GlennCraven

Haven't seen that one ...

 

Anybody tackling a Sweptline better know what they are doing...

 

Your average Swepty is going to have rotten door bottoms, rotten or missing floorpans, rotten cowl, rotten wooden bed mounting blocks, suspect if not outright disastrous wiring issues, tweaked if not cracked frame (they got used, hard, like trucks should be)... Bad gauges, bad fuel system components (tank seams rot, even in the cab), dried out rear wheel bearings (greased, not splash lubricated, not common anymore so overlooked)... Nearly impossible to repair windshield and back glass leaks, rotten hood lip, damaged irreplaceable grill panels...

 

Which shop bit off more than it could chew this time?

That was the Gas Monkey guys on "Fast N' Loud." I just watched the episode during a marathon today. They overpaid for the truck -- though just $750, but it looked about $350 worth -- and it was a constant source of frustration for them.

They did just what Knuckleharley said, though: Crown Vic front end, Chevy crate engine and transmission. They just sanded and clear-coated the paint. They did spiff up the interior, which doesn't take a whole lot as there isn't a whole lot to that interior.

Indeed the frame was bent all sorts of ways. And the Ford clip didn't want to mate to the original frame rails of the Dodge, so the frame went under the torch some more. They also had trouble fitting a new gas tank, which made me wonder why they didn't just try a different tank. Do they not measure before they order? Were they cheaping-out by trying to use something they already had on-hand?

Ultimately the Boss Monkey won a coin-toss with a salvage-repurposing interior designer (from whom they bought the truck to begin with) and sold it back to the guy in essence for $10,000 and a $40,000 industrial-art redecoration of the garage's new office space. ... Wouldn't surprise me if that wasn't a negotiated deal all along.

I liked the truck better when it was done than I thought I would. I still would have gone with a Mopar drivetrain and I didn't like the wheels on it. Gas Monkey spends a ton of money on wheels that I usually hate.

I didn't like the way most of the crew sort of belittled the old Dodge throughout. Aaron, the main builder, apparently dislikes Mopars. He said it was "a Dodge he could stomach," or something like that, because it was out of the ordinary. But in the end he even pried the DODGE lettering off the hood and left just the empty holes and the letters' outline in place. He was glad it wasn't a Mopar named after a fish or something you throw at a board, and that they didn't build it with a Hemi.

On a '59 Rambler wagon build, I was puzzled by their decision to facilitate a slammed look on the bagged chassis by just cutting three inches off the depth of the oil pan on their supposedly high-performance engine. ... How much oil capacity is lost? Will the car still have enough oil to lubricate itself?