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Aliveboys new project(s)!


AliveBoy

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So, this has been a tale of back and forth and lots of repeating myself. Basically lots of cursing the previous owner and fixing mistakes.

 

I've lowered the truck 3" all round and added BMW wheels which I stole from the Camaro. The rear end is currently having custom rear shocks and springs made as I couldn't buy the ones I wanted!

 

I've had a custom prop shaft made as well and had a custom clutch line fabricated. Neither of which have been easy, but both have been very reasonable cost wise!

 

Unfortunately I've got to re wire the truck from scratch which is the main hold up, what was there before was complete junk. Someone had used small nails instead of fuses, had added circuits in all the wrong places and it was literally a fire hazard. I've taken this opportunity to add digital gauges into the dash as the old ones weren't great and the speedo was erratic to say the least (say this like an auctioneer and you'll get it :lol: 40.40.40.45.45.50.50.50.40.40.40)

 

This has now been smoothed in with the rivet holes filled but I don't have a picture :teeth: .

 

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All of the wires below were redundant, either not connected to anything at one end, or some of them were empty at both ends!

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The truck currently stands as below:

 

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It's still moving, just not a lot has changed in the pictures! I'll have a bigger and better update soon! Maybe. I hope. Please :lol:

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The fronts need bigger tyres (already found the size!) They look ok in person, just not amazing, I'll get something else eventually though. I'm thinking of importing some corvette staggered wheels with 18's front 19's rear, it's just money as always :lol:

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Nails!!! Ffs! Sorry to hear your truck belonged to one or more cowboys before you got your hands on it. Hope you get the wiring resolved soon. You seem pretty well sorted but if you need anything auto electrical wise at trade let me know.👍

 

 

Sent from my Zed using Nangkang tyres front, RE040's rear

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  • 4 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Apologies for the lack of updates! I had a mishap with a drill, a holesaw, some steel and my hand. I had to take a couple of weeks off as I had some very deep cuts lengthways into my fingers. Once I was able to get back to working on the truck I was massively behind and my sisters wedding was approaching fast so I forgot to update everyone.

 

Pictures of my hand below, it doesn't look terrible, but apparently if they'd gone across the finger instead of down, I'd have lost one of them. Because the cuts on my index finger were so close together they couldn't stitch them, so it was a case of strips and prayers :lol: Luckily it's healed up almost perfectly now :D

 

 

 

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I had a few amusing *VERY MUCH NOT AMUSING AT THE TIME* issues in the build, which have all now been fixed. I'll list them out below, they are quite long, so sorry! :)

 

1) Electrical gremlins...maybe

 

After two weeks of wiring the truck my indicators would only come on solid, clearly I'd wired them up well enough to work, but not well enough to work properly. After two days of going back and forth I finally put up a plea on facebook and had a call from a local hotrod builder who I purchased the wiring kit from.

 

"You're using LED indicators aren't you"

"How did you know and is that a problem"

"You need an LED specific flasher unit to make them work, they're £6 and I'll get you one for tomorrow"

 

The LED flasher unit fixed the problem, I'd been overlooking the most simple solution for two days solid :lol:

 

 

 

2) I killed the engine.... maybe

 

 

Running the engine up to temperature to bleed the cooling system, I had a friend out the front to keep an eye on things and I was in the cab watching the coolant temp. Suddenly he's screaming at me to kill it, I turn it off and jump out. There's 2 litres of bright red, very expensive engine break in oil all over the floor and the engine is steaming. I've murdered it! Unfortunately in my blind panic I didn't get any pictures, but I used every absorbent fabric I could to get it out from under the truck so that I could get under to see what had failed. Hot oil was dripping in my face, my torch wouldn't work properly, and I couldn't see an issue. Nothing, no holes, no pistons on the floor, just oil EVERYWHERE. After an hour or so of searching the issue became apparent, the seal on my brand new oil filter was perished so had split and under pressure the oil had found it's way out. Luckily the engine was fine and after a change of filter and new oil we were running again.

 

 

 

3) MOT day and legend companies!

 

 

MOT day has arrived, one week before the deadline of my sisters wedding! I drove it down the M4 from Wokingham to Slough and every time I accelerated I could smell transmission fluid. It turned out that my prop shaft which I'd had custom made was around 1cm too short, so wasn't forming a complete seal on the back of the gearbox. At the side of the road I crawled under wiped down everything I could to disguise the leak from the MOT tester. Luckily he was very understanding of the issue and because he knew I was going to (HAD TO!) fix it decided to be lenient on that one area. I went back to the absolute legends who are Propshaft Services in Feltham and explained that I'd made a mistake on the length, but I needed the prop back within two days and I would pay whatever costs were needed to fast track it. On the Wednesday, two days after they received the prop, I had it back in my hands, they'd lengthened it and even repainted it for me, best of all, they did it for no charge!

 

 

 

4) The wedding day!

 

 

On the morning of the wedding I started the truck up and pulled off, suddenly the truck was DEAFENINGLY loud and there was a dragging noise, my exhaust had fallen off! So I had to climb under the truck in my suit to put it back on, luckily the exhaust clamp had slipped so I just had to reattach it and tighten it up.

 

 

 

5) I nearly ruined the day!

 

 

On the way to the wedding, within a mile of the church, the truck kept on cutting out when we were in traffic. I'd let the truck sit for a moment and it would fire right back up. I got to the church and I sat there through the ceremony wracking my brains. I couldn't understand it, was my electric fuel pump pushing fuel through the carb flooding the engine? All of the plugs were brand new, maybe a loose wire on the distributor? After all of the pictures and formalities happened I went to leave for the venue, but now it wouldn't start at all. The engine was coughing and spluttering for two cylinders or so to fire and then it died. I manually operated my carb from the engine side and peered down, no fuel was squirting... I then climbed underneath and checked my fuel filters, not blocked. As I looked up I realised, the fuel pickup is in the bottom right hand side corner of the tank, every time it cut out I was going round a right turn and the fuel was moving away from the pickup, and leaving it for a minute was letting the fuel come back! I'd run out of fuel!! My fuel gauge is apparently the opposite, empty is full and full is empty :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: Thankfully after 20 litres in we were running perfectly again, my sister got there on time and I'm still living :lol:

 

 

 

Below are progress pictures along the way:

 

Smoothing in the side reflectors on the rear

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cutting out the rear to allow for a traditional chrome bumper to go on. I also had to remove a towbar, which had been welded in so badly I actually managed to break the welds using a club hammer!

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the front is all together! It doesn't look patchworky enough to pull off the multi coloured front, so we had a think...

 

 

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I painted the grille black to match!

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Two days before the wedding I had a ton of little jobs to do, so the fantastic Michael Young (madmikester on here I believe) came over and we worked all day on the truck, ate pizza and then at 3am literally slept in the bed of the truck, we then got up at 9 and worked for the whole day solid.

 

Bed time!:

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We decided to paint the leading edge of the bonnet black to bring the grille and the wings together, eventually it will all be turquoise and for those who noticed... NOT stripey either :lol:

 

On the wedding day:

 

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Unfortunately my new chrome front bumper didn't arrive in time, so we had to roll with the horrible fibreglass one which had terrible paint for a few weeks :(

 

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Future plans include, 15x10" wheels with street drag wrinkle wall tyres. I have one wheel for now to test and to make everything fit:

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Some new fancy wing badges:

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a mexican blanket!

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I also just received some awesome engine dress up bits a few weeks ago, I'll get pictures when they're fitted, but here's the bay for now. It needs some attention for sure :)

 

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I think that's everyone pretty much caught up for now. Any specific pictures/requests, just ask. I'll try and keep this more up to date now!

Edited by AliveBoy
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Awesome action packed update! Looking pretty sweet now and lucky (in the end) with the injury.

 

Just got to ask though, you know, the whole thing with the wedding, the hill billy truck, your sister... you weren't marrying her right? :lol:

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Just got to ask though, you know, the whole thing with the wedding, the hill billy truck, your sister... you weren't marrying her right? :lol:

 

:lol: :lol:

 

Thankfully not! :lol: We grew up with horses as a family, she went to work in America for 6 months on a ranch type place and fell in love with old american trucks there. The day she saw the truck she asked if I could drive her to the wedding, for her, the tattier the truck the better :lol:

 

She actually had a rolls royce (apparently from downton abbey?) drive the couple from the church to the venue, was a really cool car too.

 

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  • 4 months later...

So in November I took the truck on the Fueltopia toy run, we chucked some toys in the bed and gave them to sick children. I got stuck in a traffic jam for over an hour and wasn't able to switch the truck off as it was constantly slow moving. Despite this, the truck was FAULTLESS!! The engine temp didn't get high once! Bearing in mind it's a 1960's truck and a 1970's engine I'm super happy.

 

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some video with the truck in :)

 

 

On to 2017, whilst the roads are so salty I've not taken the truck out so far this year. I've got the new wheels and tyres on the way, I've got the rears and next month I'll sort the fronts. The main complaint from both myself and other people is the BMW alloys looking weird, so I've gone for the 15" steels above and I've decided to get 70's style radial tyres as the wrinkle walls would have been sketchy in the turns and apparently flat spot really easily. As for paint, I've decided to paint the truck satin black, it's easier than a gloss colour and it should match nicely with my NEW PROJECT!!! :D

 

I picked this up brand new on the 1st December and so far I've done 1200 miles. It's my daily ride so I can't do anything too crazy.

 

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It's a Harley Sportster Iron 883, it's the baby of the Harley world but it still plenty cool in my opinion. Massive thanks to WINKJ for allowing me to pick his brains, providing links and being a general all round good dude as he has the same bike.

 

I even rode it in the snow :lol:

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I've already got new bits for it!

 

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Vance and Hines Short Shots and an FP3 Fuelpak which is like a self tuning module, I then had to nip to Harley to buy some gaskets for the new exhaust and I accidentally did an impulse buy...

 

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Harley Davidson Screamin' Eagle heavy breather.... and a lame bag as I hadn't planned on buying anything big so didn't have one on me :lol:

 

The projects together, pre bike mods! (yes it's filthy!)

 

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