Damn, that looks so good
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'72 K5 - Greg's @MightAsWellK5 Build
- Thread starter Greg72
- Start date
This is the build description. I will improve this later. (GB)
A1971Blazer
1/2 ton status
NOW we know the reason why all the hate'n on hard tops! That factory dip really does mess up the lines with the top off anyway.......huh?
Lookin' good man........... gonna be one-of-a-kind
That factory dip really does mess up the lines with the top off anyway.......huh?
Lookin' good man........... gonna be one-of-a-kind
....and even with almost 3" cut off my doors (and no door glass) in a rainstorm my truck would be just as dry inside as a factory K5 with it's lousy hardtop/rubber seal design!!!!
I just couldn't spend another moment trying to "restore & preserve" the original door design, once I saw how much nicer it looked with the door cut to match the bedrail height.
-G
....and even with almost 3" cut off my doors (and no door glass) in a rainstorm my truck would be just as dry inside as a factory K5 with it's lousy hardtop/rubber seal design!!!!
lol, ain't that the truth!!
although I do have to admit that I'm so used to looking at the doors sitting higher than the bed that it just looks "off" to me still.
Maybe when there is more defining the first gen shape (hood, fenders, windshield, etc..) it will look more natural to me. Also, I'm curious how it's going to feel with your arm sitting on the seal lower like that. Maybe I'm the only one, but one of the first things I do in a potential new buy is roll down the window and see how it feels with my arm hanging out.
Also, I'm curious how it's going to feel with your arm sitting on the seal lower like that. Maybe I'm the only one, but one of the first things I do in a potential new buy is roll down the window and see how it feels with my arm hanging out.
I have never felt comfortable resting my arm on a stock 1st Gen door (or in my old '72 Suburban for that matter).
The sill height just seemed a bit too high to be a natural fit for my arm, and the divider for the wing window was always right where my hand wanted to rest too. Cutting out the divider and doing a 1-piece window would have been a good first step, but I have had the opposite feeling about the "raised" window sill look.
It has always struck me as an odd look with the top removed, and I can't NOT see it for what it really was: A low-cost method for re-using the existing pickup truck door stampings. As soon as I chopped that extra metal off and copied the radius from the bedrail across the top of the door, it just made me so much happier.... it changed the proportions of the body and made it look a bit sleeker and more streamlined (if such a thing is possible in a truck
)..... and obviously, since I had no intention of putting the fiberglass top back on anyway, losing the side windows wasn't an issue.-G
I hear ya, and I seem to recall thinking it looked wrong when I first saw them 20 something years ago so like I said, I just need to get used to how it looks done the "right" way.
At least they were never as bad as the Dodge Ramcharger. I always thought they looked dumb as hell with the full truck doors with the top off.
lectric80
3/4 ton status
I know this is going to sound wrong, but it isn't intended that way. I had forgotten about the look of the factory doors, and yours just looked so right that I never even noticed what I'm sure was a huge amount of work. Makes me wonder what the factory was thinking with the original design.....and even with almost 3" cut off my doors (and no door glass) in a rainstorm my truck would be just as dry inside as a factory K5 with it's lousy hardtop/rubber seal design!!!!
I just couldn't spend another moment trying to "restore & preserve" the original door design, once I saw how much nicer it looked with the door cut to match the bedrail height.
-G
That's actually my favorite type of compliment.
There are subtle (and not-so-subtle) mods all over this build, but I really don't want it to stand out as some sort of crazy, "Frankenstein" creation...... Ultimately, I want it to pay homage to the original design so that it is instantly recognizable as a 1st Gen, but doesn't assault your eyes with a bunch of obvious hacks.
When someone sees it in person for the first time, they should be able to walk around the truck for an hour....slowly noticing the things that aren't "stock" about it... (Like those door mods). Given the opportunity to compare it side-by-side to a 100% 1st Gen hopefully people would actually prefer the aesthetic and functional changes that have been made.
-G
Congrats on getting it on all 4 wheels and outside.
Your work on it is awsome
Your work on it is awsome
belairesearch
Newbie
i just spent 4 days reading this thread (at work) from the beginning and all i can say is WOW. Huge inspiration dude.
"....and in other news, US Productivity was down sharply in September. It is unclear why, but Google analytics show that a new keyword search called 'Might As Well' is trending very aggressively....."
The worst part about reading the entire 6-year build in 4 days is that now you're stuck waiting for daily updates like everyone else.... Sometimes when I find a cool build online I skip to the very end to make sure that the vehicle actually got finished before I slog through hundreds of updates and photos.
I guess now I'll assume you will be one of the 100 or so guys who are subscribed to this thread with the "Instant email notification" option selected? Its always amazing how fast the view count jumps within 5 minutes of posting something new here.....
-G
Crockett13
Registered Member
All I can say is AMAZING!!
Spent the past week reading the entire thread, yes most of the reading at work. The wife has almost put me on CK5 time restriction because of your build.
Im stacking parts in the garage and driveway getting ready to start on my Jimmy and your thread has given me a ton of insight into what I am diving into. Keep up the great work and now i have to wait for the next post for my "transformer fix"
Spent the past week reading the entire thread, yes most of the reading at work. The wife has almost put me on CK5 time restriction because of your build.
Im stacking parts in the garage and driveway getting ready to start on my Jimmy and your thread has given me a ton of insight into what I am diving into. Keep up the great work and now i have to wait for the next post for my "transformer fix"
2014.09.09 - UPDATE! - WHITE WHEELS & HUBCAPS....
Since it appears that nobody is actually doing any "work" at work today, I might as well post an update for everyone and roll out the start of my latest skunkworks project...
Getting the truck out into the driveway for a couple-hundred "beauty shots" was a great feeling, but somewhat diminished (IMHO) by the fact that the truck is still sitting on those miserable H2 Alloy wheels. They were a cheap way to get into a 17" wheel so that I could mount my tires, and they had good backspacing (5.56") which made them a decent choice for the portals which need all the backspacing they can get!!!!
My plan for a long time has been to come up with some way to match up a 17" steel wheel with the factory Chevy 12" hubcaps so that my truck would have a more "classic" look.... and ditch the "too modern" look of the H2 wheels once-and-for-all.
It's not that easy to do. Obviously there are no 17" steel wheels that look like the traditional Chevy wheel, and none that would hold the hubcap either... Most of the generic wheels also don't have enough backspacing for my application either.
The best option seemed to be working from a stock 16.5" Chevy wheel and somehow merge that with a 17" barrel from some other donor wheel... Armed with a bunch of old, crusty 16.5" takeoffs I decided to get started.
The factory wheel center is not welded, it is held in place by 12 rivets per wheel (3 per flange)... so the first order of business was to drill and punch out a LOT of rivets.
....then press out the center from the outer hoop.
After a couple hours of joyless effort (on my birthday no less!) I had this:
Time to begin!
Over the last couple of years, I have bought a number of 17" outer wheel hoops and wasted quite a bit of money trying to find something that would match the 14.148" O.D. of the 16.5" Factory Chevy centers. As you would expect, nothing out there is a perfect match. "Custom is custom" after all....so I found the closest thing I could get and am now committed to making it work.
This is what they call a "drop valley" 17" wheel hoop. The internal I.D. is 14.228"... which is about .080" too large for the centers. However, for the time being I picked up some thin .040" steel shim stock and was able to make up the difference to keep the mock-up process moving forward.
The actual "drop" area isn't all that wide, and since it's got a pretty large radius on both sides, the useable FLAT area where you'd want to land the mounting flanges from the wheel center is only 1.375" inches across.
A bit of Dykem and the not-so-scientific method of gently sanding across the area with a flat file revealed where the flat area ended, and where the curved (and unusable) areas began.
I did a similar test for the wheel center flange to see how much material I have to work with.....
As you can see, even though the flange is pretty wide the useable FLAT area is only 1" wide....
Laying the hoop down on the workbench (back side down) and measuring up from the tabletop, shows that the flat area starts at 6-1/8" and runs to 7-1/2"....
This is basically my workable area to install the wheel center flange... so realistically, that's only about 3/8" of real adjustment for backspacing if I want to keep both flat areas in 100% contact with each other.
I've still got some more math to work out, and a whole bunch of other concerns about wheel runout, fit-up and welding.... but now that I've spent all the money on scrap wheels, 17" wheel hoops (Qty 5) and vintage hubcaps...... I'm fully committed to finding a solution.
-G
Since it appears that nobody is actually doing any "work" at work today, I might as well post an update for everyone and roll out the start of my latest skunkworks project...
Getting the truck out into the driveway for a couple-hundred "beauty shots" was a great feeling, but somewhat diminished (IMHO) by the fact that the truck is still sitting on those miserable H2 Alloy wheels. They were a cheap way to get into a 17" wheel so that I could mount my tires, and they had good backspacing (5.56") which made them a decent choice for the portals which need all the backspacing they can get!!!!
My plan for a long time has been to come up with some way to match up a 17" steel wheel with the factory Chevy 12" hubcaps so that my truck would have a more "classic" look.... and ditch the "too modern" look of the H2 wheels once-and-for-all.
It's not that easy to do. Obviously there are no 17" steel wheels that look like the traditional Chevy wheel, and none that would hold the hubcap either... Most of the generic wheels also don't have enough backspacing for my application either.
The best option seemed to be working from a stock 16.5" Chevy wheel and somehow merge that with a 17" barrel from some other donor wheel... Armed with a bunch of old, crusty 16.5" takeoffs I decided to get started.
The factory wheel center is not welded, it is held in place by 12 rivets per wheel (3 per flange)... so the first order of business was to drill and punch out a LOT of rivets.
....then press out the center from the outer hoop.
After a couple hours of joyless effort (on my birthday no less!) I had this:
Time to begin!
Over the last couple of years, I have bought a number of 17" outer wheel hoops and wasted quite a bit of money trying to find something that would match the 14.148" O.D. of the 16.5" Factory Chevy centers. As you would expect, nothing out there is a perfect match. "Custom is custom" after all....so I found the closest thing I could get and am now committed to making it work.
This is what they call a "drop valley" 17" wheel hoop. The internal I.D. is 14.228"... which is about .080" too large for the centers. However, for the time being I picked up some thin .040" steel shim stock and was able to make up the difference to keep the mock-up process moving forward.
The actual "drop" area isn't all that wide, and since it's got a pretty large radius on both sides, the useable FLAT area where you'd want to land the mounting flanges from the wheel center is only 1.375" inches across.
A bit of Dykem and the not-so-scientific method of gently sanding across the area with a flat file revealed where the flat area ended, and where the curved (and unusable) areas began.
I did a similar test for the wheel center flange to see how much material I have to work with.....
As you can see, even though the flange is pretty wide the useable FLAT area is only 1" wide....
Laying the hoop down on the workbench (back side down) and measuring up from the tabletop, shows that the flat area starts at 6-1/8" and runs to 7-1/2"....
This is basically my workable area to install the wheel center flange... so realistically, that's only about 3/8" of real adjustment for backspacing if I want to keep both flat areas in 100% contact with each other.
I've still got some more math to work out, and a whole bunch of other concerns about wheel runout, fit-up and welding.... but now that I've spent all the money on scrap wheels, 17" wheel hoops (Qty 5) and vintage hubcaps...... I'm fully committed to finding a solution.
-G
First off, you crazy....
Second, anybody got dibs on your h2's?
Looking forward to this playing out!
Second, anybody got dibs on your h2's?
Looking forward to this playing out!
There's a set of five H2 alloys (completely refinished, zero-miles) with your name on them....
Shipping to Germany, or Ohio?
-G
Oh my! I think we'll go for Ohio...There's a set of five H2 alloys (completely refinished, zero-miles) with your name on them....
Shipping to Germany, or Ohio?
-G
Obviously no rush on that. Might even be able to pick them up depending on what the universe has in store for us next summer.
Local pickup would be VERY cool...!! Bring Archer too.... I want to meet that big doofus.
-G
What is the width of the 17s?
If all goes to plan, maybe the Cummins powered square body crew cab that I'm hoping to get to be the new DD / tow rig will be somewhere on the east coast. Then we can fly in, pick it up and then come say hello. Complete with goofball!Local pickup would be VERY cool...!! Bring Archer too.... I want to meet that big doofus.
-G
Now to confirm we'll be moving to the states, then track down a crew cab...
The hoops are spec'ed as 17" x 9". The outside flange-to-flange measurement is 9.75"
The H2's are spec'ed as a 17" x 8.5". The outside flange-to-flange measurement is also 9.75".... though the mounting lip profile is thicker (due to being aluminum, I believe) so the actual seat area where the tire sits IS actually smaller than the new steel wheels.
-G
The H2's are spec'ed as a 17" x 8.5". The outside flange-to-flange measurement is also 9.75".... though the mounting lip profile is thicker (due to being aluminum, I believe) so the actual seat area where the tire sits IS actually smaller than the new steel wheels.
-G
