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Not much excitement to report. Finished the other side last week.
just repeated the same process. But took a couple extra pictures.
cut the wheel arch completely out and cleaned the back side of undercoating and paint. Probably least favorite thing to do on any build!
since I was rotating the arch outward I was also changing the angle where I made the cut. I had to tip the cut edges up on the bed and down on the arch. After that the arch needed a little shrinking to keep its shape before going back on. Final pick is with the weld all ground down. It has some distortion from the MIG but not visible by pictures. Will smooth out easily with a skim coat of mud.
Been working on the top secret stuff. Hit a mile stone on it and switched gears to do a little rust repair.
Around the rain gutters the roof panel rusted thru. Don’t know how bad since the previous owner too a cut off wheel to it. Very crooked cut off wheel.
I squared it up and put in patches.
driver side was easy. The patch was only on the flat areas. I did find a new trick. Cut the full length as a rectangle and then used the sprinkler and stretcher to round off the end to get around the back end of the drip rail.
passenger side was not as easy. I did get the try out a sand back and new hammers for the first time. Where have these been all my life!
around the leading edge which is very rounded with three layers. What to do.
Cut it all off and work backwards one layer at a time!
layer one is the roof skin. Two was the drip rail. Remaining layer is part of the window frame. What’s left of it.
Removed that last layer and just cut a rectangle. Easily bent to shape with fingers making slight arc.
the hole that was just below this patch on the a pillar. Just filled it with weld and then ground it down in sort of a wood carving fashion.
next was a flange to replicate the bottom side of the drip rail that was also rusted away.
after this I trimmed the flange to size and then welded the good part of the drip rail back into place.
The hard part. Or so I thought. I was shocked I got this on my first try. With 16 gage steel at that.
Cut out a roughly correct sized piece. Put a little flange in it 70% of the length by clamping into vice and tapping away with a hammer to bend it. Out came the little sand bag and to my surprise I was able to match the compound curve of the roof skin.
Good as new!
Got some mechanical work done last weekend. The Godzilla is even more worthy of its name!
The owner and I spent the weekend putting on a Holley accessory drive. Front cover. Oil pan and oil pump.
Of course while in there it would have been silly not to do a cam. So it’s got a TruckNorris BTR cam in it. Should be good for 600 or so gross HP now.
The kit went together very well. It wasn’t cheap. But what you get for the money is pretty amazing. Also added to the Holley oil pan was a fully baffled sump with trap doors. Since this thing should be capable of 1G or more of lateral grip we thought that upgrade was a need.
Also trial fitted a set of long tubes. They will need some rearranging due to the funkiness I have going on up front. More on that latter. But here are the headers for a little eye candy
Last edited by tiresmoke410; Nov 16, 2025 at 09:28 PM.
So with the set up we are going with three of the header tubes need to be moved. Owner of the truck is working with the guy who makes the headers and he will build them but with three pipes missing. I’ll get the “loose tubes” separate from the complete header so I can then put them where they need to go. Fun.
also we need to figure out what direction is best for the fuel system. This is a topic I have zero experience with. So will be talking to several aftermarket tank and fuel pump makers.
I also had some issues with headers on the CV build. Headers made for it were 1800 bucks. So like you buy so cheep Mustang headers and do some cutting.
These were not cheap. I’m not sure anyone makes a cheap header anymore. The guy we bought them from was very good to work with. We told home we had a custom set up and were not sure his headers would fit. He sent us some mock up headers from his one car to test fit before we bought.
From there we decided to buy a set if he could leave three tubes unfinished. He was more than happy to help. Gave me a bunch of scrap pieces to work with and let me know what stainless he uses and filler material so I make sure everything matches when done.
Made the new transmission cross member for the TKX. Pretty simple set up. But it looked cheesy as hell so had to add some sheet metal around the stand offs to pretty it up.
A small length of 1x2” tubing and two threaded stand offs.
to make them a little nicer I added two pices lengthwise down the bit tubing. Then I used my favorite trick to making templates to box it in. Piece of paper and then rubbing dirty fingers of the corners to get an outline. It’s so fast and easy. And accurate.
Cut that paper along the lines. Trace it on sheet metal and there you have it. It is there for athletics but using 16 gage I’m sure it helps with rigidity too.
oh yea. Also finished boxing the frame. And adding an X brace made from 2x6” tubing. Should be a pretty rigid chassis now!
Finished the headers over Christmas break as well. Fit like a glove into the chassis.
don’t have a pic with the collector installed. Please use your imaginations.
It is coming along. Almost done with frame fabrication. I keep remembering a laundry list of little things thought that’s till need attention before I paint the frame.
if this helps with motivation on your project that would be great. Post your results too. Keep this forum going.
