72 Chevy shortbed -- quick build!

[67pro-street]

Hi all,

I bought a 72 shortbed a few years ago about a mile down from my house. It was a pretty cool looking truck that was originally from California. It had awesome patina and I had to buy it. The truck was rough to say the least, but at least as rust went it was pretty minimal. I originally bought the truck with hopes of doing a full rebuild but then I realized how cool that patina was and wanted to keep the body as original as possible. I bought another truck with a 402 BB and took the motor out of that. I put in the typical cam/intake/carb setup from Edelbrock that Jegs sells as a kit, and then installed a noisy gear drive for good measure. Installed some flowmaster 40's and build the wood bed from scratch. I used a pretty cool method on the wood bed. It's a Japanese method where you burn the grains in the wood and then sand it down, then burn the grains and sand it down...so on and so forth. I also had a try at patina paint by transforming the white door to make it match the rest of the truck. Anyways, here are some photos! I'd love to hear some comments good or bad...I've got thick skin so lay it on me!

-Aman

[67pro-street]

As I bought it.

[67pro-street]

[67pro-street]

First step was to order a lowering kit from early classic enterprises and get the stance a little better...

[67pro-street]

Next step was to put the big block in. I hope these videos work...

With the engine, as well as everything else on this truck i tried to keep as much of the original patina and wear on it as possible. I wanted this truck to look and seem like the most badass sleeper around. To most, it would seem like a crappy old truck, but to those that know...well..there was much more than meets the eye!

[67pro-street]

Finally, I had to deal with the ugly white door, aka the white elephant in the room...

This was my first ever attempt at trying to achieve patina. I was also using paint off the shelf, so I had to get creative by using two different colors of orange to try and achieve the same color as the truck. Keep in mind that the passenger side of the truck was painted at some time in the past, so it was already a different shade then the rest. Instead of trying to match the rest of the truck, I attempted to match just that side of the truck. Given my paint limitations, I think it did alright. I also transferred the logo from the driver's side to the passenger side. A crude attempt at it, but that's exactly what I wanted because you could still see the brush strokes on the driver side from when the logo was originally painted on.

[67pro-street]

Here's how it ended up after the painting to try and match the colors. Not perfect, but pretty good considering....I also sanded the passenger side a bit to get it to bare metal in hopes that over time keeping it outside it will rust a bit to match the driver side....







Now here is the start of the logo transfer...









Now onto the passenger side....

[67pro-street]

The moment of truth...YIKES!!!





And then after a little more sanding to try and make it look old and weathered...





Comparing it to the original driver's side....

[67pro-street]

And now the bed. Pretty proud of this one, built it from scratch. The finish is really the best part of it all, if you haven't ever heard of the Japanese method of burning wood to preserve it, I suggest a google search or two. It is pretty impressive! The thing I like about it is that it still keeps that old weathered look that I was trying to go for. I didn't want to put a brand new flashy bed into an old rusty truck...it would just look out of place. This method allowed for the preservation of the wood as well as the look I was trying to achieve.

[67pro-street]

And the final pics. Took this outside my front field. Washington rules!!!







Hope you enjoyed, have a great day!

-Aman