Project Old School, Part VI

Chrome & Flames. Finally!

By Jeremy Cook

After many months of cutting, hammering, shaping, filling, welding, sanding, primering, and spraying, Project Old School finally has a coat of black suede on it. We left off last month by torching all four coils 'til the '64 was resting on the bumpstops and bolting on the new red steelies and wide whites from Stockton Wheel and Coker Tire, respectfully. We just had to give you (and ourselves) a little preview of the things to come. Well here it is! While we still have much to do with the interior, drivetrain, and suspension, we have finally conquered the exterior portion of the buildup.

Yeah, I know. We already shaved just about everything off of the truck, right? But there was still a substantial amount of work left--what I like to call "the fun stuff." For starters, we are installing the brand-new Brothers bumpers we picked up. Brothers, who already supplied us with the new front fenders and tailgate filler panel, carries pretty much every reproduction part ever made for the '60-66 trucks--so we knew we would be back. Added to our Brothers parts list were rear bumper brackets, as well as taillight lenses, bezels, and gaskets, a windshield rubber, and door-panel screws. If you recall the earlier stories, we swapped our Chevy frontend for a GMC unit we found at Chevy Truck Salvage in Santa Ana, California. We then supplied the GMC grille and headlight bezels to American Classic Truck Parts as cores, who, in return, sent us restored and re-chromed units that looked better than new. We filled the four headlight buckets with Adjure tri-bar units straight from the Southern Rods catalog.

But before we went bolting-on parts, we still had a few tricks up our sleeves out at Totally Polished. We decided that the front bumper would look better 1.5 inches closer to the body, which meant slicing off the ends of the frame and shortening and trimming accordingly before welding them back on. I also had another bright idea--flip the stock rear bumper and raise it up a bit. This required TP's Chris Daley to heavily modify the new brackets, but I think the final result is pretty cool. And, finally, remember how we were rapidly closing in on our planned debut at Paso Robles? Well, we were down to our last 72 hours when we bolted all the chrome on for the first time. Not only that, but while we were shooting this installment, we were also working on the suspension (which you'll be seeing next month). But in my mind, it wouldn't be a true debut unless Old School was flamed! I called in a favor to an old friend. Lance Laverty has been building show-winning trucks for over twenty years, and, more recently, helping to produce SEMA vehicles for the likes of Gaylord's and Street Scene. He showed up at TP with only a few hours notice with plans to perform one of his trademark flame jobs, which usually consists of several layers of multicolored flames achieved with masking, airbrushing, and pinstriping. I then explained how that wouldn't go with the theme of the truck. I needed a lot of pinstriped flames in white only, and they needed to look good--but not too good--like it was done really fast as an afterthought. Then I told him he had three or so hours to pull it off. He did it in two. What are friends for, right?

Follow along as Chris, Lance, and I, along with anyone else who stopped by on the way to Paso, finally make Old School presentable. And check back next month when we replace the torched coils and rusted drums with Airlift 'bags and CPP discs.