Hi everyone!
I've been looking for a place to share and discuss my project, and by all accounts this looks to be the place. Just thought I'd drop in and say hi before I get into all of the crazy questions and thoughts I've had brewing. It's nice to have people to talk to that are interested in this hobby, so here's my story!
A few years ago, while I was in college, I was gifted a 1957 Chevy Pickup. It was actually my grandfather's truck 55 years ago, but after a few years he traded it to an in-law, where it sat in a garage for 40 years. Although he intended to restore it, he never got around to it and finally offered it to me. I'd always wanted to restore an old vehicle, as my father had restored a 73' Firebird 400 while I was growing up, so I agreed to pay the shipping from Indiana to Florida. I had absolutely no idea what it looks like or anything about it. At that point, I didn't even know a thing about cars, so I knew I was in for a ride.
Here is what arrived:
The TruckA bit daunting to say the least. In actuality, much of the missing pieces were in either the cab or the bed, so parts wise, not much was missing.
To sum up everything I've done so far in the past few years, I've dissassembled pretty much everything that wasn't welded. The original 235 engine got torn down, washed and rebuilt with new parts. The frame got vigorously stripped by hours upon hours of hand labor as I didn't have access or the know how for a sand blaster. Because I was in college at the time, I didn't have much time to work on it. The first two years were very slow going. Fast forward to now and I'm putting in 9-12 hours a day, six days a week and it's coming along very quickly once I learned how to braze metal.
This is where I am currently: I have the frame restored, the suspension and brakes restored, the engine and transmission rebuilt, the cab interior and exterior mounted and primed, and all of the engine compartment pieces cleaned up and painted, and clear coated them for good measure. I even have the hood fully painted and cleared so that I could test how good I was at doing a paint job myself with an HVLP gun.
I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm proud of what I've learned over the entire process. Everything I did was either self taught from the internet or hearsay from my father and grandfather. I'm sure many of my methods are horribly faulted and I dread what is going to happen when I try to fire the engine for the first time. But that's still a month or two off, so for now I'll keep working.
Here's a small album of some of the work done so far:
http://imgur.com/a/YNzwI#0
