Countless things need to be addressed when building a vehicle from the ground up. It's often more than some people can keep up with, let alone pay for. Even though this can keep shops in business, it can also be too much for the weaker ones to handle. They might go under all together or just let a project sit with no motivation to work on it even when there's money to be had.
Out in Phoenix, Jim Scheiffele found a '62 GMC shortbed that was an abandoned project truck. He liked it enough that he bought it even though it was in many pieces and hoped he could see it through to the end. He started by taking it to a local body shop to have a lot of shaving done and things filled in on the body followed by finish paint. A year went by with little progress and Jim was more than disappointed, so he yanked the truck and took it to a fab shop in Phoenix to have airbags installed. Well, after a few months they only managed to physically mount the 'bags in the chassis, no plumbing, no dice.
So Jim was back to almost square one and pulled the truck from that shop to drop it off at American Built Customs, aka ABC, in Phoenix after hearing some good things about the shop. It was here at ABC that Jim and the shop sat down and made a plan to finish everyone else's loose ends and actually get the truck on the road without having to take it anywhere else.
ABC got to work on the GMC and filled all the seams in the knee-knocker cab as well as the hood and cowl vents. They shaved the handles, eliminated the tailgate chains, and deleted the stake pockets. The rear wheelwells were tubbed just enough to fit big 22-inch Boyd Coddington wheels. ABC also remounted the airbags and set them up to work using Ridetech's Pro E control system, which included full plumbing and wiring.
After the chassis and metalwork was dialed in, Mason Rush at ABC laid on the Chrysler 300 Vanilla DuPont paint inside and out. Once the truck was fully reassembled-which is way more work than people think-Troy Davis came in and applied the brushed silver leaf work and orange pinstripes around the whole truck as an alternative to stainless trim. All in all, the truck spent two years at ABC but when Jim pulled it out of the shop it was under its own 383 small-block power!