52 Chevy Pickup With Complete C5 Suspension and Drivetrain

[Nate_ERC]

Well, everyone keeps telling me that I should start a build thread on this 52 Chevy truck we are building. I tried to push it off on the owner, but it turns out that he doesn't even own a computer. Is that even possible anymore!?

So anyhow here it is... The truck came to us as an ex pro street basket case. We are doing a complete custom build on it. It's getting a Torque 3G chassis that uses all C5 components. Some of the performance upgrades will be big brakes, coilover suspension, and a worked LS1 with a Kenne Bell blower. It's going to run a 6L80e transmission.

We are keeping an old school theme, it will feel (to me) more like a pro street car. With the vette chassis it will be a pro touring car at heart though. The owner plans to autoX it, and take it to some vintage races.


Here are the initial renderings...




And here is the truck when we got it...

[Nate_ERC]

We immediately bust out the green tape so that there's no misconceptions. This is going to get some major surgery,

[RomsMotors]

I had the same idea. I'm in the process of buy a 1950 Chevy pick-up and do the same or make it a Rat Rod. The rendering looks great. Keep us post with progress.

[Nate_ERC]

In the mean-time we began construction of the chassis.





The perimeter frame rails go on once the chassis is under the car, and use the factory body mount locations.

[Nate_ERC]

Here we are taking measurements to see how much we will have to widen the body. We want to run rims with a good sized lip on them.

[Nate_ERC]

At that time we also started to get creative with the back of the truck.

[Nate_ERC]

We sent the cab out to get media blasted, and started marking up the donor cab. Any guess what's coming next?

[Nate_ERC]

We brace up the cab, and start cutting.

[Nate_ERC]

The new pieces are welded in, and it starts to take shape. The new stance is pretty cool (for a truck) .

[Nate_ERC]

We drop the bed back on, then start working out tail. I say we should have just ironed out the foil and called it good.