58 chevy truck build thread.

Well my dad lets me use his account now so i am able to post now. I am sdrodders son and i am 15 years old. I have this 58 chevy fleetside truck that dad and me are building. We have owned this car since about 3 years now. We bought it here in san diego for 4 thousand dollars. It runs a 235 chevy six with now a nicson triple carb intake and some headers. At the moment it looks kinda 80s streetrodish due to the red ralleys and red grill and various other trim peices. We have lowered the truck with an axel over spring front end and in the rear we had the springs flattened out by national spring company in santee. We also converted the front axel to a disc break setup. The interior is stock. The stock taillights and trim rings(dented up) were replaced with new trim rings and a set of 59 caddilac taillights. The lakepipes on the car are actaully run so they are not just there for decoration. My dad drives it daily but right now it is sitting as it needs a new set of rod bearings. I have been wanting to change the rims but the ones i have dad says are to narrow and i am missing one. We had a option to get a set of stock wheels for it but the seller sold them behind our backs(luckly we didnt give him any $$).

Future plans call for some 16 inch steelies that are much narrower than the ralleys. I wanna redo the bed wood and be strips also. After i finish high school i wanna tear the truck down completely and get everything thats painted red at the moment chromed. The color i think would look great on it would be kustom shop hot rod flats pearl red. Anyway glad to now be able to use dads account(will change it accordingly) and glad to be here overall.

Here is a pretty good pic of what we started with. When we got it it didnt have the olds hoodbird, peep mirros, and ralley wheels



How it looked before an all around lowering. The grill is a stock 58-59 chevy grill modified with 7 57 chevy hood bullets mounted on the 2 bars





Here is a look at the intake that is now run on the car. Its a vintage nicson triple carb intake with 3 rochesters. I have been trying to find vintage parts and this was one of the peices. We got it for 200 dollars at long beach swap meet







After getting the axel over spring in the truck i decided to see how the truck looked with one of the 16 inch steelies with the whitewall looked on it. I persoanly like this look the best(we put the ralleys and such on before i really got into traditional but they were an improvement over the awfull 16 inch chrome 30 hole wheels)



Another modification we did to the 235 was the popular t-5 swap. Before swaping the trans i found at the swapmeet this late 30s early 40s dodge? hood ornament. I was suprised when it cost 5 dollars. Dad bought it for me for the truck. Dad took it to the body shop with him and made it fit the t-5 shifter. We ran if for alittle while but when the trans started making a noise we took it off. Here is a look at the trans and at the hood ornament





After getting the headers i went to autozone and picked up some header paint and painted them red. Well i dont know what went wrong or if it was just the paint after 1 week on the running 235 it flaked off. Now my headers dont look that good anymore as there are some flakes of red and a bunch of the orignal black color to be seen. I will redo them though when i take the truck apart to finish it completly



The 235 before any new additions



After new additions





Lastly a look at the rear springs. Above is a stock spring while below is the flatened out spring




Ok well to finish off the pictures this is how it sits now.










Guess i should tell alittle more about the truck. When we got it we quickly registered it in our name and my dad drove it daily. Thats when he noticed some overheating problems. After getting it we bought another 58 stepside(sadly never got pics) and swaped the rims. After selling it due to having to move and it being alittle worse condition we moved. Dad kept worrying about the overheating. We did alot of work for that. We replaced the thermostast housing, water pump and even changed the stock radiator to a desert edition. Still we had problems. We then had another 235 so we took the head and had it changed over to lead free. When we took off the stock head to replace it with the new head we noticed some of the cooling ports were plugged. So the head was swapped and then driven but still we had issues till dad noticed that the thermostast didnt open. He then realized that when u drove the cold air blowing into the motor room was hitting the thermostast housing and cooling the water alittle so the thermostast never opened. Dad made alittle plate infront of it and now its fine.

The body held a few more secrets than we expected. Instead of just haveing just 2 small rust holes on the fenders the last owner did a nice bondo job. on the p***enger side inside the cab below the vent the whole area was filled with newspaper, mesh, and everyones favorite body restyling product bondo. Dad knocked all that out and then drove it for about 2 months till he fixed it. The drivers fender had a dent on top above the headlight and that is somewhat pulled out and bondoed up too. When i wanted to add the stock mirrors i started knocking off old bondo. The drivers side door had the holes easily found and tapped out. Now the p***enger side is a different story. When i started knocking off the bondo i found out that someone had tryed to open the holes for a mirror but failed misserably. What i ended up with was 2 hacked in holes and a bunch of bondo.

Thats it for now. Gonna hopefully replace the rod bearings. I have a lead on a 58 delray in a junkyard gotta call next week to find out about its fate. If it sadly gets parted i will get the bumpers and see if i can get em to fit on the truck.

 

Cool project, you're a lucky young man! What did you use to lower the front suspension? Did you use an aftermarket lowering spring like in the rear?

 

thank you. In the front my dad and me used the stock springs and axel. What dad did though is he welded a plate to the bottom of the axel and then set the axel on the spring. It lowered it more than with just a dropped axel. In the rear we used 55 chevy truck springs and just had them flattened out. Pretty much we used all orignal components.