1929 Chevy Truck

1929 Chevy Truck

Just been gathering parts lately, I've changed from a tuned port to a blown 350 and have gotten it mostly together. I've got it so the injector hat fits entirely under the stock hood for that ultimate sleeper look. It will have electronic injectors under the Enderle hat and my plan is for the EFI to appear to be a mechanical injected motor to the inexperienced eye.

(I love it when someone tries to tell me "you can't run that on the street")

I also have a Dana 60 rear axle that I've put disc brakes on, a 5" drop Magnum axle company front axle, and a Turbo 400 (I may end up going to a 4L60 or a 4L80, though)

I've got the motor and trans in the body and the front mounts made, also have the rear duals in the plywood bed mockup and I think I've got the bed length right to look best.

Don't worry the bed will be made out of steel instead of plywood.

Above is also a drawing of the 29 so I could see if I liked the looks of a Carson-Style top on it;

I think I'll probably be going for that look

Currently I'm working on the 6-71 Blown & Injected 350 Chevy I'm going to be putting in it, it's not going to be a racer so I plan to keep the boost at 5 PSI or lower; HP around 400 to 500.

The work I've done this year (2009) on the truck was clearancing & re-assembling the 6-71; Making the 12 injector plate, idler bracket, V-belt pulley, and bending the stainless steel lines going into the 12 injector plate under the Enderle Hat.

Lately I've been machining everything going on the motor on my Tree 320 CNC mill in the background, I guess with the economy the way it is I've got more time than I've got money, and I can make extra parts and sell them if there's some demand for the parts. I've made a page of parts that I have for sale so I can make some extra "Truck fund cash".

Things that I've made so far are the Billet dash gauge insert, the 12 injector plate under the Hat; the lower V-belt pulley and upper pulley spacer; The idler bracket for the 6-71; Rear blower bearing cap spacers for the HD bearings; among other small parts.

Getting ready to mount the front axle, you can see in the above view the firewall modification to give the motor clearance, the 6" dropped Magnum axle company axle, the kingpin/spindle mounts so I can use the 1 ton hubs on my street rod axle, and the power rack and pinion which I will soon be replacing with a manual rack because of clearance issues.

To the left shows the start of the airbag suspension, I needed some way to cut the brackets out easier so I made an arm to mount my Plasma-cutter on my CNC mill, now I don't have to hand cut out the brackets or even drill the holes, I just Plasma cut them!

The lower axle mounts are made from 6 separate steel weldments with 4 functions: Hold the axle with the 4 link bars; Lower mount for the air bags; Lower mount for the shocks; and mount the rack and pinion directly to the axle on the back.

I've machined my "Bud" rims because I decided that the spokes were to big, the video on the left shows me milling the rims, the vid on the right shows the air bags doin' their thing

Now I'm starting on the rear frame, I got lazy and didn't document the narrowing of the rear axle, I opted for a Dana 60 (3/4 ton) rather than a Dana 70 (1 ton axle) because parts are more available for the 60's, and I doubt I'll be loading this thing up more than a 3/4 ton axle will handle.
I just made a 1 ton axle out of the 3/4 ton, and added disc brakes in the process.

Mouse over the thumbs for a small description or click on each for more resolution,

Rear frame section made out of the kick ups for the original frame and some 2" by 4"

Rear frame mostly boxed in to the original frame

Boxed rear frame, I put the crossbar in for now but I'll need to notch it later for a driveshaft loop

Rear frame showing plumb bobs for alignment & centering lines made on floor, precision level was nice to keep track of warpage while welding (weld one side, then the other; repeat)

Ready to put the 4 link on the rear axle, I wasn't sure which way would be the best; parallel 4 link bars or triangulated bars, in the end it was the triangulated bars that won out because they had the right amount of clearance in the right places, and it was nice not having to make some kind of panhard bar or watts link to control the side to side movement of the axle. The only problem with the triangulated bars was that I was running a Dana 60 and you can't weld on the center part of the housing, so I had to make a bridge to mount the top bars to.

The bottom bars are tacked on, now I'm lining up the top bars and getting ready to start cutting out the brackets.

1st bracket cut out and on the top bars, you can also see here the rear mount that I made that bolts to 3 of the top rear cover bolts of the Dana.

3 of the top 4 link brackets cut out and tacked to the axle and frame

Starting to build the bridge for the triangulated bars, boy it sure is nice to have a plasma cutter mounted on my CNC mill!

Axle bridge welded together, I'm going to grind it smooth to make it look like it was some how stamped from a single piece of steel.

2011 Progress
I haven't gotten around to updating my web page yet this year but I've been getting a little progress on the '29, this year I was doing a lot of the little stuff that's not very exciting and consumes a lot of time, such as building the Enderle injector linkage (with provisions for a TPS sensor) building the exhaust, the driveshaft, the alternator brackets, rebuilding the running board splash apron, ect.
While I was wanting to get the motor fired this summer, I got caught up in all the little things that need to be done, currently (Aug. 11) mounting the aluminum radiator and electric fans and test fitted the hood (dropped the radiator shell 1-1/2" and leaned it back 2") and now I want to finish mount the hood, sides, ect. (I'm going to make the hood open up like a normal car hood, but I've got some ideas that will make it a little different) The radiator was built for a '32 Ford but the measurements were right and it really mounted a lot easier than I thought it would, and even sits back so the AC condenser has room on the front.
I think for a little project this winter I'll take on building the grill for the rad shell, I'm probably going to mill it out of a 3/8" thick slab of 6061.
Here's some of the pic's

First was the injector linkage, and I'll just put the video I made in to show that:

I've got some extra TPS mount Enderle linkages that I'm selling if anyone needs something like this, click on this link

Next was the exhaust, I just made that out of 180 degree u-bends, just cut and weld into place, then grind the welds smooth (not quite as easy as it sounds) no pictures of that, sorry.

Next was the running board splash apron, originally that was made out of .035" thick steel and since it was in a spot where it could have some weight put on it occasionally I wanted to make it out of .125" thick steel, so I milled a .050" thick step on the top side of the .125" by 8" wide cold finished steel so I could weld the new top and original sides together: (as always, click on thumb for better pic)

Then I did the driveshaft, in the old days I would have just went to a junkyard and found one that was close and just cut it to length, but you know, since the axle yoke is only $60 and the trans yoke is $60, the tube weld yoke ends are $20 each and the tube is $30, what the heck, just build it new:

After running the air suspension up and down a few times I was trying to fit my alternator to the engine and got concerned a little bit because the alternator wouldn't quite fit with the suspension all the way down so I looked around for a smaller one and Nippondenso made a very small one, but it looked like it was only putting out about 50 amps which I didn't feel was enough, so I settled on a GM CS121 Alternator which was smaller than a standard GM, and put out 80 amps, so I figured that would work.

I had to mount it as high on the side as I could and had to make all the brackets to mount that, here's the finished brackets.