Romancing The Stone***The Diamond Deuce** Part II

Well, some of you know my Hemi pick up has been boiling for a while....I finally have pics and more pieces to the puzzle.....
here is a brief history.....

A young man in the 50's originally built the truck....started it somewhere in 57 or 58.....maybe even earlier.
His name was Gerald Watson.Born and raised in Hamilton Ontario.
The truck was featured in HRM in 61 and had a spread.
Not bad for a home town kid.I have spent lots of time tracking parts and history on this rig.When I bought it in the early 90's.... I had no idea it was a local survivor.It was a show truck,street racer and spent time (alot of time) at the track.

 

I have quite a few of pics from the years and will add them to this post as time permits......the truck had many different facelifts..... originally chopped and channelled, then unchannelled....different engines and drivelines.....flattys,hemis.olds etc etc.. when I got it the truck was holding a late flatty with a ton of Fenton speed stuff.. heads,dual pot intake,97,s headers and hooked to a BBF 4 speed.
....It ran like ****.

 

I wanted a driver and then started to learn abouts its past.
I bought a nailhead and stock dynaflow....but got sidetracked by "street rodders".....Ya gotta put a chevy in that pile!

uh,,,,no...I bought a sweet little 289 Hi-po and used a C4.....
I used it for 4-5 years as a summer daily.

 

Some more pics from my summer of love.....around 91-94

 

So....after I started to think about this trucks past and alot of grey beards telling me storys of smoke and burnouts....I decides to return the "Diamond Deuce" to its former glory..........
.....somewhat.

I enlisted the help of a very talanted man by the of name Ken Stewart.
Ken was(is) a roundy round man with a ton of talent for doing magical work with race cars and hotrods.
An ultimate Metal and fab guy.
here are some old pics from the early mock up on the table.

 

sorry for the **** pics....digital has come a long way......

 

Well.....here are some pics of the battle with this in the past 2 years.....

 

Hold on..I am having technical difficulty with Photobucket......

 

Sorry.....again...here is what 45 plus years of hotrodding does to a 75 year old body.....
Inner cowls were cheesed and mudded pretty bad......

 

The doors were very bad as well as the rear cab corners and front lower cowls....losts of bondo on top of lead and br***.
the whole cab was literally cracking apart at the a pillers and just beyond the tops of the doors.

 

I employed the help of Terry Sparks...another fine metal man to s****,peel and repair the cab and bed.
One door wieghed 72 ****ds withall thegarbage in there!....new skins were ordered along with cab corners and front lower cowls.
basiclly...everything from the belt line down....very ruff.


and then we re-chopped it

 

front.......before and after...just another inch.....for good measure.

 

and the back.......

 

Gets kinda depressing at this stage......
I was seriously thinking roadster pick up....

 

The bed was very tuff too....(I will post more shots of that later....here is a pic of the new stake pockets....and the frame work inside the bed.....

 

MAS tank...there will be 2...on above(shown) and one sunk and hid
Hemis are thirsty beasts.

 

more bed(stripped)......nice and denty.....

 

Thanks John!

I will post a ton of construction stuff soon
But I have H=O-M-E!



pics....

 

pics..

 

pics......
Wheels sit where they should.....

 

pics......

 

firewall and such......

 

Rear shot.....

 

another.....

 

more.......

 

Lets move into the boiler room......

 

more.......

 

more again....