're going to need is just an adjustable wrench this allows you to easily fold the tabs in for the rack mount and bend it into place and burn it in [Music] according to our initial measurements and markings we needed to create some clearance for our upper a arms and to get that done well we just cut a couple of slits in the frame rail so we could depress the top rail and to do that we're using a big c clamp that will hold it in place until we get it welded solid [Music] after some quick work of the flap wheel to grind down the weld and verifying our measurements we can move on to the next step now all this measuring and marking we're doing may look a little confusing and overwhelming but it's just to establish the correct pickup points for different suspension components that way this universal kit will fit your vehicle no matter what make or model you have now for a project truck named classics we wanted a traditional wheel and tire style what we ended up with is perfect for this truck these wheels come from summit racing and these are 15 by sevens with the traditional five spoke design and dark center and at just over 120 bucks a piece you can't deny the value and they look great we've wrapped them in these mickey thompson sportsman st's to give you the option of the black wall or raised white letters with a 245 60 15 we got a nice fat sidewall that's going to ride good and with a 440 tread wear rating well it's a good value because they're going to last a long time now one of the things we have to do is figure out our spindle center here's an easy way to do that what you want to do is get a straight edge put it on top of the wheel and using a level you just draw a reference from the very top of the wheel which is going to give you the outside tire diameter so that gives us an overall tire diameter of 26 and a half inches half of that which is the actual center of the wheel is 13 and a quarter inches but you have to allow for a half inch of tire compression due to the weight of the rest of the front of the vehicle so the measurement that gets transferred onto the side of the frame rail is 12 and three quarter inches now just like the cross member the upper towers that hold the coil and upper shock mounts in place are available both as a diy kit or as a completely pre-assembled piece if you're going the diy route well it's pretty simple just need some half inch spacers set your plate on top drop in your upper shock mount and you just weld it in all you got to do is add the lower pre-bent bracket what you're going to end up with is something like this now since these are already done we're going to cop out and use these all we've got left to do is make some notch cutouts so these things fit our frame we know where to make the cuts based on our previous measurements [Music] when installing the cross member it's got to be level front to back and side to side burn it in and here is where all that measuring and marking and accuracy really pays off because you know everything's gonna fit you don't have to second guess yourself thanks for coming together [Music] nice there it is now we're making progress after the break we'll stand on our new suspension now with the weight of the engine out of the vehicle you need an opposing force in our case it's ryan's giant shoe stick around hey welcome back to the shop where we're working on our 49 chevy project class 6. we obviously had a chance to fully weld in our paul horton's welder series mustang 2 cross member and upper towers even had a chance to hit him with some black paint but we want this pickup sitting on the front tires and wheels by the end of the show so we definitely need to add some more parts now lots of new parts yes but what we're not going to do on this project is start throwing money hand over a fist at it we're on a budget so we did some digging around found a company called jw rod garage these guys have been kicking out high quality street rug parts for almost a decade everything from frame rails to a full rolling chassis to several different versions of a mustang 2 suspension system so what we ended up with here is pieces of their budget-minded economy mustang 2 kit this system utilizes stock forged spindles stamped steel upper and lower control arms a stock configuration shock and coil springs set up along with single piston calipers and 11 inch brake rotors now jw rod garage offers several versions of a mustang 2 system including upper and lower tubular control arms even an airbag setup but with the economy setup we still get the benefit of an independent front suspension with rack and pinion steering and way better brakes than stock all for a budget minded price now some people might think the stamped steel upper and lower control arms don't look as cool as tubular but it's kind of a question of preference because they are just as strong now the lower stamped arm does require a strut rod for stability and triangulation now there's no custom one-off and high dollar expensive parts here all of these components are easily attainable and very affordable you may want to recruit the help of some friends to compress that coil spring though now with the weight of the engine out of the vehicle you need an opposing force in our case it's ryan's giant shoe all right or maybe two giant shoes there we go all righty that's got it [Music] [Applause] i think it's spawn there we go now we'll do a preliminary set on our bearing preload by rotating the rotor and snugging it down until it stops turning and you back it off a notch and pin it now you just might get luckier than we did and the strut rod may sit directly below the frame rail but if it doesn't line up there's nothing a little heat can't fix that ought to be about right and with the bushing and bracket assembled needs to be pulled tight up against the bottom of the frame rail and welded into position but don't just rely on the 3 8 thick bracket needs to be gusseted too hey welcome back to trucks but we've got our front suspension built up and ready to test but guess what just came in this is our manual steering rack we got from summit racing it looks great and for right around 180 bucks it's a heck of a bargain too but we may have a fitment issue yeah because it's pretty apparent we're gonna have a clearance problem with our factory chevy gusset here we left it in place to tie the two cross members together for strength it's no big deal we'll trim it to fit we've got grinders and welders no problem but for now we want to throw the new wheels and tires on this thing get the sheet metal on see how she looks [Music] well check it out what a drastic improvement over stock that a straightforward suspension change and a cool set of wheels and tires can do and now we're finally starting to see the awesome potential that these trucks have to be cool street rods yeah this thing's already got a much improved stance and once we get the weight of the engine and transmission over the front end of this thing and it squats a little bit well then we can determine if we need to go any lower and the great thing about a mustang 2 suspension setup well there's plenty of options we can always go with a shorter set of coils but just some drop spindles today we're dumping the antique torque tube from project class 6 so we can build in a triangulated 4-link rear suspension then it's how to create a custom paint effect on a budget it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks we're making some great progress on our 49 chevy project class 6. now the goals for this project were very simple right from the start it was never going to be a super expensive custom nut and bolt restoration trailer queen quite the opposite in fact we wanted to start it with a typical advanced design series truck one that everything worked but had an older restoration and then break it down component by component and finally end up with a rock-solid daily driver with a minimal investment and one that pegs the cool meter and so far we're doing pretty good so we yanked the turn of the century buggy axle and installed a paul horton welder series do-it-yourself mustang 2 cross member and wrapped it with jw rod garage suspension components so now with 11 inch rotors we're gonna stop grade with a modern suspension it's going to ride nice and it's going to steer precisely with rack and pinion steering now we had to do a little trimming on the frame to make room for the steering rack bellows but hey that's hot rodding and paul hortons has you covered with c-notch kits all kinds of tabs and builder parts including these frame bend sections that ship flat assemble easily using the locator tabs and when you burn them in you end up with something that looks magical bent that's pretty cool but the front well it's obviously only half of the equation and unless we want this old green pickup looking like some sort of clapped out two-wheel drive mud dragster well we've got to do something about the back half of this thing and we told you right from the beginning we're getting rid of the torque tube in the rear axle that's attached to it and going with something a little bit more modern something that matches the front we wanted a suspension system that had a much better ride and a little bit of ride height adjustability built into it and since we're swapping axles well we decided to go with something that had a proven track record and something we've reached for in the past so we put in a call to certified auto recyclers down in alabama and they came through for us with this ford 8.8 inch rear axle now this one came out of a ford explorer and this axle in conjunction with these tires and wheels puts our track width at only a half inch wider than the stock setup so we're in great shape there now this one's got 373 gears and just like our cheap cherokee it's got a limited slip differential 31 spline axles disc brakes and a five one four and a half inch bolt pattern this one seems to be a low mileage unit in pretty good shape the ford 8.8 can be found under explorers crown vicks mustangs rangers and full-sized pickups so needless to say they're easy to find and parts are cheap now each model has a different track width so like ryan said the explorer axle fits our application perfectly now we're not hacking stuff up we're unbolting things and taking it apart because after all these are antiques [Music] okay through the magic of television we already have the front sheet metal and the engine sitting on the front suspension that way we get an accurate representation of where the front ride height actually is and knowing where that's going to sit well we can set our rear ride height exactly where we want it and on this old truck well we're after either a level stance or even one with a slight rake to it good a little more right there perfect so with the help of our bubble gauge and a couple of jack stands we can set the attitude and altitude of our truck because after all it's all about how this thing looks coming down the road all right with the rear half of our frame stripped down and the ride height set about where we want it we're almost ready to start throwing some parts of that thing but before we do that we've got a few brackets to fold up and weld first now the kit we're using is a welder series triangulated four link now all four links have some adjustability built into them so you can dial in your pinion angle now the kit comes with the tube sleeves and urethane bushings to attach to the link ends as well as all the hardware you need it's got coil over mounts upper and lower link mounts as well as the shock tabs to attach both the axle and the frame end now before we do that we've got to bend up and weld these lower link mounts we'll be ready to go now once you have the solid block that acts as your coilover attachment point welded in you can go ahead and fold up both sides to approximately 90 degrees [Music] now here's a pretty handy tip using a thin piece of cardboard stock as a shim and the link mount bushing center as a spacer you can weld together the lower link mount and not risk it being too tight together and having to pry it apart to install the link and with the bracket tacked together go ahead and install the lower link mount bolt and that will prevent the sides of the mount from spreading apart during the final welding process [Music] okay we've removed the copious amounts of axle brackets from the explorer axle and i'm grinding everything down to smooth it out with a flap wheel but since we don't know exactly where our new four link brackets are going to go i'm going to go ahead and get rid of the rest of the paint on the axle tubes [Music] now with the tubes cleaned up we're using the original axle location to use as a reference to position our new axle now's the time to check and recheck to make sure the axle is located perfectly and we'll make sure it's dead on square before we set our pinion angle there's four inches in between the wheel and the frame yes there's four inches in between this wheel and the frame we still centered yeah i don't think we moved [Music] yeah right about there we can dial the rest in with a four-leg cool hey welcome back to the shop where we're in the middle of swapping axles and suspension on our 49 chevy pickup project class six now we've got our ford 8.8 inch rear axle centered in the frame and square we've got our pinion angle set about where it needs to be and the frame is sitting at ride height ready to start adding some brackets to this thing starting with a measurement of two inches inboard the frame mark the back side of the axle tube using a plumb bob but before you attack weld it on make sure the link and coil over mount is perpendicular to the ground [Music] okay with the lower link bar right where it belongs you can see that the front link is almost exactly where the original leaf spring mount was and we've got to box this so there's some trimming that has to be done not here right about there now this work would be possible with the bed still on the frame however the labor involved in pulling the bed off pays dividends big time when it comes to the convenience of working on both sides of the rail and being able to stand flat-footed while you can see everything that you're doing now a plasma cutter is a great tool but if you're going to weld to the areas that you're cutting with the torch make sure that you grind the slag off for better weld integrity now just like on the front of the truck we're using cardboard to make a template and transfer it onto eighth inch steel to make our boxing plates then staggering our welds and burning it in it's up to you whether or not you grind down the welds completely for a nice finish show quality look but you at least need some flat real estate to weld the frame bracket to and the front link mount pivot point needs to be about five inches below the axle center line [Music] all right now you may have noticed we haven't discussed the need for a rear track bar that's because the four link system we're using utilizes triangulated upper links with both upper links mounted at opposing angles that's going to eliminate any side to side or lateral movement of the rear axle letting us run without a rear track bar now the axle end of the upper link just gets installed over the axle tube the only other measurement we've got to pay attention to is the frame end we've got to mount it 2 and 1 8 inches above the rear axle center line that'll maintain all the correct geometry that the welder series suspension has designed into it now before we send this antique suspension system off to its final resting place we wanted to show you guys some of the cool engineering that was incorporated into this system now this is referred to as a torque tube where the drive shaft runs internally of this external protective tube now it can flex at the front where it bolts to the transmission but there's no flex going on right here it's hard mounted unlike today's conventional modular drive shafts with a universal joint instead the flex is incorporated right here where the leaf spring meets the axle there's an actual pivot point that allows for suspension articulation and eliminates binding the other cool thing is this right here now these shackle bolts are designed to last there's a grease fitting on one end and they're machined hollow here there's a grease galley and a channel it's designed to self-lubricate every time the suspension cycles now we're showing a little bit of wear but i would be willing to bet that these guys are ready for another 60 years of use it's not on this truck now these components were designed to last out of necessity because you got to remember unlike today there just wasn't a service center on every second street corner the trucks had to be tough and they had to last so it's kind of a shame to see it go almost all right now our triangulated four link is mocked up and tacked into place and remember guys each one of these link bars is adjustable so you can really dial in your pinion angle and make sure the rear axle is square in the chassis now the money we did not spend on our recycled rear axle well we did spend on these coil over shocks these are qa1's carrera line of coilovers and they cost less than you think in fact for each coil and shock combination will cost us about 180 bucks per side as far as adjustability goes we've got plenty but the shock body is threaded for adjustment we've got three different choices as far as the mounting location down here on the axle bracket all we've got left to do is come up with some sort of cross member that goes from frame rail to frame rail to provide a mounting location for the top of our coil overs once we do that burn in all these welds rear suspension will be done project class six is finally off the jack stands but for now anyway now we had a chance to finish up most of the welding and all i've got left to do is add a few gussets here and there to add some strength and finish things up now we also got our coilovers mounted you've seen the lower bracket but we added this upper cross member that's nothing more than a piece of heavy wall tubing we added a couple of tabs to and then welded directly to the frame now we're doing pretty good budget-wise on this whole 49 chevy pickup especially considering the tires and wheels are both new products the wheels are a new five-spoke design from summit racing and the tires are a new tread pattern from mickey thompson now we also went to summit racing for our coil-overs we've got less than 400 dollars in the pair the upper triangulated four link system was just over 300 bucks add another 200 for our junkyard rear axle and we're looking at about 900 dollars for the entire back half of this truck now the front was about thirteen hundred dollars but that included steering and brakes so all told we're looking at about thirty one hundred dollars for everything we've done to this truck so far we're on the right path this is what the guys were doing today it's old school custom bodywork straight from the 50s we're frenching our headlights and tunneling our taillights check it out and it's the latest in led lighting technology it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks today we're back on class six our 1949 chevy project now the last time we had this thing in the shop we did some major suspension work we installed a welder series mustang 2 front end kit along with one of their universal triangulated four link rear suspension systems and that'll locate our swapped in ford explorer rear axle we've got the whole truck rolling some new tires and wheels and now that we've got the stance just how we want it we want to make some styling changes nothing too drastic just some tasteful customizing now when you're going for a retro look it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to reach for 50 or 60 year old components to get that look just like our suspension we're going to be reaching for modern components to do our custom body mods during the research for this project and trying to figure out what to do to be period correct i came across something pretty cool check this out this is a 1956 annual custom car book by the editors of car craft motor trend and hot rod now this is one of my dad's old custom car books from when he was a teenager so obviously it's pretty special to me but what's more important is what's inside it there's all kinds of custom body mods and techniques from the 50s this is 1956 this is what the guys were doing back in the day they've even got a section for trucks and this is way cool stuff now you may have noticed like i did flipping through this book that there's a common theme with almost every single custom job in here and that is french or recessed headlights and tail lights for instance this is the stock headlight of our advanced design series truck it looks fantastic especially with the polished trim ring that we showed you how to repair a while ago but over here this is a typical classic 50s custom mod this is a french headlight the light itself is recessed back into the fender and the sheet metal is wrapped around where that headlight ring used to be now this looks like it would be a pretty involved project right not so much this is easier than you think and we're going to walk you through every step of it now another cool custom mod from the 50s is tunneling the tail lights into the fender gives the truck a cleaner more custom look and it's going to get rid of our bug-eyed trailer lights that came on the back of our truck when we bought it now you can make an argument for reduced visibility when performing this modification you combine that with the fact that we're going from a larger lamp to a smaller lamp and well we just don't want to sacrifice safety so we're going with a brighter much more visible led light plus these things look like they're straight out of the 50s we'll show you more later reliable power products group better known as rppg incorporated started out about 20 years ago with two guys a great idea and about 600 bucks between them now they've got almost 30 000 square feet 20 employees and they're kicking out some cool custom bodywork projects like these custom beams french headlight kits they come with a universal headlight bucket kit that fits several applications and includes all the hardware you need adjusters grommets a headlight retainer and seat that accepts a standard six inch high low beam bulb and a stainless steel trim ring that sits in from the top now one of the cool things about this kit is that the headlight goes in from the front whereas with your typical 50s custom the bulb is located from the back we also had them send us their fab cad tail light kit which is designed to accept the stock 59 cadillac tail lights again a traditional custom trick on top of that they sent us one of their french antenna kits along with the power antenna itself that's designed to work with most radio systems now you can take your time and hand fabricate all of this stuff but the point is with the kits you save so much time and they fit great not to mention that you're not working with a bunch of hazardous lead like they had to do back in the day actually there's very little tear down to do to get ready for a french headlight kit once you've got your antique parts safely out of the way what we're going to do is prep around the headlight so we can later use our plasma torch and trim the ring [Music] and that will allow you to sink the bucket into the fender and mark around the outside edge of the headlight ring itself now keep in mind you want to cut conservatively make sure that you leave a little room for adjustment [Music] low beam high beam flow b after testing out the new headlight we're removing the paint about an inch or so back from the opening using a 50 grit grinder [Music] cool that's what we're looking for now if you're using this kit this hole on the bottom is what you feed your wires through also acts as a drain hole it's important to keep that on the bottom because even though the buckets are universal your adjusters need to be aligned so you've got an up and down adjustment and a left to right adjustment otherwise you get a bug-eyed truck that's no good now we gotta prep the edge start tacking it in place see easy now the headlight buckets are shipped out already prime and since we're gonna be welding right around the perimeter of the ring you don't wanna contaminate your weld so we're stripping the primer back now once you're happy with your placement use the tried and true method of spacing out your tacks to minimize heat warpage now there's some obvious differences between the shape of the 60 year old fender and the brand new headlight bucket so you've got to make the metal do what you want it to do the way to do that around a very strong crown to panel like our front fender is by doing relief cuts very much the same as you would cut a paper template we're cutting the metal you can see by my reference points exactly where i'm going to do my relief cuts and then basically you just work the metal around to where it meets your new headlight bucket now there are a variety of different tools that you can use to cut the metal in your relief cuts we're using a madco grinder with a 40 000 cutoff blade which is very thin what this allows us to do is do the controlled cut that we want utilizing the torque of an electric tool now where we couldn't reach with a cut-off wheel we're using a pneumatic air saw this allows us to get into the tighter angles that the larger blade wouldn't fit into now it looks like there's a giant gap at the bottom of the ring but it's kind of an illusion you can see when i'm pulling the metal out with a pick it comes out and actually meets the edge of the headlight ring then all you do is tack it in place oops just make sure you hold the metal in place until your weld pool cools [Music] now if you're working on an older panel you're going to run into the situation to where the metal just sort of melts away from your welder there's a way to work around this when you create a solid tack weld off of the tack where you're actually working off of a more solid substrate than you're trying to weld too it's kind of a delicate dance because you're waiting for your weld pool to cool about halfway wait for it to get a bit of an orange color in your mask and then you can safely build off of it now of course there's a ton of tack welds here and we didn't want to bore you to tears so we sped it up but keep this in mind as well all the strength that is engineered into that crown stamped fender you've now deteriorated by doing the relief cuts so you've got to work around that and let it cool down effectively between tacks so you don't force a warp into it [Music] up next it's lead sled custom tricks without all the lead and later leds aren't just for your computer anymore stay tuned hey welcome back to trucks well i've got all the world's ground flush using the same technique as welding moving around so we minimize any distortion that might occur with excessive heat now we knew going in that there's going to be a bunch of filler around this light we're going to use our filler and work off of the ring to make sure that we have a nice smooth contour from our headlight bucket into the rest of the fender we're going to start off with fiberglass filler to fill in any pinholes that may be present from the welding process and then go to polyester and then finally to primer when we're done it's going to look just like this side over here blocked out nice call this thing done now when choosing the location for our tunnel tail light well we didn't just pick it at random we tried to follow the good rule of thumb of keeping it on the same plane as the headlight so before we cut this out we ran a tape line down the entire side of the truck level with the headlight and that put us right here and another reason this looks right is because it follows the rule of thirds i'm sure you've heard about basically it keeps the light in the upper third of the fender leaving two thirds of the fender exposed giving it the correct proportion now to make sure we put the driver's side light in the correct location we simply use the same technique that we used on project hrt when laying out the flame job we simply took some masking paper contoured it to fit the fender then trace the area that we had already cut out and it was just a matter of transferring the paper over to this side flipping it over and all we got to do is trace the area that's been cut out now we've lowered our truck about six inches so it works out really well that the new tail light is about six inches higher than the old one that'll keep us visible to traffic behind us [Music] now we're tracing the cutout which is a mirror image of the other side but we want to make our cut about a half inch inboard of that then we'll just trim a little bit at a time and work our way outward because just like on the front well it's a lot easier to keep removing material a little bit at a time than it is to add it back in once you've made a mistake [Music] now we're dealing with multiple curves and angles here so getting the tail light tunnel to line up correctly can be a challenge but it's also very important and it's another good reason to trim just a little bit at a time now we're using a plasma cutter just to get our general shape because it flat out gets the job done quick but once we get close to exactly where we want it we're going to switch up tools to something a little bit more precise and since we want the tail light bucket almost perpendicular with the rear of the truck well the outermost edge is going to be sticking outside of the fender and will need to be trimmed off later now you're probably wondering why we didn't just use a piece of exhaust tubing to save a bunch of money instead of purchasing a kit well these tail light buckets are hand formed to fit the 59 caddy tail lights perfectly and that's going to save us a bunch of time on the installation i don't know about you but around here time is money now like we said we're using a multitude of tools to get this job done getting more and more precise as we get closer to our final shape all right well after lots of grinding fitting and trimming we got this thing sitting exactly where we want it and that means having this join line parallel with the top of the bed rail as well as keeping the bucket as perpendicular as possible to the traffic that's going to be behind us because led lights tend to be highly directional all we've got left to do is grind some of this paint away get this thing welded in [Music] now it's pretty apparent somebody's been here before doing some bodywork [Music] and once we ground down through all the previous repairs we finally found some decent metal to work with after fitting our taillight bucket where we want it we tacked it in place spacing our tacks about a quarter inch apart and that'll keep it from moving while we grind it flush with the rest of the fender it'll also give those tack welds and the surrounding metal a chance to cool off and using a fresh 40 grit flap wheel gets the job done quickly without overheating the metal [Music] and with it all ground flush we can continue with the tack welding process now when we're doing sheet metal work like this we like to use our little 110 volt welder and some .025 wire [Music] after the break it's led headlights that are plug and play stick around hey welcome back to the shop well we've had a chance to grind down the welds on a recessed tail light as well as wipe some mud on it now we told you right up front this truck ain't gonna be a show truck now if you take a closer look you can see the multiple layers of body filler that have already been applied to this fender so rather than grind it all down to bare metal and start over we're just gonna work with what's already here there's no crime in that we're simply blending our new body filler in with the old now all we got left to do is spray it with some primer we're going to do that on the cheap as well but first we want to show you some of the new lighting technology that's going on this old truck now early on we talked about led lighting the fact is that more and more car makers are using led technology for a couple of different reasons it's brighter and it requires less power we've used led aftermarket kits in a couple of our trucks projects hrt and old school both used led tail lights now i don't know if you recognize these lights but they're from a company called mustang project they're shelby lights mustang project is the originator of the sequential led tail light kit along with these they've got some really cool products that we're going to show you but check this out this is brand new now this is an led headlight it fits in where a standard sealed beam bulb does and plugs right into your existing receptacle now we've all seen the seal beam headlights that just don't offer much illumination especially at night coupled with the fact that we're sinking it down frenching it into the fender we can do a little bit better than that and i think these guys will compensate check it out that's low beam and that's high beam we are definitely going to be able to see with these puppies no worries now ryan showed you these a little earlier on this is a modern led version of the classic 59 cadillac tail light now this is a pretty cool trick back in the day to sink these into your fenders but no longer do you have to go hunting around the swap meets or the classifieds to find them just give mustang project a call now the fact that these aftermarket lights plug right into your factory wiring makes the installation pretty straightforward [Music] the led tail lights require a chassis ground which is easily done by running a screw into the back of the bucket into the light itself with the light mounted all that's left is simply splicing into the existing tail light harness watch this now i think you'll agree that we have not lost any visibility due to changing these tail lights and we hope we've made george barris and some of his peers proud with this cool modern twist on a 50s custom trick now this looks like it's flickering a little bit well sometimes tv has a way of doing that to led lighting but trust me this is constant it's bright and man it looks cool yeah these frenched in headlights and tunnel tail lights give our 49 chevy a classic custom look with a modern twist like we showed you it's not that hard to do so if you've got some free time and access to a welder well you can get creative with your project today this is real patina this is fotina we're throwing out the painting rule book to show you how to mimic what takes mother nature 50 years to do and with just 12 bucks of electronic parts you can make an air fuel tuner for your map equipped ride it's all today here on trucks yeah we're done hey welcome to trucks well there's two words that strike fear into the heart of the average diy hot rod builder those two words are custom paint the combination of those two words usually means a boatload of time invested or a ton of money invested or a generous contribution from both of those piles either way we're going to show you today a way to get a custom paid effect without a lot of time without a lot of money and believe it or not without a lot of skill just a little bit of creative imagination now we've shown you before that the paint on our 49 well it's just kind of beat it's chipped up it's cracking it's fading it's peeling it's blistering and we haven't been very careful while we've been working on the rest of the components so some of this is our fault but we know we want to put a paint job on this truck and we want it to look cool so you've got two ways to go you can go full on restoration strip it to metal and do all those time consuming expensive steps or you can paint over top of what's here which is not always the best thing so we've got some decisions to make and we're kind of at a crossroads now if you remember the show where we frenched our headlights well you know that we found layer upon layer of very poorly done bodywork and since we don't have the time that it's going to take to strip this thing down to bare metal and we certainly don't want to put in the money or the resources that it's going to take to do a high-end paint job from the metal op well we've got one choice and that's to work with what we've got and since this paint job already looks old and weathered we're just going to give it a head start let me explain now i know you've heard the term patina thrown around in reference to antiques well it's a naturally occurring oxidation that happens on any given surface if you take a look at the truck we're looking at here well we're in new mexico just by the magic of television this truck belongs to steve silva in santa rosa new mexico and it's naturally occurring sun fade it looks awesome and it's a great part of this hot rod truck well there's a way to create this effect without using 40 years of time that we just don't have but pay attention to one thing look at the horizontal surfaces the top of the fender and the top of the hood they're darker that's because the sun shines down you got to pay attention to that when you're creating a patina look or what we're going to call fotina now we're watching our pennies all the way through this build so we want to use a wallet friendly paint system as well you've seen us use dupli-colors paint shop system on dust bronco before we're going to use that same system with a little bit different twist the paint shop system has a great color selection and everything ships just like you see it and it's ready to shoot so there's no mixing or ratios or anything like that involved and the best thing is that they're reasonably priced and available just about anywhere you can buy auto parts now normally we would use a pneumatic paint gun to apply this stuff but this time well it's going to be different we are going old school no i'm not kidding and i know if you've ever seen an old trucker car painted with a roller and brushes well it builds some serious texture and believe it or not that's what we're after way different than a conventional paint job where you want it smooth now before we explain this in detail and we will just like any other paint job we've got some prep work to do now i'm going to say right off the bat that this is not a typical paint job especially since we're masking it before it's even sanded now we're using 180 grit sandpaper to prep for a top coat which is very unusual in that it's very coarse and way too coarse for a conventional paint job but for us we don't want that paint to roll off the fender since it's going to be on so thick applied with a brush and then a roller now those of you who paint have probably noticed that i didn't wipe the panel down i didn't even blow the dust off that's because we're trying to build texture any way we can get it and that's why i'm using a random brush pattern this is why my wife never lets me paint the house okay with our black ground coat laid down we want to come across that and layer it up with a contrasting color undercoats are usually primer a good primer color is red oxide we start with the hugger orange now one thing you want to make sure of is that you have a repeatable formula for a red primer color we're using four parts hugger orange and one part black this is just wrong one thing the brush did with the black is give us an irregular pattern with the roller it's regular but it's crazy texture which is going to serve us well down the road in the next couple of steps now we're being random we're leaving runs in and all kinds of trash now we like the way steve silva's truck looked with a bit of a seafoam hue to it so we're going to mix up a turquoise starting with silver [Music] for the turquoise color we're going gonna use five parts silver one part blue and one part yellow which is gonna give us an aqua color that looks pretty good mixed up but not so much on the fender now instead of rolling it or brushing it on we're gonna use an el cheapo aerosol sprayer that you can pick up in just about any hardware store [Music] one of the best things about the paint we're using is that it's thin enough to spray through an aerosol can now if you're watching my technique throw the rule book out pay no attention to overlap what we're doing is just giving a missed coat in a random pattern over top of the other and yes we're using white header paint but there's a method to the madness kind of like a reverse guide coat the white will stick in the low areas that don't quite get sanded off and give a real patinaed aged effect just just wait you'll see it hey welcome back well if you're just joining us you're probably wondering to yourself what the heck have they done this looks terrible and you're right it does but it's a beautiful kind of a terrible because what we've done is layer up different contrasting colors using a roller using a brush leaving trash going against the grain of every professional painter in the world creating this wonderful effect that we're going to sand off and expose the layers that we've created now we're using a sanding block unlike our hand because now it matters if you sand with your fingers and leave finger grooves well it doesn't give a natural aged effect so we're using a soft sander and some 320 grit sandpaper and this is where the fun part starts now this is what 30 to 40 years of mother nature beating the heck out of a paint job looks like we're just going to take some of the styling cues and copy it now the most noticeable thing on the actual faded fender is the giant sun damage spot on the very top so we're going to recreate that first now obviously we've sped the film up to show you more of the progression of the sanding through the layers rather than the technique because quite frankly there is no technique now with the 320 grit sandpaper you're going to move a lot of paint rather quickly despite the fact that it's in gobs and layers so you got to be careful so you don't burn through completely now having said that if you do burn through your layers too much what you can just put more paint on the point is sand until it looks natural now as our layers get shaved down you can see the black coming through the brown layer and you can see why we brushed it and then rolled over top of that the layers are exposed and if you've ever walked through an antique junkyard well it kind of looks just like that i'm using a little bit of dish soap in with my sanding water to lubricate the sandpaper this lets the surface get flushed off easier and you can see your progress just a little bit better also your paper doesn't load up as much now using a coarser grit paper first allows you to create your design just a little bit faster but a word of caution the sanding stretches from the 320 can actually be seen so once you've recreated your age and you're happy with your shape move to a finer grip this will allow a more natural fade between your color transitions now i've been a professional painter for a long time i'm not going to tell you how many years but the point is i like it i love the work i love the sense of accomplishment and i love the sense of immediate gratification in a nice shiny paint job but this well this is a whole different school of thought creating patina gives you complete artistic freedom and it gives you a chance to inject your own personality and sense of style into a paint job heck you can even pay tribute to an actual antique truck kind of like we're doing [Music] okay there are no real rules when it comes to creating a faded effect other than contrasting layers but check this out see my line doesn't go straight across the fender that's because the fender crowns this way and it crowns this way so when the sunlight hits it it's going to take a piece of the side as well so we're recreating a natural effect kind of recreating nature sort of scary but man it's fun now with the fender dried off and giving it a closer look we noticed that we sanded down through to the original green color of the fender now that's okay because it actually looked natural but i wanted a complete separation from the original color of the truck so we dusted on some black dupli-color semi-gloss paint and forced to dry with a heat gun to give us a chance to go around to and totally cover up the green the white well it just gives us kind of another dimension a little bit more texture just another way to create more age [Applause] since the spray campaign is so much thinner than our brushed on black i'm using 800 grit and just kind of hitting the edges to feather it in to the rest of the paint using red scuffing pads you can eliminate any sheen that the finer grit sandpaper puts on a surface they'll also let you take care of any random shiny spots on the rest of the fender since shiny means new and we want it to look old so after toweling it off and forcing it dry with air it allows us to give it a final inspection yeah yeah we're done now let's take a look at what we started with here's our old paint it's kind of faded the color's not that great and we got primer spots and chips and all that kind of stuff all over it and here is what we ended up with and no joke we've got two hours we did the math two hours in this fender so you and a couple of buddies between sanding brushing and rolling letting it dry overnight you could get a complete 14 of paint job done on your project vehicle over the course of a weekend now some people love this look some people hate it they think you're trying to cheat and trying to fool people into thinking it's an antique but you got to consider no matter how you feel about it it gives you another alternative as opposed to spending a hundred grand on a street rod or spending a few hundred bucks on a cool looking paint job i want to think about it today we're converting our fotina 49 chevy from the standard three window to a deluxe five window cab and letting a pro show us how to install the tricky and not so cheap curved corner glass without cracking it it's all today here on trucks that's why you hire the pro hey welcome to trucks well this is the first time in a while that we've had our 49 chevy project class 6 back in the shop and this is the first time you guys get a chance to see the completed paint job the paint job we're calling fotina it's pretty cool so take a closer look [Music] classics is our way of doing a project that's a lot of fun to drive has a ton of character and it won't break down on the side of the road and it won't break the bank budget was the main agenda from word one but we didn't compromise on quality or safety we used reliable and affordable components to create the new stance but the icing on the cake is the paint job that looks like it's saturn in the sun for about 30 or 40 years so that brings us to the point to where we've got a cool looking paint job and a killer stance and we are well on our way to having a cool looking street rod that's built on a budget however there are some things that we'd still like to change for instance i've always sort of had a soft spot for the five window cabs we got a great deal on this one because it's a less expensive and in some circles less popular three window cap i like the five windows but what do you do do you start hacking holes and hope no there's a plan and thanks to chev's of the 40s and street rod headquarters we got the equipment to do it so we picked up some brand new sheet metal from them to help get the five window conversion complete now like we've shown you on projects in the past you don't have to use the entire replacement panel that they send you especially considering our 49 doesn't have any rust issues in the cab at least on the roof anyway so we're just going to cut out the sections we need let the rest hit the recycling pile now this top piece is the outer skin and what's underneath it is obviously the inner now both of these pieces are reproductions of the factory sheet metal and you can see how it goes together and whether it's a three window or a five window they both use the same center glass speaking of which check this out now replacing glass in a vehicle from the 40s or 50s not so much of a big deal most of it's flat like this rear glass you can cut it and trim it down from a larger piece if you have to pretty affordable however you get into the corner glasses and it's not so simple you can't really trim this down from a larger piece but chefs of the 40s offers these dot-approved laminated safety corner glasses that make this aspect of the five window conversion a piece of cake especially since they offer weather seals and the bead for the perfect seal so really and truly this is an affordable way to get the truck cab that you want without having to buy a whole other truck all you need is a little bit of sheet metal know-how [Music] now before we started cutting and grinding and making sparks we decided to remove the bomb-shaped fuel tank from behind the seat thanks ryan you're a real guest that was awful sometimes removing vintage auto glass while keeping it in good condition can present a challenge in our case we got lucky and all we had to do was remove the hard plastic lock strip and gently pry the supple weather strip and take the glass out no problems here comes that's a beautiful thing okay here's the plan what we're gonna do is do the outside of the panel first and step one is eliminating or removing this drip rail so we have this edge to go by that way we can get both sides exactly the same by measuring off of an existing corner now i know you're thinking hey what are you doing hacking into a paint job that you just got finished well we can blend this in using materials that we've got left over even put prime response around it and make it look even more authentic but we don't have to spend another week's worth of time and a thousand dollars worth of material blending in and clear coating and buffing and all those kinds of things that you would with the high-end street rod paint job and that is the beauty of fotina [Music] now drilling out the spot welds on the drip rail is step one you can find spot weld cutters in the matco catalog or just about any auto body supply store a panel separator knife minimizes the distortion of the panels you're trying to separate [Music] [Applause] now it's really important that we test fit the panel at this point because we're not installing the whole thing we're just using markers to trace out the outside dimensions so we don't cut too much of the original panel off the outline of the panel is just a rough guide to give you a reference point where you can sneak up on your final fit you want to leave enough metal on your patch and enough to the original metal to where you can refine your cut and gradually adjust it in to where you get a perfect fit the larger diameter four inch cut off wheel gives me a lot more accuracy and control when i'm cutting sheet metal now the sheet metal on this cab is unbelievably solid so all we did was use a flap wheel to clean up the metal edges around it so you don't burn the paint and contaminate your welds [Music] like that now what kevin's done is removed any overlap of the two panels leaving a 16 inch gap perfect for a butt weld the top of the cab corner is stamped for a flange with an overlap so on the pinch weld for the rear glass and the top we're going to use rosette welds using a 5 16 pneumatic punch and a drill bit helps us make the rosette weld and doing this panel one side at a time lets us keep the cab square and straight while we make this conversion cool we'll prep the insides and make ready for the welding it's gonna look pretty cool hard to see through though yeah no need to tint the window man that metal is in good shape though up next with the outside done we'll show you how to cut the inside of the cab and later dante helps us with the glass to make our cab a five window fishball stay tuned [Music] hey welcome back to trucks we're making great progress on the 3-5 window conversion on project class six like we showed you we've got the outside panel done and even the inside panel is finished basically the chevs of the 40s inner and outer panels have served as well now all we got to do is scab this one in on the other side make it where we can actually see through it but we wanted to remind you also that we removed the fuel tank because let's face it rni on a fuel tank is a heck of a lot easier to deal with than skin grafts so be careful at home now to keep the spot weld cutter from walking around like they have a habit of doing we went ahead and drilled eight inch pilot holes to make sure that doesn't happen now the rest of the panel removal involves using the cut off wheels now we made our cut along the door jamb close to the weather stripping so our repair will be less visible now the cut closer to the center window will be right next to a factory seam because it has strength in that area and it will minimize the warpage when welding the new panel in and since this is hopefully the last time we see this interior cab brace we went ahead and scuffed off the surface rust we had access to and hit it with some rust preventing primer we don't want our truck rotting from the inside out now just to be absolutely sure we don't have any corrosion or rust issues between the replacement panel and the factory sheet metal we applied some seam sealer over top all of the welds and around all of the edges just for some extra [Music] insurance now to prep the interior panel for installation we're drilling about a half dozen holes for plug or rosette welds and to make sure we don't have any contamination in those welds we're grinding away the e-coat that surrounds the holes that we drilled now in the areas that we have access we're using our punch tool again just because it limits the amount of possible distortion from drilling holes but if you don't have a punch tool not the drill bit will get the job done [Music] now with the panel trimmed to fit and sanded down on the edges we're going to go ahead and install it and start the welding on the outside of the panel closest to the center window that way we can work the area around the window opening and make sure all the contours line up we're using a variety of locking pliers to move the metal around and get it to go where we want to but a low buck alternative is just to use sheet metal screws to hold everything in place while you're doing the welding part of the persuasion process sometimes involves a hammer now just like with any sheet metal work and like we always tell you move your spot welds around so you don't concentrate the heat in one particular area and cause the sheet metal to warp all right with our fifth window fully welded in we get to grind down the thousand or so tack welds holding this thing together then we'll come back do a little bit of finish work make sure all the seams are nice and smooth we should be ready to move on to the next step [Music] hey welcome back to trucks the more i scuff on this thing the better it looks here it is a five window cab now after we finish welded both sides inside and out we picked up some z glass fiberglass reinforced filler from auto body color and supply blocked that out followed it with clawson's z glaze blended that in recreating the original contour for a factory look now we followed the theme we started with the rest of the truck when we photined the entire vehicle using dupli-color's paint shop system and we reached for some dupli-color filler primer to cover up the bodywork now we could go through the same recipe that we showed you rolling brushing misting and then sanding and blend this into where it looks like it was all painted at the same time but i got to tell you i'm really digging the primer spots in fact i think it looks a little more authentic so now all we had left to do put the glass in all right with the metal work bodywork and paintwork completed the only thing we've got left to do to finish up our five window conversion is install the glass now we've shown you installing glass using this type of gasket seal before in the past heck we've even shown you how to cut flat laminated safety glass but a lot of people aren't comfortable doing that kind of work and it's right behind rebuilding an automatic transmission or doing electrical wiring on a lot of people's list of things they'd love to avoid so sometimes it's worth it just to pay a pro to come in and do the job for you that way you make sure it's done right you don't risk breaking your curved and not so cheap glass [Music] so we enlisted the help of dante the glass guy who has seen it all when it comes to auto glass now he's using a very soft and supple rubber weather seal which is key with a corner glass like this where you're going to apply a lot of pressure to get the glass in the rubber has to be movable where it can flex when your glass can't otherwise you run the risk of putting too much pressure and breaking the glass [Applause] [Music] now there's a fine line between applying force and applying pressure dante is applying pressure with the palm of his hand so it's evenly spread out for the glass to get the new window properly seated in the channel using a glass cleaner as a lubricant allows dante to work with the two different materials without binding or pinching and it evaporates quickly enough where it won't leave a residue behind [Music] the last step and probably the most difficult and sensitive is installing the hard plastic log strip you have to do this because the lock strip is what holds tension on the weather seal and keeps the glass in even with the right tools like the log strip tool experience is what's keeping dante from breaking this glass [Music] that's why you hire the pro today we're going to the newly rebuilt advanced plating the nashville flood nearly wiped them out but now they're back better than ever and we're taking the grill to our project class 6 to get a unique and budget-friendly copper-plated finish it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well today we're back up here at advanced plating in nashville tennessee and it probably looks the same as it did every other time we've been here but back in may of 2010 where the middle tennessee area got hit with well over a foot of rain in a single 24-hour period putting the cumberland river 12 feet over flood stage and if i was here then well i'd be underwater and i'd be swimming but today everything once again is dry and gleaming like jewelry you can even smell the new paint advanced plating is back bigger and better than ever but it wasn't long ago that i would have been standing chest deep in water and everything in this entire facility was covered with this funk this muck from the cumberland river it wasn't [Music] pretty these rising waters are the result of a flood that was supposed to happen only once every 500 years damage estimate to the nashville area have exceeded 2 billion dollars in property damage the whole nashville area community was stricken by a tragedy of huge proportions now as bad as it looks in these photos the truth is this was after the flood waters had already started to recede but the actions that owner steve tracy took the day of the flood are nothing short of inspirational well to get here i swam across the parking lot and then to get out i was rescued by boat there was never a doubt in my mind what i was going to do from the minute i got on the boat and that was just basically do a restoration of a different type here [Music] so steve and his helpful crew rolled up their sleeves and got started on an extreme chrome makeover so advanced plating did their own version of a frame off restoration not only repairing the damage from the floodwaters but also taking the opportunity to make improvements where they deemed they were necessary i had quite a few people that came from out of state some people that we knew some that we didn't and various amount of car builders that had come a lot of industry people that came and they all pitched in some of them rescued the cars some of them helped with the renovation a lot of moral support a lot of encouragement all of it very important very lucky very blessed [Music] now the truly remarkable thing here is that not a drop not a single drop of any of these chemicals was spilled into the cumberland river as a matter of fact there were only two tanks that needed any kind of repair or replacement now there wasn't just outside help involved steve's employees worked in shifts around the clock and really dug in to help improve things and get the facility back up and running now the buffing shop is where the artisan craftsmanship happens and it was also one of the areas that got hit the hardest all of the electronics in each workstation including electric motors had to be completely replaced but it didn't stop there the buffing wheels play a critical role in the polishing and plating process but these didn't stand a chance against mother nature now this is something that's not new but we've never shown you this room before that's because it's been greatly improved due to the effects of the flood this is a room that's temperature controlled to 100 degrees and no humidity specifically for the purpose of curing the buffing pads now advanced plating lost nearly 50 years supply of buffing pads for the big wheels and again it was a tragic loss but it gave them the excuse to take some time and improve the situation this room is almost perfect for its purpose but it's hot and as big of an impact as mother nature had on the shop well they took the opportunity to reduce their own by installing new air filtration systems and added ventilation throughout the building now rightfully or not the chrome plating industry has kind of acquired a reputation of being not so environmentally friendly but advanced plating has always been ahead of the curve now this is the recycling room where all the chemicals gets processed neutralized and treated they go through these four drums and ultimately end up in this giant container here where the liquid passes over 500 feet of grating that's stacked up inside that container the clean wastewater is separated from the solids which gets filtered out they end up over here this green colored electroplating byproduct is kind of indicative of how they operate here at advanced plating very green none of this stuff ends up in a landfill never has in fact this stuff here is going to get shipped off the metal is going to be reclaimed and used in the zinc die casting process one of the last steps in getting the facility back up and running involved replacing some of the equipment necessary to handle the huge amounts of current that are required for electroplating last critical piece was to replace our rectifiers that allowed us to get our use and occupancy permit so as of yesterday we are 100 up next a copper-only chrome job not only looks cool it's the right price and later making our new transmission fit our class 6's engine stay tuned hey guys welcome back to trucks and welcome back to the newly restored advanced plating now steve and the rest of his crew have done a fantastic job at getting advanced plating back up and running and in a big way which is a really good thing because we needed some more stuff plated but instead of going the typical restoration quality chroming process that they usually do here at the facility we're going to take a little more budget-minded approach and a theme that's going to follow right in line with our patina 49 chevy project class six and it all starts with this replacement girl that we picked up at chev's of the 40s now this is a budget approach that we're taking to a cool looking plating project and anything that you can do at home like disassemble the grill well it'll save you money whether the parts are painted or e-coated like our grill they sit in a bat of methylene chloride for about 30 minutes to completely remove any finish but this is one more way that you can save money at home you can strip with a simple aircraft stripper that's available at almost any auto parts store and send them to them [Music] bear now you're going to see us do a series of clean water rinses after the acid process it serves the same general purpose which is to neutralize the acid from the previous step and get it ready set it up for the next step then our grill parts sit in a soap cleaner and activator tank for about five minutes [Music] now the brushing just helps remove any fingerprints or residue and really drives the solution down into the pores of the metal making sure the parts are ready for the next step [Music] i feel like a mad scientist kind of cool [Music] and just like in between every step in this process we take our parts to a rinse tank for a quick dunking water [Music] next our parts go in a mild alkaline acid etch tank for about a minute this sets up the surface or profiles the metal creating porosity for the copper to stick to and one more trip to the rinse tank neutralizes the acid [Music] after the rinse we go to a cyanide copper deposit but don't think that just because there's cyanide in there it's dangerous there's a small amount of cyanide and it's a very high ph level making it safe for the technicians now the crazy frankenstein science fiction bubbles mean that there's copper being deposited and i think of everything like a body shop this step is the primer on your metal that gives a solid foundation for the filler and by the way the bubbles that's hydrogen gas forming in the solution now you can see the wires that hold the parts up while they're electroplated too but these wires don't just serve the single purpose of spacing out the parts and holding them where they need to be they also help complete the electrical circuit that's necessary for electroplating finally this two hour long bath of acid copper plates a thick layer onto the metal this new copper is used as a restoration tool it allows the parts to be buffed and polished removing any imperfections in the surface creating a foundation for a perfect chrome finish but this is where our process ends making the finish that we will allow to weather and age to fit the character of our project class six ah nice that looks killer oh one final rinse we'll be done all right well there you go we've got a beautiful unique and custom grill for our 49 chevy while you guys can't come down here and become part of the process like we did but you can certainly send your parts in and have them copper plated and remember this it costs about a third of what it would run you to have these same exact parts chrome plated man that looks awesome up next class six goes from this to this stick around hey welcome back to trucks well it's great to see that advanced plating has survived the flood and they're back better than ever and it's no secret we've shown you before those guys are capable of the finest chrome plating in the world but they're also pretty darn creative check out our grill this is fully assembled and man it looks cool and because of the fact that all they do is plate this and ship it they don't spend the time surfacing and polishing well it cuts the cost into about a third of typical chrome plating and just the short amount of time that we've had it it's already started to change color and oxidize into these cool different patterns if we leave this alone it's going to age way beyond its ears it's going to give us this very cool effect but you can polish it to a high gloss lock the gloss in with a clear coat and let it be bright polished copper now these two panels are original to the truck and you can see if you look a little closer that some of the scratches and chips and dings well they left them in and all this is going to do is add to the character of the vehicle so if you're doing a 14 a truck like we are this is perfect if you're doing a rat rod it's an alternative or if you're doing a high-end custom and you want a really cool alternative look to chrome plating you might want to check out advanced plate and get him to do you some copper let's get this stuff on the truck [Music] [Applause] now if you've ever worked on a vehicle that's 50 plus years old well you know that the fasteners are usually fine thread and they're usually flat head both of those mean a recipe for disaster fortunately for us this truck had been kind of restored before so all the fasteners came loose with just a little bit of persuasion now the filler panel goes behind the bumper arms of course followed by the bumper that mounts onto the front of the bumper arms heck they even copper plated the carriage bolts that hold it in place and we're just mocking this stuff up so we're not worried too much about a proper fit and finish we just want to see what it looks like [Music] now this shiny and polished copper grill may look a little over the top for our 49 chevy with the faux tina paint job but park this thing outside for a few months and it'll transform and look like the statue of liberty or an old copper roof then it'll blend in a little bit more closely with the overall character of this old pickup [Music] hey guys check out our refurbished and upgraded 235 inline six that's going back in project class 6. this is fresh from the guys at horsepower and has been upgraded including dual exhaust and dual carburetors but we're also getting away from that sloppy three on the tree standard shift that came in the truck and move into an automatic so we decided to go with the 700r4 we picked up from monster transmission now not only is this unit more than capable of handling the power output from that 235 more importantly it's going to work closely with the narrow torque range and power band of that old engine and the truck won't seem like such a dog when we drive it we also picked up their bracket kit tv cable transmission mount even a lock up kit as well as one of their torque converters that's pretty close to a stock range but here's the real issue how do you make a modern transmission connect with an antique engine here's how we're going to use this adapter kit that we got from benson's transmission adapters this is their speed gems 2 kit that features a steel adapter plate that has both the bolt pattern for the 700r4 and turbo 350 transmissions as well as the 235 block pattern it ships with a bolt kit their own design flex plate and a stagger bolt starter now what this system allows us to do is to utilize the benefits of a modern 700r4 automatic overdrive and still retain the cool factor of an inline six vintage engine so thanks bensons hey welcome to trucks well we're back on project class six which is getting closer and closer to becoming a driver again and a cool one at that and this is the 235 blue flame six that we took out of the truck although it's not the original engine it's still a great choice it's not the baby style engine it's got the better oiling system in it so we decided to run with it and we added a 700 r4 automatic overdrive transmission connected it to the engine with the benson's transmission adapter but what you may not have seen is what the guys over at horsepower did to freshen it up [Music] after extracting the engine and transmission from the chassis mike and joe went to work doing the forensics involved in disassembly then the rotating assembly and engine block were subject to the typical machining that a refreshed engine goes through with the block cleaned up they went to work installing an engine rebuild kit that they got from chevs of the 40s street rod headquarters [Music] now we change up the camshaft profile and of course put in larger pistons to match the overboard the head and new valve train came from pioneer and of course everything was reassembled back to factory specs so between freshening everything up some nice mild high performance parts we will get a nice bump in performance with this engine and still remain classic looking everything down to the crankcase vent tube now obviously our rebuilt engine is going to fit in this truck it came out of here but the original engine mount setup utilized three different mounts one at the front of the engine and two on the bell housing one on each side to control engine torque the problem is the stock belt housing is long gone so we're going to have to come up with something to control engine rotation or torque now the transmission is going to be supported with an aftermarket cross member and we are going to utilize the front mount but just to line up the engine and the placement of it in the engine bay that way we can maintain good radiator and fan clearance most of the cross members and mounts on this frame are riveted in but the rear crossmember is bolted in but it's still pretty tight bfh baby [Music] now we knew we were going to have to make some modifications just because of the differences but there's only one way to really tell where to start and that's stab the engine and transmission in how's the front lined up we're about a foot and a half short okay so this crossmember's got to go too quite a few years separate the old three on the tree standard transmission and the new 700r4 monster automatic four-speed transmission so the old cross member it just has to go away now the second cross member well general motors never intended this to ever leave ever so it's riveted in and we actually had to cut it out to relieve some of the pressure even then it took a whole lot of technology and some good old-fashioned sweat equity to remove it [Music] just like that easy get your own truck to work on okay with that stuff out of the way installing the new transmission crossmember ought to be a boatload easier primarily because we're not fighting 50-plus years of crud and crust but also touching on what ryan said the aftermarket has kicked in and given us exactly what we need in the form of this cross member we got from classic parts of america it's designed to fit 47 through 59 model chevy trucks and our transmission but as you can see it gives us lots of options for placement for fitment no matter how wide your frame rails are we also had them send us this protane transmission mount so between these two pieces we got to be a lot further down the road locating our new engine and transmission combo in class 6. all right we're going to set our cross member in right here just for now because we're not sure exactly what orientation or what the final placement is going to be but it's going to serve the purpose of holding up our transmission and with the ultra stubborn cross members out of the way we went ahead and installed our polyurethane protein transmission mount and try it again all right come down a little bit more all right whoa whoa whoa up and this time we made it a little bit farther before we ran into another problem the bottom of the cab okay with that floor access panel out of the way we can see clearly where we need to do our trimming which is right here and with the panel out of the way we can just trim until it fits now this is obviously just a rough cut to gain clearance for the giant bell housing we can figure out how to finish it off later on my way now with the floor clearance both of the old cross members out of the way and the new one marked in place third time was the charm but make no mistake this is a process that is going to have to be repeated but hey that's hot roddy come back back towards me okay we're getting closer [Music] all right that's it wow good enough for now all right let's see what we got well the good news is the engine's in it's kind of where it's supposed to be the bad news is we're showing about eight degrees of tilt back we need about three for proper bearing alignment the problem is we don't want to go down any further on the front because we want good rack clearance and i don't want to have to section the oil pan so all that means is that we're going to have to trim a little bit more of the firewall than that toe board [Music] hey guys welcome back to trucks well we finally have our blue flame six an automatic overdrive transmission mocked up and sitting where we want it we've got about a half of an inch in between the steering rack and the oil pan and there's some wiggle room in between the back of the cylinder head and the firewall now all we've got to do is lock it into place by fabricating some new engine mounts however there was an issue with the new bell housing hitting the floorboard but kevin's got a pretty slick solution for that now the access plate like the floor is almost completely flat except for this little kick up at the end where it meets the toe board so our problem was that the bell housing is a little bit wider than the original transmission the solution very simple we just trimmed it out to match the contour created a flat flange and trimmed this piece off the original i created a domed piece just with some simple hand forming sheet metal techniques that sits right in the place of the factory original you're never even going to notice this once there's carpet or a mat on it [Music] now like we told you earlier two of the three original engine mounts are history but luckily for us there was three unused bolt holes on either side of the engine block and after making a template for the mounting plates we measured the bolt hole spacing and as far as the bolt holes go well they're about an inch deep so we've got plenty of thread engagement and they should be plenty strong then we just transferred our measurements over to the quarter inch plate used for the engine mounts now the rest of these custom mounts are going to consist of two small pieces of dom tubing and since there's not a lot of room in between the bolt holes and the tubing we decided to ditch the mig welding and go for tig welding takes up less space and will allow for plenty of bolt and washer clearance now it also means that we've got to concentrate on cleanliness and get rid of all the mill scale on both the flat plate and the round tubing for a nice clean weld now more than likely this engine mount would have been strong enough with just the dom tubing but since that old straight six isn't exactly light we added a small triangular gusset just for extra insurance now here's the reason we went with inch and a half 120 wall dom the inside diameter of the tubing happens to match the outside diameter of these polyurethane bushings and that'll provide a good firm mount for our engine while still isolating the rest of the chassis from the harmonics and vibrations that the engine is going to produce there you go [Music] hey welcome back to trucks with the transmission crossmember bolted in and the engine located now we can finish off the engine mounts left and right [Music] now using the typical templating process we traced out our templates onto quarter inch steel and then of course mark the bolt hole location with the engine in its proper mounting place [Music] now when drilling the holes we're using a bit that's 1 16 of an inch a larger diameter than the through bolt that holds the engine to the mounts this is to give us just a little bit of adjustability in case we need it and still retain a tight fit now for both the mounts to the block and the through bolts to the frame mounts we're using grade eight fasteners that we got from our friends at industrial depot just so we're safe [Music] now obviously we're going to strip the paint off the frame rails before we weld the mounts into place but we're gonna take the opportunity to close off the holes in the crank case so we don't get a bunch of grinding dust in the engine [Music] now kevin's just snugging the engine through bolt down by hand so we can tack weld the plates into position you don't want to over tighten the bolt with a couple of wrenches and clamp the bushing into place that would just make the engine difficult to remove and install [Music] now we're also adding a top plate to our custom engine mounts not only will it look better it's going to add some strength by tying the two halves together now to form that top plate kevin's kind of going old-school on it and using an adjustable wrench and a short section of axle tube clamped into the vise and he's just using the adjustable wrench to slowly persuade the eighth inch plate to form and follow the contour of the axle tube and once the curve of the top plate matches his wire jig well you can weld it in place [Applause] and after tack welding three of the four corners into position he uses a c-clamp to force the remaining corner into position so he can weld that one as well a little reinforcing tack well never hurts and no we're not going to do the final welding with the polyurethane bushings in place we don't want to melt them so they'll get removed [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop well we've got our engine mounts fabricated and we're in the process of welding them to the frame once we get done with that all we've got to do is hit them with some paint to prevent them from rusting then we'll come in here and knock out our wooden locating and spacer block and with the relief cuts kevin made to the firewall and the new transmission tunnel cover plate we've even got plenty of room in between the bell housing and the body now the transmission crossmember is locked into place permanently bolted in and ryan ran a tig welder on the perimeter of the tube so it doesn't rotate but what you're not going to see us do is reinstall the antique single pot brake master cylinder instead we're gonna mount a frame rail mounted powered disc brake conversion kit right here but that's another show so you'll have to keep watching all right with the engine and transmission locked into place we took a few seconds to throw on our offenhauser valve cover and intake manifold along with our fenton split exhaust manifold that we picked up from chevs of the 40s so now our drive train is in place our rear axle's there we've got brakes at all four corners suspension and the paint job is done so all the big pieces are in place and we're left with kind of the little things that seem to take forever we've got interior work to do steering column and some plumbing and wiring but we're getting to the point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and this truck's getting closer to moving under its own power today we're taking a trip to bay one customs to check out all the cool and one-of-a-kind projects that our buddy tc's been working on and we'll also be checking out the custom work he's done on our project class six and finally it's a cool trick from lady liberty herself on making our copper jewelry look just right it's all today here on trucks it's good enough for project classics hey got a question for you where are you going to find a 480 horsepower parts chaser that runs 770s in the eighth mile well right here at tc panic's bay one customs in springfield tennessee tc's had our 49 chevy project class 6 in the shop for a while tightening up some loose ends so we thought we'd stop by see what kind of progress he's made on the truck and check out what else he's got going on [Music] now tc's been a friend of the power block for a while now it's always kind of fun to stop by bay one customs and see what else he's working on now this 1980 scout is in the booth ready for more clear and although it's got the original 304 engine a closer look shows you that this thing's had a ton of custom work when we started this project the customer wanted to didn't want to raise this vehicle to install this 35 inch tire so we was able to get by with just a six inch suspension lift and cut four and a half inches out of the wheelhouse in the rear four and a half out in the front raised the wheelhouse about six millimeters fabricated a new factory uh flare and reinstalled it to give it a factory look this did create one problem for us and it weakened the center structure of our vehicle so we took part of our roll bar system and cut it down and modified it and reinstalled here to give us strength for the center part of our structure now this is one of my favorite classic muscle cars a 66 chevelle now tc has done some nice custom work on the hood and right here he's using plastic hard edge tape to block up against and really crispen up these body style lines but the icing on the cake is this 600 horsepower stroked big block that's going under the hood i can't wait to see this car done now bait one customs can fix anything and do it right case in point this 72 cutlass is kind of a radical custom now tc laid down the flawless candy a couple years ago when the customer had a little incident because he drives a car had a damaged part in this fender tc blended in the candy perfectly which just goes to show you that it doesn't matter what it is they'll take care of it now this mid-30s oldsmobile is typical of the mixed bag of tricks that bay one has their hands on the factory suicide doors are original but the seats interior steering column even the windshield that's all custom stuff and the wiring harness well that's out of an s10 350 chevrolet engine and tc's job to make it all work together now as usual bay one's got all kinds of stuff going on in the shop everything from bare metal repair to the finished product and just about everything in between we're going to talk to tc about the approach he uses in creating these custom vehicles but before we do that let's take a look at class 6. now the last time we had this truck in our shop we permanently mounted the engine in transmission but tc's had it for a while now has been working on it off and on and has made a ton of progress check it out along with a custom paint treatment on the valve cover tc did a fantastic job of tightening up the wiring harness using a homemade recipe of vacuum line and zip ties he also did a really clean installation of the vacuum and fuel lines to the rather odd configuration of single barrel carburetors the carburetors on this particular vehicle are not in line like your traditional throttle linkage is installed so the throttle linkage is quite involved to get it to work properly so by using existing threaded bosses on the aluminum intake manifold tc created a mounting solution that not only let him address the carb synchronization issue but pay attention to some safety concerns as well anytime you push a throttle linkage you have to make sure it's a stop because it'll come over when it goes to full throttle and then you've got a customer flying down the road trying to turn the gas the throttle off for the transmission linkage tcu is a combination of aftermarket components and a little bit of homemade ingenuity now remember this is not the 49 engine it's a 1954 blue flame 6 and has a pressurized oil system and needed a remote filter all this pretty stuff under the hood was surprisingly easy to get bobby at chevy's of the 40s helped tremendously all i had to do was make one phone call and he got me every single thing i needed i've never met bobby but i thank him for helping me so much with this build not only he got me on my new parts he got me technical advice and used parts that weren't available and not only does everything look good under the hood it sounds awesome split manifold no exhaust baby got a pretty quick throttle response too now inside the cab everything works we've got a headlight switch with high and low beam we've got turn signals at work with an indicator on the inside rhino like that we've got a functional tilt steering column from brothers truck parts the shifter all the detents work for the overdrive but the best thing is this right here tc was able to utilize the original 49 chevy steering wheel with the brand new tilt column and he left the power steering speed knob too this is cool hey welcome back to trucks well for all the time that tc put into class 6 he wasn't the only one that had his hands on so we want to say thanks to pac castle and jeff root now check out our copper it's really aging and patinaing nicely so while we had some extra help we're going to throw some more copper pieces on and finish it out a little more now the headlight rings were part of the original frenching kit for the headlights themselves and although they were stainless when we got them they looked much better copper now jeff and pat like a lot of you guys have been following this build on the show and they were happy to help out but make no mistake these guys know their stuff and tc depends on them regularly now the door handles they're just the originals replated in copper complete with the popping off chrome and with some new fasteners to hold them in place they match the patina almost perfectly complete with fingerprints and skin oil that's going to aid the patina or the aging process just like the grill or the front bumper now the classics emblems on the sides of the hood are an original design milled out of aluminum in a torch mate fixture now thanks to advanced plating they're a beautiful shiny copper but not for long stick around we've got a fix for this that you're not going to [Music] believe man that aged copper looks killer now back here in the shop we've got a chance to throw our old 49 chevy up on the lift and take a closer look at some of the stuff that wasn't quite so visible up at bay one customs and just like everything else tc did this stuff's looking really good now to connect our monster automatic transmission to our junkyard ford explorer rear axle we picked up a three and a half inch steel drive shaft from the guys at advantage driveline now typically on these old trucks we take the fuel tank out of the cab and put it somewhere outside of the cab but on this truck we wanted to keep it simple so we just kept the stocker in his place it's worked for 60 plus years so why change it tc just added some new fittings and some fresh rubber now for a brake system we just went with an under the floor frame rail mount booster and master cylinder that we picked up from brothers truck parts tc just bent up some new lines heading to the disc brake equipped rear axle and our mustang 2 calipers up front well now that we know our classic chevy pickup is good and road ready kevin and i are kind of chomping at the bit to take this thing for a nice long cruise but we've neglected the interior thus far so the next time we've got this truck in the shop that's what we'll be working on once that's done we're driving this thing hey guys welcome back to trucks well like ryan says thanks to tc and bay one customs project classics here is nearly done down to the last details but there's still a couple of things that we need to address number one put an exhaust system on it so it sounds a little bit less like a farm tractor and there's another aspect of this build that we've never addressed and that is the interior now inside nothing has been done short of the steering column gauges wiring harness and some sheet metal work to accommodate our new 700r4 transmission other than that well this horrible green metallic farm paint is still on the inside and kind of sounds like you're driving in an empty steel drum other than that what we have here is known as a clean pallet we got any direction that we want that we can go in but we started a theme with this truck which is patina or photina which is new patina but believe me we can draw plenty of cues from the street rod world to make this truck as cool on the inside as it is on the outside speaking of patina check this out now with our copper plated pieces on the grill we're crazy about the effect it's really deteriorating and looking very very cool once it's at a point to where we're happy with it we'll lock it into some kind of metal sealer but here's the problem these headlight rings and some other pieces that we put on the truck have been plated at a different time so they've got to catch up with these things but here's a cool trick if you're doing the same thing to accelerate that process this is african violet fertilizer in a liquid form this is available at any home center across the country in most hardware stores you mix it with water dilute it it makes a solution that you spray on is great for your shrubs and if you just threw your cold drink at the tv saying what the heck does this have to do with trucks well here's what and it's a neat story a good friend of ours whose father worked on the crew that did the restoration on the statue of liberty told us about this secret when they replaced the copper panels on the statue it had to match the ones that they didn't replace so they thought their way through it and typical problem they came up with a perfect solution and the way we figure if it's good enough for lady liberty it's good enough for project class six today project class six is getting a new interior makeover that matches its style and only costs about a hundred bucks then we'll make and install an inexpensive parts store glass pack exhaust it's all today here on trucks hey welcome to trucks well project classics has come a long way since we first got our hands on it and man is it neat to hear that engine run and although it looks pretty cool not quite done yet needs a couple of projects we need an exhaust system and we want to get rid of the last remnants of this ugly tractor green on the inside so today we're going to show you guys a couple of things we're going to show you how to put an exhaust system on using a universal kit as well as how to do a low buck custom interior now all it takes is a few dollars some imagination [Music] [Applause] now we're not going to completely blow apart the interior of this truck just to paint the panels we got pretty good access to everything with some trim and the upholstery removed and it just doesn't really fit the project to blow the doors apart pull the glass back out like you would a high-end custom because let's face it this truck is not a high-end custom it's a driver with a capital d after a thorough wipe down with the dupli-color prep solvent now we can start masking we're using typical body shop supplies from auto body color and supply masking up the gauges and all the switches just so we don't have to disassemble it when you're doing a paint job like this the masking paper and tape serves two purposes not only does it protect from overspray but it also protects from your sandpaper or in our case the red scuffing pad which is pretty aggressive it'll ruin your chrome [Music] with all of the shiny scuffed off the horrible green paint i give it a wipe down with the rag slightly moistened with the dupli-color prep solvent and blow all the dust out of the cracks and crevices now the process is called painting but we're actually using a primer and it might seem like we're just sort of trading one horrible color for another with the red oxide that we're using it really was part of our plan all along the red oxide kind of looks like terra cotta and really reminds us of the southwestern feel that we got from steve silva's truck when we first saw the photos he kind of modeled this project at least the looks of it after his truck now rattle cans get a bad wrap sometimes because the paint flakes off if you don't put enough on put three fat coats of this product on and you'll get great results and a long life out of it now that's going to sit and drive for a little while and we can unmask everything and install the upholstery speaking of upholstery here's what we pulled out of the truck it looks kind of like the rest of it sort of worn out and you know to fit the theme we could put this back in but it looks a little dated so we want to update it and follow the theme of the rest of the truck and show you guys how to do your own custom upholstery inexpensively and like the rest of the truck easily with a few simple supplies you can get just about anywhere a little bit of common sense and this is what we found to upholster it the colors are perfect with the colors of the rest of the truck it sort of looks like a midwesterny sort of a native american feel and more importantly check out the fabric it's got a bit of stretch in every direction so that's going to make it easier to pull around corners which is pretty important when you're doing your own upholstery now this was quite inexpensive i've got two yards here it was about 16 which is plenty to do the whole interior of this truck or at least all the panels that we're gonna do it's gonna give it a cool look and it's not that hard to do now since this fabric actually has a pattern you can use it to your advantage and light it up so that you have a symmetrical design that also makes it easier to duplicate on the other side now with the rough idea of how much fabric we're going to need i take the rest and put it off to the side so it doesn't get dirty because that's going on the headliner folding the work piece in half allows me to cut the piece in two and that gives me the fabric to cover the other trim panel now to the sid shavers and the ron maguses of the world i apologize for my technique i don't pretend to do the type of work that you guys do however this is something that everybody watching can do at home now we're using a loctite headliner adhesive which is a spray contact cement you can get it at most auto parts stores and it's perfect for this project now you're going to notice that we've sped a lot of this footage up and it's not to hide anything in fact it's to show you the whole process if we played it in real time it just wouldn't fit in the show now a contact cement means that you spray both surfaces you've got a little over spray on the paper so we're putting down more so it doesn't stick the great thing about contact cement when you let both sides dry is that it allows you to work with it and still stays open long enough to where you can apply and reapply and correct your pattern like i'm doing with the fabric locked down on the front side i'm flipping it over and just going to give it a refresher coat of glue on both surfaces now the two inches of overcut on all sides well that's not an accident it's always nice to have more fabric than you need so you can pull it and push it and correct as you need to this is a fairly simple process on the straight sides and it just involves folding it over the glue will take care of the rest the corners are a different story because of course the material gathers so you're going to have to do a series of relief cuts so you don't have a bulge there that will hold the panel out from the door and it wraps around nicely and you've got a good glue contact interestingly enough this is kind of how metal acts too in the sense that you can't really ever shrink it you can just work with it and mold it around where it does what you want it to do now don't get into the mindset where you have to be in a hurry you don't you've got time to work with this and with the glue fresh well you can apply and reapply i'm using single edged razor blades to trim but a good sharp pair of scissors will do the same thing it's just easier with the blades and you're going to go through about a half a dozen of them because the fabric dulls the blade out pretty well this trim panel took about 15 minutes real time and is the most basic of projects but it looks pretty good [Music] hey welcome back to trucks we'll check out our reupholster trim panels i think they look pretty snazzy and they're going to look really good up against the primered interior but we're not done yet the headliner is actually the only other piece in the cab that needs reupholstered and these i don't know if the reproductions are originals my guess is the reproductions but look at this that's mold so strike one you're out now the other part of the headliner is well it's just plain nasty that's mouse debris and i don't know there's some kind of an insect nest in there those are spores from some alien planet we're not gonna touch this because replacements are inexpensive from lmc truck so we got new headliner boards that we're just gonna reupholster kind of the same way a little bit different technique since it's so big pay attention there is no prep with the brand new headliner boards but for applying the adhesive to the fabric we're only doing one side at a time that way it's much easier to manage and you can flip your other side over apply the adhesive and then just gently pull it against itself this allows you to pull any folds or wrinkles out of the fabric and to make sure that your pattern is aligned the technique for folding onto the back side of the headliner is the same as with the door trim panels however there are small reliefs for the screws to hold it in place so we're making a slight relief cut around them so we don't have to poke and hunt for them and believe it or not the function of a headliner back in the 40s was literally to keep the condensation from dripping onto your head unlike today's luxo boxes to where it actually serves as insulation speaking of insulation the cab of this truck used to sound like an empty steel drum when you're wrapped on it so dei's boom mat acoustic tiles are going to solve that problem here we've cut a couple of tiles in half and place them in between the bows on the back of the cab and we're using full tiles three of them on the ceiling now you don't have to cover every inch of sheet metal to make a dramatic difference with this insulation all right i don't know if you remember the sound of this thing without the boom mat but listen to this that's dead now since these are not custom panels just the originals reupholstered reassembly is easy but here's a tip use an all or a really small screwdriver to find the screw holes that way you don't have to poke around with the screw and risk pulling fibers out of your fabric the paint on the window frames was in pretty good shape so all we did was reinstall them this is where it pays dividends to keep track of your screws now the headliner is fairly easy to install if not a little bit frustrating just because of gravity but it helps to pre-align and pre-trim your headliner board before you upholster them they're held in place with screws on the back side and pinched with the weather seals on the left and right side the front half is held in place with the same screws that hold the window trim in place and again pinched with a weather seal on the left and right sides now we don't know if this is original or not but the center section was held up with a steel bow it didn't really look original but it served its purpose so it gets reused and as far as the seat we didn't even have to touch it [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop well kevin's got the interior finished up that means we've only got one project left on our 49 chevy and that's adding an exhaust system now on a truck as old as our 49 well finding an exhaust system in a catalog somewhere can be kind of tricky if there's limited options what's available may not be what you want so what we're going to do is make our own but we're not going to spend a ton of money doing it so we're going to avoid the stainless steel and go with aluminized steel tubing that we picked up from our local parts store along with a pair of cheapo glass packs [Music] now our exhaust manifold kit came with flanges so we were off to a good start and as far as bends go but we use a piece of tig wire but a coat hanger will do the same thing but the tig wire is obviously really small in diameter and the exhaust tubing we're using is two inches so there's going to be some clearance issues that we run into with the pipe that we didn't with the tig wire all right we're gonna be hitting the steering shaft now to make room for the steering shaft we broke out the rosebud tip on our oxyacetylene torch and created a nice little curve for the steering shaft to fit around a couple of tack welds holding the pipe in place we can check for clearance now the second pipe is nearly identical and once we get it bent and tacked into position we can figure out where we want to place our glass packs like right there and with both down pipes tacked together and cut the length we pulled them out so we could finish weld the flanges now the tubing we're using is two inches in diameter but the glass packs that we picked up on sale for two and a quarter inches but we can make them fit no problem now we decided to go with glass packs for a few reasons like we told you they were cheap but they also have a cool unique and distinct sound that should work pretty well with our old straight six and lastly while these things are small making fitment a breeze to keep things simple we've decided just to run the tailpipes out of the side of the truck rather than go over the rear axle and through the four-link suspension and the great thing about this truck well we can leave the raw metal edges alone it's only going to add to the character when it starts to corrode a little bit and don't look for any fancy chrome exhaust tips either just doesn't fit this truck and with everything mocked up we can remove both sections of the exhaust and fully weld them then it's back on the truck for final installation including gaskets add in the exhaust hanger and fine tuning and finalizing the location of our tailpipes [Music] well i gotta say that sounds really good and considering it costs less than 200 bucks that just makes it sound better [Music] the day has finally come we're taking our 49 chevy project class 6 out on the road to see how our straight 6 powered vintage looking truck performs it's all today here on trucks hey guys welcome to trucks well days like today is what we live for to be able to take a finished project like classics here out on the open road where it belongs see how it performs and to see how it lives up to our goals and compares to the bone stock truck that we started with now when we first picked up this 49 for about six thousand dollars well it ran and it was a driver problem was it was mostly original and we wanted something that was a little bit more modern and a little bit more drivable but for the price that we paid for this thing well we couldn't have asked for a better foundation here's what we started with [Music] we found this old truck in the classifieds just like anybody else would looking for a project we wanted something that had stock running gear stock engine stock transmission and stock power levels which barely got us past this horse and buggy after pulling the engine we determined it was a 1954 year engine had the pressurized oiling system and was something worth keeping we followed that with removing the stock front suspension and welding in a paul horton's welder series diy front subframe the horton system is a typical mustang ii setup however it ships flat and requires that you weld it up saving you tons of money and being on a budget was a precedent we set right from the start with this project so combined with jw rod garage's suspension system we had disc brakes budget wheels from summit and rack and pinion manual steering system making this front suspension safe and modern and that's a theme we followed on the back half of this truck as well we ended up with the triangulated four link a pair of coil overs and a junkyard ford explorer rear axle complete with disc brakes then it was on to some 50's custom tricks in the form of frenched in led headlights and 59 caddy led tail lights so with the front and rear suspension taken care of the rear axle swapped in and the rest of the drivetrain figured out well that just left us with a rolling chassis with a really ugly green body sitting on top of it and that was something we were not going to leave alone so with that rather solid but boring blank canvas we knew we had the raw materials to create something really cool but what we did want to do was throw a whole ton of money just because we wanted to create a project that has a ton of curb appeal but on a budget and show you guys that you can create a vehicle with massive amounts of character that you can see coming from a mile away [Music] so we took a little inspiration from a real truck in arizona with actual patina and just kind of copied it starting out with sanding the base and then applying a layer of sloppy black with a brush followed by a sloppy layer of red oxide with a roller this creates tons of texture and we followed that with our own blend of an aqua color mixed from the dupli-color paint job system and sprayed through a five dollar pressure sprayer from a hardware store throw on some header paint just for a little bit of contrast and texture and then you're ready to start creating your sun damage which begins with 400 grit sandpaper to get down through the layers quickly now what you're trying to do is recreate sun damage from the top down which is exactly how our inspiration truck appeared the top surfaces were deteriorated and faded even down through the layers right to the metal now there's no real way to even make a mistake with this system you have to go by what you think looks right you can check it step back and look at it and in the end it's your style and your design that you're creating once i was happy with the fender we applied it to the rest of the truck and it gave us the appearance we were looking for all for less than 200 bucks for the entire paint job now we found our three window truck for a little bit cheaper and a little easier than you can pick up a five window cab problem was we like the five windows so time for a conversion but luckily for us reproduction sheet metal is readily available and we converted our cab to five windows for a pretty fair price but when it came time to install the not so cheap curved glass we called in the professional now we've installed glass before but in this case it wasn't worth the risk and since dante's not new we let him handle it it was worth it now when it came to replacing the grill and other chrome pieces we wanted to take a different approach so with the help of our friends at advanced plating we stop the plating process right at the copper which cuts about two-thirds of the cost off of the finishing process and also leaves us with a surface that is beautiful to look at and also gives us options as far as how it's going to eventually end up now we can always leave it bright shiny copper and lock it in with some sort of a sealer because it flat out looks cool like it is but to follow the theme of the rest of the paint job we're going to let it age naturally and just like the statue of liberty it will take on a patina that's gorgeous so with the exterior of the truck just about done we removed a couple of cross members to make room for our new 700r4 automatic overdrive transmission an aftermarket cross member holds it in place custom engine mounts hold our blue flame six in place that's the engine that was rebuilt by the guys over on horsepower tc panic mastered the throttle linkage beautifully and short of an exhaust system this thing was ready for the road [Music] now we were really happy with the paint job that ended up on this old pickup but it's kind of polarizing either love it or you hate it luckily for us the vast majority of people that laid eyes on this old rig they love it like we do we don't build them to look at them because until they're out on the road it's nothing but a pile of parts so out on the road is exactly where we're taking this thing shake it down a little [Music] hey guys welcome back to trucks well the day is finally here to take our 49 chevy project classics out for its first test drive because like we said we don't build these trucks to sit around in lawn chairs and look at we build them to drive them so let's take our budget classic out for a little spin sounds good now it's always fun to get a driving impression the very first time you take a new project out on the road and what struck us right from the start was how stable and solid this truck felt on the road and despite not having sway bars front or rear that was surprisingly little body roll even in some hard corners although we weren't exactly setting any speed records or going for an autocross timing event but if you think about it that's not what this truck is all about it's about cruising and that it does and does well the combination of the 373 rear gears 700 r4 overdrive and the power band of the inline six well it was the perfect combination for exactly the way we wanted to drive this truck kevin's right this thing does ride great but there's still no shortage of wind noise buffeting and rattling that's just part of the nostalgia of driving a truck that's 60 some years old now something that's not that old are these led headlights and tail lights which you can clearly see even in the bright of day now all the copper work on our old 49 started out looking brand new and now it looks just about right and all we had to do was let it sit outside for a little while now the longer we drove around in this thing the more the engine broke in and the better it ran and with a cab full of windows visibility certainly wasn't a problem [Music] now on this project we wanted to compromise on dollars spent but not sacrifice on cool factor we think we pretty much hit the nail on the head and we're able to show you guys some great tips on how to modify these advanced design trucks now part of the reason this vehicle sits in the road so nice is because we didn't go crazy with wheel and tire diameter number one it's more expensive when you go to the larger diameter wheels and you compromise on the amount of sidewall we've got 15 inch wheels lots of sidewall with mickey thompson radios and it just rides good now this engine didn't even think about overheating all day long with its fresh rebuild we probably more than doubled our top speed capability when we first picked up our 49 the worn out straight six had us limited to about 45 or maybe 50 miles an hour purely from a lack of power but cruising down the highway at about 70 this thing's barely breaking a sweat now this truck has come a long way and we didn't spend typical restoration money getting it to what you see here a very very unique and custom truck full of character you

Channel: Gunpowder & Gasoline

Views: 1,805,061

Keywords: powernation, powerblock, chevy, chevrolet, chevy 3100, restoration, rebuild, truck, trucks, rebuild truck, inline six, inline six engine, straight six, straight six engine, engine, straight-six engine, full build, hot rod, inline 6, patina paint, patina, patina paint job on trucks, patina paint job, 1949 chevy truck, 1949 chevy 3100, restore truck, restore, 1949 chevy truck restoration

Id: oC5acvv3Y1c

Length: 152min 55sec (9175 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020