So it’s been an interesting few years for our little shop, once also known as Hot Rod Jim’s now Nerd Rods to better reflect what’s actually going on here. Dad, My little Brother Billy and I are the bulk of the work force with a few friends doing some part time work for us. To sum it up Dad had cancer, Mom had cancer, Little brother messed his back up pretty bad, Dad broke his leg and that upset his already messed up back resulting in back surgery followed shortly after that. Cross that all with spending way too much money going to the SEMA show that ultimately flopped and the bad economy and you’ll get a basic understanding as to why we’ve not had a finished shop car in quite some time. Everyone is good now and the kit frames have been a real hit with the DIY guys but we are tight on space in our little shop with all the projects going on and a real high quality build take up space we don’t have so we brain stormed what would be the best thing to do and we started looking at our collection in the front yard.
Photo Gallery 01
http://gallery.nerdrods.com/Projects/03_D3/01/index.html
Turns out from our pile of crap out front we are only one finder shy of a complete 1955-56 truck. So with Dad’s Subaru on the frits and we want to show what someone can do on a budget we going to build Dad’s Down and Dirty 1955 Pickup, loving shortened to the D^3 project. I want to keep a running total on everything for guys to get an idea of what this actually takes
The Goal, no frills daily driver for dad on the cheap.
• 5.3L LS and 4L60E (800.00) but we can sell the transmission and make some of that back
• C4 Corvette Suspension (1200.00)
• QA1 Coil Over shocks (1352.00)
• C6 Corvette Wheels (450.00)
I do have some goodies that we’ve been stock piling and will be installing in dad’s project just to make it a bit more fun that would normally blow the budget up on a project like this but the way I see it this stuff it just taking up space at the moment so why not use it.
• Dana 44 with 4.10 Gears (+1800.00)
• T56 – 2002 Camaro Transmission (+1200.00)