afroman006 said:
Badass sniper. Thats alot like what I want to do. Non-skinned fenders with the bottoms boxed and the hood lowered a little. The only problem I am going to have when I do it is The damn radiator. I have a 6.2 so my radiator is a monster that sticks about 8" past the opening on the driver's side. I think I am going to get a custom 5 or 6 core one made that is narrower so I can bring the fenders in as much as possible. Do you have any plans to do anything about inner fenders?
Yeah, radiators are a chore. I was limited due to moving the cab back 3". If I'd left the cab in the stock position I could've recessed the radiator/core support back flush with the fenders. Right now, the core support's back edge is right where the frame starts to go up to the front crossmember. There is about 1.75" ground out of the core support to clear the front of the steering gear. The radiator is a stock S10 4.3L with AC radiator. The headlight buckets just barely don't rub on the plastic tanks. The radiator barely fits height wise in the 19.25" tall core support. Looking back, I should've made it at least 43" wide so I had a bit of room to play with.
The inner fenders were started but never finished. What you see on there right now is 6.5" of 16 gauge welded all the way from down at the "pinch seam" at the rear of the fender all the way up to the nose of the fender. Every 2.5" there is a 3/8" nut welded to the 16gauge. The original intention was to make removable wheelhouses that bolted on in the factory spot on the cab, bolted to those welded nuts, and bolted to the bottom of the core support. However, before I got that far I decided to give up on the 1/2 tons and 40s for a set of 1 tons and 44s. Even with the cab-to-front-axle centerline distance increasing by 7.5" I didn't think the rear of the fenders would clear 44s. So I never finished the wheelhouses.
afroman006 said:
Sniper, can you take some close ups of the transition from where the fender is straight (near the door/firewall) to where it begins bending down and in? Did you use the factory core support at all or is that one totally custom? Did you use 2 sets of fenders to make those?
I don't have any more pictures. The rig is torn apart at my parents' house 500 miles away and the server that hosts my website got hit by hurricane Rita and I lost everything... and I mean everything. I had buildup pictures detailing everything, even moving the engine crossmember back 2.5".
If you measure 23" from the back of the fender and draw a line straight down that is where I cut it. Any shorter than that and you can't use the factory hood hinges. You'll have to run a short master cylinder reservoir off a G-body car or put an outward dent in your hood as well. You'll need to put a bunch of slices in the metal so you can shrink and expand it. Mine "bends" over a 2.25" area. If you don't want it to taper down so much you can make the line that you cut at lean towards the rear of the vehicle.
The only factory part of my core support are the headlight buckets and the pieces the headlight buckets went into on the factory core support. It's all made out of 2x1/4, 2x3/16, and 1.5x1/8 angle iron.
That's one set of fenders. They're swiss cheese fenders... were very thin and rusty. They were supposed to be my "trial run" fenders but they turned out good enough to paint with Durabak. The first fender probably took me 7 hours to do total... second one about 3. The most time consuming is the rewelding and then putting the 16gauge on.
I'm sitting hear lookin at these trucks going I wish I had that!! Thank alot guys for the pics,I may one day taper the font and back of mine???
. Thats saying alot since she is always hinting that I should sell the 'burb
.
