Restoration | Eastwood Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Restoration’

Eastwood makes Media Blasting Affordable for the Beginner

Dec 29th, 11 / 2 Comments

Soda Blasting with a Pressure Blaster

Media blasting is a job that can be quite messy and expensive. Most blasting systems are great if you plan to use it often, but the cost definitely can be overwhelming if you only use it once or twice. Normally you would need a cabinet or a stand-up pressure blaster that requires a large compressor, an efficient air drying system, and loads of media; even if you are just doing a couple small items like valve covers, intake manifolds, etc.

Small Job Media Blasting Kit

Here at Eastwood we recently released a kit that will allow you to get blasting quicker than ever before. With our new Small Job Media Blasting Kits you can be up and running in no time without the need to invest in a large media blaster or cabinet. If you want to strip and recoat your old parts we suggest coupling the new small job blasting kit with one of our HotCoat Powder Coating Kits. Using the two kits together will get you restoring and coating parts quicker, and more affordably then ever!

As always keep your suggestions coming with your ideas for new products to help you do the job right!

Eastwood Chatter

Lower Door Skin Restoration

Dec 12th, 11 / 0 Comments

We are currently working on restoring the lower inner and outer door skins on Pile House. Man; these things were bad! We will be doing a full video tech feature on it here shortly. We also will be featuring the process on our February catalog cover! Stay tuned! Here are a few pics to hold everyone over for now.

1950 Dodge Pickup Project

Mocking up the Bed on Pile House.

Nov 30th, 11 / 0 Comments

Now that we have the cab and front end sheet metal mounted and they are a “bolt-on” affair, it’s time to start tackling the job of making bed mounts, as well as stretching the bed to fit the chassis. I initially was going to shorten the chassis to match the original Dodge wheelbase, but after some time of staring at the truck, and pictures of other trucks, I decided that I think I dislike how “unproportioned” these old short bed trucks look. After some measuring of the truck, and looking at pictures of other trucks, I think the overall appearance of the truck will look more “balanced” with the front of the bed lengthened to meet the cab.

So today we chopped out the metal that was fouling the chassis from the original bed floor first, then once we dropped the bed down we found that the S10 gas tank was hitting the bed and not allowing us to move it around freely. After removing the tank we got the bed sitting about how we wanted it height-wise, and tacked up some metal rods to hold the front part of the bed at that ideal height. We also added some cross bracing inside the bed to keep it from twisting while we are chopping it up and locking it into place. This should be a great exercise to hone my metal brake and bead rolling skills that I need some freshening up on! Check out the pictures below, and keep an eye here on the blog for a lot more updates to come.

1950 Dodge Pickup Project

A 48 Chevy Truck That Drives As Good As It Looks

Nov 14th, 11 / 1 Comment

Here in Eastwood country, (Pottstown, Pa. to those not familiar) we have a great classic car community. Because of that, the sound of rumbling exhausts is common to hear echo through the building as they park out front of our retail store. One of our regulars is Bob F. He used to run a repair shop in the area many years ago and has had a ton of experience restoring classic cars and trucks. In fact Bob even had his hands on a vintage Eastwood delivery van we had at our old headquarters many years ago!

Bob’s latest creation is fresh back from SEMA 2011. That’s right, Bob and his wife took his 1948 Chevy 1/2 ton truck the 2,000+ mile trip to SEMA this year, and it performed perfectly! This says a lot about Bob’s builds, I can’t say I could do that with any of my projects completely stress free!

This truck is able to cruise those distances partially because of his drivetrain choice. With a Chevy 383 mated to a 400 turbo transmission with a Ford 9″ rear with 370 posi, Bob is able to keep up with traffic and get pretty decent fuel mileage on the highway. Of course when he needs to “get-up and go” the engine really opens up and moves this truck!

With age, comes the need for creature comforts. Sure when we were all younger it was cool to have an obnoxiously loud rod with no windows, no heat, and solid suspension, but as the years go on, it takes a toll on you and you’ll find the need for a handful of comforts when making drives like Bob and his wife did! He started with adding the normal comforts that we all take for granted on modern cars, power steering, power brakes and even A/C. But then he went one step further and added cruise control. It’s no wonder Bob loves doing these long cruises! I can say that all of this was added in a non-obtrusive manner and didn’t scream “Gadgets!!” like some other classic vehicles kitted out with modern accessories like he added.

There are loads of subtle mods performed to this truck. Some of which were so well done, you could tell “something” had been done, but hard to put your finger on what exactly it was that he did to make it look so “right”. A few of the highlights for me was changing the front glass to the later single piece windshield and even some of the sheet metal on the front end. Bob also did some chopping of the body/running boards to get the truck looking proper when at ride height. Lastly, my favorite mod was the body trim that Bob fashioned out of brass stock, then had chromed. He drilled, tapped, and added studs to the backside of the trim to secure it to the cab and finish out the OE+ look that he has so expertly done on this truck.

We want to thank Bob for bringing his truck by, and we are glad our products could help bring this truck to the level that it is now at! Keep up the good work Bob, can’t wait to see what you turn out next.

Eastwood Chatter, Matt's Motor head Talk

First Cab Mock-Up

Sep 12th, 11 / 0 Comments

With all of my other projects I have going on at once, I haven’t had much time to make progress on Project Pile-House. But, this past weekend I got a free Saturday morning and a set of extra hands to help, so we went to town on making some big moves on the truck.

After some discussion with some of the older, much more wise guys here at Eastwood (I am a bit wet behind the ears with American cars), I decided to ditch the OE S10 firewall and floor all together. Instead I am now going to just fab up mounts for the S10 steering column, pedal cluster, and brake booster. So we started by disconnecting and pulling all of the wiring out of the cab, the steering column, pedal cluster, booster, etc until we were down to the bare firewall and floor. Surprisingly the floors and cab corners were quite bad on the S10!
Once I undid the 4 cab mount bolts, we lifted the last pieces of the cab off of the chassis.

Next I got the spare tire holder removed, I plan to probably run my airbag suspension tank, valves, etc, in this area, so I need the space. Not to mention the holder was extremely rusty and the flat spare tire won’t do me any good!

After that it was time for the next big move to put the Pile-House cab onto the donor chassis. As we were dropping it down onto the chassis, I found we had to chop the front bed mounts off of the chassis to clear the cab where it has the natural “channel”. Once the cab was on the chassis enough to roll it around the garage, we were able to see where we were at with the cab mounts to the chassis mounts. I was surprised to find they aren’t that far off!

I can already tell it is going to be quite easy to lay the sidesteps on the ground when “aired out”; and anyone that knows me, knows that makes me extremely happy.I did notice I will need to cut out the floor of the cab around the bell housing of the trans to allow the cab to sit flat on the chassis. I figure I can make a tunnel/cover for this once every thing is all sorted with the final mounting place of the cab. I also noticed that driveshaft is going to run pretty close to the floor of the cab as well, This could become an issue as I drop the truck to the height I want, so possibly a full tunnel in the floor will be needed. Time will tell I suppose.

Next we went on to doing the first trial fitment of the front end of the Pile-House onto the donor chassis. From previous measurements, I had found that the front chassis legs needed to be shortened to almost flush with the steering box to begin to hang the front clip. An electric reciprocating saw made quick work of that!

After our first test fit it was apparent I needed to cut the “hoop” on the bottom of the clip off where the OE radiator sat to allow the front clip to slide over the frame rails. Again a reciprocating saw made things easy.

From there we still need to do some adjustments, but the front end will at least hang over the chassis (sorta!) enough for visualization of how it will look. It seems the cab will need to be shifted a bit more forward so the bolts for the fenders line up, more on that later this week.

The next steps are to cut off some more of the OE cab/bed mounts that are hanging up on the cab, cut out the trans tunnel opening in the cab floor, then reposition the cab and front clip so they are positioned correctly over the chassis and front wheels. Now that some of my other projects are slowing down for the fall, I expect to update much more often. Stay tuned and thanks for watching!