At times rust repair can be ultra simple; cut the old rust out, cut a square of fresh metal and weld it in. But those repairs aren’t usually as frequent as we’d like. Rust seems to like to creep into a curved area or into a body line that takes more care to repair. I recently decided to tackle a large rusty area of the rear portion of the floor on Project Pile House.
Tag: Pile house
Project Pile House- Shaving the Door handles
Since guys have been customizing cars, shaving the door handles has been one of the most common modifications to make the car look as smooth as possible. This process can be a pretty simple process, but there are a few things that can make it go smoothly. I decided to show the process on Project Pile House.
Custom Scratch Built Bed DIY for Project Pile House
Project Pile House has been an ever-evolving project and like many projects, things start small and spiral out of control and next thing you know you’re detailing the inside of your glove box hinges! Luckily I’m not quite that OCD about my vehicles (yet), but Pile House is now more than just a thrown-together junkyard parts runner like I originally planned. It’s turned into a full blown custom and not much on the truck is original or untouched. After getting the cab, dash, hood, etc. all smoothed out and “roughed in”, the original patched together bed and fenders was bothering the crap out of me every time I looked at it. The fenders looked like boat trailer fenders and were more roughed up than a boxer after a title fight, while the bed itself wasn’t much better. I decided to start dreaming up a subtle custom bed.
Plumbing Custom Brake Lines on Project Pile House
First of all, if you’re rebuilding an old car, whether it’s a full blown 100 point restoration, or an out-of-this-world kustom, you shouldn’t forget about completely redoing the brakes on your ride. Brakes are one of the most overlooked part of a build that can save your car and your life. Project Pile House is a full blown custom with little to be left original on the truck. It sits on a first generation Chevy S10 chassis, so the brake components on each corner are easy to get replacements for, but that’s about where it stops being easy. I recently decided to plumb the brake system on Pile House, and show you what goes into a project like this.
Project Pile House Shaving and customizing the original dash and glovebox.
While I had the column out I decided to start cleaning up the dash and sort out my brake pedal dilemma on the truck. In order to get under the dash for fabricating the new brake pedal setup and to shave and smooth the dash I needed to pull it out. ….
Shaving the Column- Custom Steering Column Mods
I had previously covered in a few steps how I had come up with the steering setup on the truck. To make it short, I’m using a Packard steering column housing, a custom column shaft, and a Ford steering wheel. To make all of this work together took a bit of work, but I’ve got it all bolted up and it should all jive pretty good when done. Now I need to finish up the small details that will make the column not only look good, but also work smoothly together. I’ll be covering the latter in another post, but for now I decided to show you how I went about shaving the unneeded holes from the column housing.
Custom Hood Modifications- Converting a Multi-Piece Hood to One Piece
One thing that I’ve planned to customize on Project Pile House from day one was the hood. The hood on the truck is a “butterfly” (as I call it) style hood and was a design that Dodge rolled over from 30’s and 40’s trucks. I have taken a 50’s custom type approach to this truck and that style hood wasn’t going to flow. I decided to disassemble the hood and convert it to a one-piece hood.
Wiring and Fabricating a Fuse Box Mount
One of the biggest hurdles of converting Project Pile House from “garage art” to an actual running, driving vehicle is putting some wiring into the vehicle. I’m running a carbureted small block Cheverolet V8 (SBC) so there is little to make the truck run and move under its own power, but some wiring is needed to make it street legal.
Building Custom Mini Wheel Tubs for Pile House
One thing a lot of longterm builds have in common is that the builder or owner tend to change their minds throughout the build. This has definitely been the case with Project Pile House. Over the past two years I’ve changed Pile House from being a “thrown-together” type build to something a bit more thought out and nicer. Even small items like wheel and tire combo have changed and caused me to go back and adjust things as needed.