Fenders and Custom Bumper

For the color scheme of the truck I selected black and candy orange as the color scheme.
If you have not read about our problems with the body work please do so here.

After our problems with the body we decided to use Jerry Sheppard of Custom Auto in Ogden.  Jerry is a Paint Master in the Ogden area and has won several awards for his restorations and paint.  However Jerry is very busy and we knew this was going to be a difficult project.  He took some of the parts in Mid March and with in a couple weeks had sanded, block and painted the fenders  of the truck a beautiful black.  He even did a rust coating on the underside of the metal.

His work is first class and we hope to work with him and his body man Steve in the future.

I had also asked Jake to make a custom bumper that followed the curvature of the grille.  He made the bumper in just a couple days and we took it to Ogden Chrome.  The Chrome process is tedious and takes a ton of man hours. Here is the finished product several weeks later.  You will have to decide it its worth it.

Heart of the Beast!!

The engine was done quickly but the custom Turbo took a while, then due to the delays in body and frame we decided to improve the engine.  We added several custom powder coated elements and upgraded the exhaust manifold.  As a result of the changes it took several more weeks for all the color and polished parts to show up.  The transmission was rebuilt to a stage 3 truck pull / Drag transmission.

Here is the engine finished except for intake and exhaust.  Thanks to Courtney and the crew at Outlaw Diesel in Ogden for this killer engine!

Projections are 550 HP and near 1000 ft Lbs of Torque.  I can hear some rubber screaming in pain already.

Wood Bed

Back in November and December of 2013 when I was planning the project a problem surfaced with the wood.  The original wood on this truck was exactly 1" thick hardwood.  Over 60 years later we dont use 1" wood.  For example if you buy a 1" x  wood at Home Depot its really less than 1" .  Its the same with a 2 x4 its not really 2" thick.

After some research I was able to find a solution.  I had to buy raw hardwood lumber from a mill.  The most common use was for hardwood floors but I had to find a size called  5/4 raw hardwood or (1 1/4 ) and then have it cut and planed to fit.  I found a source for raw hardwood and settled on African Mahogany as it should last outside and provide a great look.  I purchased the wood in December but finally by March the guys were ready to plane it and size it in the final Bed.

One of the reasons it look so long was we had to find another 47 Dodge truck that had the flat bed frame intact.  Eventually we found one but it was buried in snow and ice and we had to wait until the weather thawed to go torch the bed frame for the parts we needed.   After Ashley Wheelright found the truck then had to go remove the bed in the back of a yard he was able to get the final dimensions for the bed correct.

Here are the results of this several months of work to get the wood bed to look right.