Ironworks latest project - 48 Chevy truck, Blown LSX 376, lots of body mods

[ironworks]

Well We are just about done with this massive project we have been working on for about a year and a half. Pretty much if it can be done, it has. There are over 80 body mods and think after the first couple major ones, I doubt anybody could pick them out. I have sown some updates in the What's up at Ironworks thread, but I figured it was time for a full blown story on exactly what went into building this truck.

In the next few weeks leading up to SEMA, I will try to explain all the work done on this massive project.

So in Feb of last year, A local guy named Frank decided to have us build his wife a nice truck for his wife. He promised it to her like 40 years ago. Frank and I discussed a few mods and a deal was struck for the sheetmetal I had with an old chassis from another project that got a brand new chassis. Plus I had a used LS1. It was going to be a driver for his wife.

Well Frank and I both have a pretty similar design style and taste. His shop is just down the street from my shop. So with some after work discussions about how ugly these trucks were from the factory it was decided that we would Chop the top 1.5", section the cab through the hood and doors 1.75" and lengthen the cab 3". So we took the sheetmetal I sold him and gathered 2.5 cabs, 3 hoods and 8 doors to do the work we discussed. At this point we began cutting and we have a chopped sectioned and lengthened cab.






Then we began the task of lengthening and sectioning the doors to fit the cab dimensions. We wanted it to look stock behind what would be the door panel also. The doors structure was fit together to eventually have a doors skin made to the new length. It took parts from 4 doors to make each door.




Then we began mocking up the hood to sent up the cut for the 1.75" section.




So last year we took the roughly mocked up truck to a Local NSRA show for display in our booth.

[T_Raven]

Nice! I've always wanted one of those trucks but I hate how little room there is inside the cab, cool to see that you lengthened it

[coolwelder62]

Rodger Very nice. Scott M.

[ironworks]

Well about now is when things got out of control. The customer and I talked about narrowing the grille 1" per side, We narrowed the bottom one in the middle and top one on the outside.




Some other pics of bringing the loose ends together of the hood and doors and getting the body together.



We had to roll a new roof skin because of the shape of the roof when we lengthened the cab.

[ironworks]

Here is the air intake system, We always wanted this truck to have a pretty OEM appearance but just wanted to clean things up.




Here is where the engine gets it's cold air from.


Then we made a cover to protect it from the tire.




The original hood hinges really sucked and nobody made some reproduction units. So we made our own.

[srh3trinity]

The phrase "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" applies to all of your builds. Looks like another winner.

[ironworks]

In this picture you can see the addition we made under the dash for the AC vents. We tried very hard to make it look some what OEM.


In this picture you can see the under hood support we built to flimsy hood and also the gas shocks we set up to hold the hood up.


To access the fuel filler we set up 2 strips in the bed wood to flip up and give us access. We build the hinge in Solidworks and had the parts press broke. We used graphite impregnated Delrin for the bushings.



You can also see the 2 holes for battery leads if you need to put the truck on a charger.


In this picture you can see the holes in the interior of the cab for the 3 point seat belts to come out of the cab for the passengers.


At this point you can see the fruits of all our labor on the front end. The grille now has a taper to it. The grille bolts to the fenders not the other extra parts. We heavily modified a Volkswagen Karman Ghia front bumper, we made a custom splash apron, we sectioned the hood, we made custom hood trim, and installed 57 chevy truck turn signals in the front fenders, we also had to make the raised section in the sheetmetal to mount the turn signal. Among other things.

[ironworks]

Bare metal photoshoot. This thing is pretty cool if I do say so myself.

[Vegas69]

Killer! May actually have to go to Sema.

[ironworks]

Here is what it looked like leaving for paint.



The chassis mock up.