lol, we need our LSX short block and upgraded turbos before she'd feel safe sitting next to that monster.

-Russell

That is true, Grasshopper.

:D

that's awesome

Adding it to my screensaver folder

Playing in the mud
 

hehe, Got to drive it sometime right.

-Russell


http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...-57_mud_01.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...-57_mud_02.jpg

It was build to burn Rubber:willy: :willy: :willy:

http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2010/01...od-pickup.html :cheers:

Thanks for posting that link, I enjoyed the article.

Congrats Russell and all contributors to the build. :thumbsup:

Sorry for my long absence been busy catching up the customers projects and getting sick for almost 2 full weeks doing nothing but sleeping and now I'm trying to recover my strength. Nothing like knowing a month ago I just picked that rear end up and put it on the table, now I can't budge it.

For those who missed it there was a little article on the PT-57, lots of its wrong but hay who's counting.
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2010/01...od-pickup.html


For the fans, I just got around to taking these today so you all can see how she's come out so far. I'm still playing with the HDR's.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/s-1.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/s-2.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/s-3.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/s-4.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/s-5.jpg

I'm still experimenting with differential mounts and brackets so I haven't gotten a chance to put it on the track yet. I'm also going to do a major renovation of the firewall, steering column, steering linkage, and pedal system.

The steering column ended up a little lower than I would have liked so we'll be moving it up to better clear my huge size 13 feet and I'm going to give a little extra because I have 2 friends / customers who wear 16's. I want a little more leverage on the brakes, I can just barely lock up the street tires the way she sits now and that mean's I have some grip I'll loose out on with the Slicks so a little more leverage on that end and a little different pedal design too.

The fire wall is going to get a different look to make it more of a factory design instead of the overly common slick everything. I want to make the motor compartment look and feel more like the inside of a bomber / fighter than a tricked out show car. We're also going to ditch the inter coolers since they only show very little cooling compared to the intake air temp. On the dyno the ITA was only 5+ ambient and that was no air moving across the rest of the mandrill tubing under the car. The pyrometer on the end caps was only showing 8-10 degrees drop across the IC’s and they had a fan blowing on them directly so they go and with it some weight too.

Later
-Russell

O' my. This is a unique and extremely well thought out build.
It kind of makes me wish i was building a truck instead.

Do you have higher resolution versions of the HDR pics?
They are to small for my monitor resolution to look good as wallpaper.

:thumbsup: :hail:

Awesome pics. :thumbsup:
That thing looks mean. I love it, good job!!:cheers:

Good to see the pics.

Likely SEMA thrashes have been many 'supermen' aka car builders... kryptonite. ;)

I hope you recover completely soon. :thumbsup:

clicking opens them up to 1024x768 bet if you'll tell me what size you want it I'll post it up.

Now my question

A guy came by the shop today and told me he saw the Pt-57 in a magazine. I have no clue what he's talking about. Has anyone else seen it or did I just waste 3-4 hours looking for it?

Thanks
-Russell

Last months Street Trucks "SEMA coverage".

Seriously thanks for that, I ordered a copy I hope to see it this week and I scan it in and post whats there.

But before that I've got some bad news

I BROKE IT AGAIN!!!!

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-3.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-7.jpg


This time I killed the two bolts holding the dif plate into the car. They were grade 8 1/2" and they both snapped after 2-3 days of long hard burn outs on the Pilots playing with various rear shock settings. Then the next day, I'm leaving a parking lot and bam. The rear end is jumping up and down. With the front two bolts snapped the rear rigid mount I built as a replacement quickly with scrap from around the shop (during breakage #3 when I snapped the OE Corvette mount) this was the only thing holding the diff in the car and the CV's kept it centered so I could get stopped.

Now I'm sure everyone is wondering why there's a strap on the diff, that's how I got home, with a ratchet strap holding the diff down to the frame and X'd to keep it centered. I was about 20 miles from the shop and it was one of those days where everyone was gone along with my truck and trailer. So I had to drive it home, very, very slowly.

So on to the real fix now and what will hopefully be the production mount. I kept patching the old system and prototype adapter to just see what, and in what order, things would break when we take away the torque tube and transmission from the system. Obviously the first thing that needs to be addressed is the lack of support that would keep the differential from rotating around the rear axle center line. Just like the diff on a live axle car the IRS diff is forced up from the pinion yoke rotating backwards around the rear axle center line during positive acceleration. So instead of a rear lower mount (like a stock C5) I'm going to give the diff a mount up top so it will be pulling down against this new mount instead of trying to crush it. Then on the front I'm going to keep the two bolts and bushing into the adapter plate from the bottom for support during negative acceleration while the clutch is engaging the motor and the transmission is in gear. The diff at that point is hammered into the frame or in this case into a pair of rubber bushings. But I'm going to add two lateral bolts on top of the diff plate to give these two bolts more mechanical advantage over the differential case and keep the nose down under positive and negative acceleration. We will now have a grand total of 6 bolts (4x 1/2" and 5x 5/8's) holding the diff in place and set up in a way that different bolts will all be loaded a little differently and spread the force out. Take a look at the pretty picture soldworks made for me, lol you can also see the new lighter plate with a little Hot Rod Jim bling,

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-1.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-4.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-5.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...iff/01/s-6.jpg

What’s this mean about the truck, she goes on the lift. The bed comes off, most of the rear suspension, gas tank, turbo’s, exhaust, several lines and more. And we get to play setup on the new diff mounts. I'm also going to fix up several other things that have been peeving me and add in some quick disconnects on the wiring so when I get the new frame banged out the body swap will be quick and painless. So let the fun begin.

-Russell

I had the three bolts holding the steering box to the frame on my 1969 Mercedes 280SL.... as it turns out -- they were simply over torqued when the car was restored.... They sheared just like your bolts - and had that "crystalized" look at the shear line.

After the second breakage I thought I had it stacked nicely with rubber on both sided of the frame. So it went bolt, washer, rubber, frame, rubber, diff adapter from bottom to top. But when I got up under the rear end you could see that the bolts both snapped right where the threads ended in the adapter. So now we'll have 6 bolts holding it in instead of just the 4.

-R^3

Hey Russell, one of the members directed me to your project, i'm very interested in the C5/6 pinion adaptor, as i want to swap in a C5 IRS in my F body, i would greatly love your help and a guess price of the adaptor, if you could PM i'd love to chat with you.

Oh ya, Your truck is a piece...of Art! the chassis looked so appealing in raw metal. shoulda just cleared it ;) but yellow works awesome too!

Bob

Bob

Thanks for the kind words, I'll get that PM out asap. I won't have a price for the diff adapter until I'm sure there not going to break in this setup.

But for now

BIG NEWS, ITS DRIFT TIME
What better racing type to make an attempt to break my new differential combo. We'll be in Houston on March 28th at Grand Sport Speedway sliding around with the best of them and of course I'll have as much video as I can get. You can read more about it here.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/for...p?topic=1413.0

-R^3

So we didn't make the drifting event. I started fixing thing, one thing led to another and we ended up not making it. Sunday morning at 3:30 My buddy Kelly and I sat down, made a list of what we needed to do and at the very least we needed 10 more hours worth of work. Had we not been awake for 20+ hours at that point we would have keep banging on it. I didn't want a repeat of Optima where I get the car together then bring it back and have to rip into it again to fix something that was half assed of overlooked because we rushed it.

Prototype parts are one thing but I found pinched lines from the oil back on the turbo, the shaft pivot had been installed with a grade 2 bolt and had twisted, I see 10-15 pounds worth of steal on the front that made up a last minuet radiator support and gussets that can all go, and I want to get my inner fender in finally.


So onto the rear end. And the mods I was working on for the truck to make it a better street car and way better for drifting.

-Steering Arms
The truck only had about 46 degrees of turn in, good for smooth course racing but it was a little tough in town making tight corners. So I made up a new set of steering arms that moved the rack back .5" inches increasing the steering angle to 57 degrees.

The old arm is shown here on top with the new arm on bottom, notice that the lower plate on the new are is also clearances to allow the outer tie rod room to move up into and clear the steering under real hard cornering.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-1.jpg

The pile of inter cooler just that came out.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-3.jpg

For the diff and the race I decided I really wanted to get in there and see what things were doing, so you can see almost everything that ended coming off.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-4.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-5.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-6.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-7.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-8.jpg

-New Diff Mount

The old diff coming out weighted 92 lbs. You can see the new rear mount on the diff. The old system tried to use the OE corvette mounts and added a few, that failed honorably. So this is what I've come up with to fix it. The rear plate is the big difference but I've moved the front upper mounts too and upgraded to 5/8' hardware. The rear we drilled out the threads since all but 1 of the rear plate holes go through the aluminum and captured the bolt on the other side to ensure a much better hold to the case.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...ate/10/s-9.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-10.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-11.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-12.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-13.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-14.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-15.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-16.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-17.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-18.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...te/10/s-19.jpg

-Whats next

I'm going to get the turbos coated and mod the exhaust a little. Some of the wrap was getting ripped up on bottom with all the gravel in the area.

Gas tank mod, it had a little leak, lets just say I got a little full of my self with the tabs and slots and made an awesomely complicated section that I couldn't weld all to well and now it leaks, a lot.

Wiring, I'm re arranging some of the ISIS boxes for ease of access and changing some of the wiring to more secured locations.

Brake cooling ducts, with the inner coolers out of the way it'll be easy now the back is getting a neat trick too.

Finish out the roll cage

Later
-Russell

Great idea Russell posting as many quality pics as possible.

Looking good, I especially like the closeup of that fatt Pfadt. :unibrow:

So you might ask what’s been going on with the PT-57 and why has Russell stopped posting information. We’ll, we’re still in business after this last year. Its been interesting and that’s taken up too much of my time just in the day to day operations. We’ve gotten more models of the C6 parts and I’ve spent a large amount of time turning them into manageable files groups we’re I can adjust the suspension geometry in the computer depending on what car we’re working on. Lots of time consuming BS for a 2 man shop but it’s all necessary and we’re still in business. I think that saying a lot these days.

On to the truck, we were going to go to the Dallas Goodguys back in October but we had some issues and couldn’t make it in the end, that cost us a serious chuck of time. Part of that was in some new sheetmetal we wanted on the car. A local shop offered up a good price to bang out some sheetmetal work on the Fire wall of the PT-57 to help with her weight loss program. Let’s just say it didn’t work out to well, pictures are worth a thousand words so they say.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-1.jpg

So my father (the retired metal art professor from Texas State) decided he wanted a whack at it finally. We cut out the old crap and removed lots of .250” steel flat stock that was welded in to the truck and used to form the sheetmetal around. Let’s just say I think with the new fire wall and floor tunnel, the truck is probably 20-30 Lbs lighter, and that’s being realistic. We mounted up the Vintage Air Gen 2 AC, tossed in some speakers, and decided to go to a hydro boost master cylinder on the fire wall due to packaging restrictions under the trucks floor and for the ease of daily driving.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-3.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-4.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-5.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-6.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-7.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-8.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....11.29/s-9.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-10.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-11.jpg


Design ideas

So we had some big problems with the PT-57’s front frame design and its interference with the surrounding systems. The headers and steering were the biggest problems. The headers were so close to the oil filter that in the 2000 miles I put on the truck during testing I burned up 4 oil filters. The headers were so close that is caused the internals of the filter to break. To me driving I suddenly saw the oil pressure drop from 45PSI to almost 20, scared the **** out of me the first time. I feel luck that the starter didn’t burn up, the headers were just as close on that side. Next because of the frame and the headers we didn’t have enough room for a steering linkage I would normally approve of. So we needed more room for that as well. Rack and pinion choice also needed to be reevaluated. We went with a C4 corvette rack on the original design for the availability but with GM cutting back the racks are getting harder and harder to find. I also want 32 degrees of turn in radius for the truck so I can do some more drifting so we turn to Flaming River for that one. We will be using the Flaming River FR40001 with its 6” travel over the 5” travel corvette rack. The rack doesn’t have the clearance issues with the Power Steering lines anymore and we can move the motor down a little further getting the CG down a little more.

The rear of the PT-57’s frame also needs some re working for the new differential adapter and better turbo integration. The new differential adapter mounts from the top and the current frame didn’t have enough bracing to hold the differential with its short lever-less structure so more tubing needed to be woven in to make the functional support. I love the rear turbos but I need to take the complexity of the boost tubing down a notch so I’m also going to integrate some of the boost tubing into the structure of the frame so we don’t have to fish it through and around the differential and CV Shafts

Finally after some problems with the powder coating (and the final straw with the yellow V4 Frame) We built our own powder coating system again so this time we can do all the little bits and make sure they won’t crack off this time. We can also take out oven up to 800F so I plan to add ceramic (or titanium) coating to the headers and complete exhaust of the PT-57 for even better turbo response (I don’t know it that’s even possible.)

These are some of my rejected frame designs from the last year.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-12.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-13.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-14.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-15.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...11.29/s-16.jpg

And finally after 4 rejected frames (I think) I’ve finally found the right combination to make the front really work out, take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-1.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-3.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-4.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-5.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-6.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-7.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....04.20/s-8.jpg


2011 Should be a fun year for the PT-57 and I hope she will fully evolve into the PT nightmare I want her to be.
Thanks
Russell Alexander
Hot Rod Jim’s
http://www.hotrodjim.com

You know your pic happy audience here. :thumbsup:

Good to see all the improvements to 'da beast.

Look forward to seeing how it all comes together when you get to flog it again.

Yes, yes I do Skip, So I rejected that last frame due to a lack of turn in clearance but I think I've solved that problem Behold V5.4 and I'm almost done with the front stub, Check out the update

Update
2011/05/21

So I’m almost done with the new frame front section. Right now it looks to be right at 101.26 lbs. I’m looking for more room I can lighten the front up without losing structural integrity. I still need to add the rear shock brace and the sway bar hole so I look to pick up another 3-4 lbs there and I’m figuring on 2-3lbs of welds. The old one was just over 75lbs in the computer but I didn’t have all the parts drawn so probably closer to 85lbs with those parts and welding wire.

We now have a full 34 degrees of turning radius with 275/xx/Rxx Hoosiers. FYI Hoosiers have a serious edge on them making them almost .300” wider than a normal 275, So I can probably run 295 Front tire on this configuration and still turn around in 2 lanes without punching on it.

Flaming River Rack and Pinion, BIG thanks to those guys for sharing a part file for my design I drew one off the rack I had but there are too many compound angles and I screwed up a little here and there. We now have a much beefier rack up front to take the load and its only 2 lbs heavier than the C4 corvette rack I was using.

PFADT’s superior upper shock mount with their Coilover shocks. I love the OE Pfadt shocks I have already, the map is great and I plan on keeping them. But with some serious luck I’ll be able to get a set of these for my truck, http://www.pfadtracing.com/catalog/p...7606d692d513ba this will shave some weight from the suspension and most importantly the un sprung weight and I’ll be able to dial in my compression and rebound independently which will be important when I get back on the track.

I’m waiting on a visit from these guys http://www.absolutegeometries.com/ My plan is to scan several portions of the body into a 3D point cloud so I can drop it into the computer and overlay it with the truck to make sure we have clearance. Here are some video for you guys who have never seen one of these 3D scanners at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZKrwkzO6-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywFb-FnT8rA

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-1.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-3.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-4.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-5.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-6.jpg

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-7.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....05.21/s-8.jpg

More coming soon
Later
-Russell

Update 2011.07.10
 

3D Scanning and getting the last parts to the puzzle

So after talking through several emails with Mike owner of Absolute Geometry (http://www.absolutegeometries.com) I figured out all I could without seeing and working with the parts myself. I spent several weeks of trying to get some free time and getting my schedule to align so I could head up to his place and talk in person with the equipment for demonstration. I also decided it would be a good idea to get some small parts I wanted scanned so I’d have something to play with in the computer to better understand the final product. The STS Turbos I want to really suck into the chassis and make them fit so I took one of the turbos and took it in 3 parts, the compressor housing, the turbin housing and the center section. This would give me 3 separate parts so I can clock the turbo in the computer for future chassis project and really fit the turbo in to the chassis, here are the results.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-1.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-2.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-3.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-4.jpg

The I’m having a little trouble making 3D surface files out of them but that’s just because my version of Solidworks doesn’t have the 3D scanning software and I’m forced to go to a friend’s place to use his premium copy so I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it. I also found out he can do the laser scan of the surface and then go in and get hard points with the FARO pointer. The points come in as a IGS file that will lay over the scan. The advantage to this is I don’t have to do any work to the scan to change it from a STL file into anything else. I have the hard points to measure from and I can see where something might interfere with the outside and change that.



So I showed this to a friend and so he asked me to supervise the scanning of his A-Body frame. After the scan it he called and decided he wants the back to Lay frame. So he asked if I could make a quick modification and make up some rear arches that will move the loop up 4 inches. It took 15 minutes with the scan data and everything’s to scale, take a look.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-5.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-6.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-7.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-8.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro....07.10/s-9.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...07.10/s-10.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...07.10/s-11.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...07.10/s-12.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...07.10/s-13.jpg http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...07.10/s-14.jpg

So my plan is twofold. One is to have the bottom of some of my other projects scanned so in the future I have all the body bracing, inner and outer fender, firewalls and core supports all in the computer before I start so I can build my frame and look to see if it will clear without having to spend a week moving the body, building a prototype moving everything around just to find out one section is .500 to far to the left and hitting a body brace or you can’t get the wheels off, the list goes on. The second part of the plan is to check against deviation from the design. When we’re done with the frame we’ll scan the first few out of the Jig to make sure they are all within speck and not warped all to hell. The best design is useless if you can reproduce it accurately.

More to come
-Russell

What ever happened to this truck and the guys building it? Its one of my favorites.

http://www.hotrodjim.com/immages/pro...oot/01/l-4.jpg

Ironically, I spoke to Jim about a month ago about this truck. He said he's still ironing out some things. But, recently his son, forgot his name, has been getting his business off the ground. Jim told me the frames are now being built by his son. They have developed a newer frame for this truck and a frame for Tri-Five's. Several other frames are in the development stages, per Jim's son. His son's shop is named Nerd's Hot Rods.http://www.nerdrods.com/

Cool. They need to get it fixed and bring it up to GG this fall. I loved to see it in person.

Sorry for the silence. Unfortunately the truck has been dismantled for a new frame but has been sitting in piles for the better part of a year or two. Problem is that the economy told us that no one was willing to pay for C5/6 stuff and everyone just wanted C4 as "good enough". So I came up with our Weld it Yourself frame that Jigs itself and that idea has taken off.

You can watch my time-lapse here showing me welding one of these frames without a jig here.



And here's the 3D animation showing the details.



My plan is to get these babies selling them selves then redesign the PT-57's frame into a C5/6 (C7) DIY frame so someone else could build a similar frame at there home garage. We've already had over 20 of the C4 TriFive frames sold and more than half are finished welded with no problems from the owners other than minor fitting issues with old metal cars and a few minor mess-ups on my end of thing but we've gotten those straightened out too. You can read more about that here. http://www.trifive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100996

I'm going to steel some bits off the PT-57 for my 57 4 Door Project to showcase the DIY frame but I've got some new lighter goodies in the works for the PT-57 as well, :stirthepot: Think 20lbs of boost on an aluminum 5.3L, 50lbs off the frame, lighter wheels, lighter rotors, and a better transmission. Should be a wet weight under 3000 lbs, Mawhahahahah!

Thanks again
-Russell

Thanks for checkin in. I really liked that truck. Wish I could have seen it all sorted out.

I'll get more into is after we move to the DFW Area. First finish the 4 door, second do a C4 frame for the trucks, third move then its C5/6 time again!

Later
-Russell

Jim, you and your son are moving the business to DFW....where? :welcome3:

NW DFW please. Lots of room out here and we'd love to have you.

Don't know yet, still looking but I'm all ears if you've got info!

Thanks
-Russell

Hey Russell:

Did you ever get the 57 truck frame done for sale? Is that the tri five frame that you have? Great video.

Yes and No,

So by getting together what you all saw together I was able to get a price on what it was going to cost me to build that frame and make money it the sale. I started talking with several people and it was just not in a price range people are willing to spend on an old truck. The C5 requires too much modification and tweaking for most people.

At that point I realized what needed to change for the truck to be a road gobbling but still street-able machine, and I was broke. So, broke and I was devolving a product with little to no customer base wasn't exactly a sustainable idea for a small shop but one think I noticed I was lacking was a cheaper option. I would spend hours talking to guys about what needed to be done and why we did it to make it handle, look or fit and every time I would just get a "thanks for your time but do you have anything cheaper"

So the TriFive frame was pretty easy since we've build over 50+ of them and converting it to a DIY frame was going to be much easier. Since it was a new idea, using new equipment and a new concept I really needed something I was familiar so I only had to deal with the design challenges of making the kit not fitting the body, clearing tires and designing the frame in general. Its been fairly successful and so I just started working on the 55-59 trucks. Starting with a 3D scan for future projects!

I'll post up something on those soon.

Later
-Russell