This truck project really began back in 1995 when I worked at Quinn Caterpillar During my Senior year of Highschool and the first year or so after High school. I bought this truck from a fellow co-worker for 1500 bucks. I had big dreams of welding in a camaro subframe and learning how to do the work myself. The truck remained on the road for the next 4 years, In 1997 I finally tore the truck apart to begin to prep to install the camaro subframe for myself. Well as life passed me by The truck never got worked on, I had all the parts but 12 hour days in the oilfield never allowed me to get around to finding the time to do the work, nor did my live arrangements ever give me the space to really work on the truck. Fast forward to 2001, a few buddies and myself reant a small 700sq ft shop, The rent was 200 per month, finally I had the space to work on my truck while my buddies were building motorcycles. I spent week getting that subframe fitted to the truck, I finally got it under the truck. I had the front wheels reinstalled and thought I had really done some thing, well that worked sparked my interest to think about doing a rear tubular subframe in the back of the truck. Well this is now the summer of 2001 and I had just left my old job to open Ironworks. My buddies and I had moved up from the back little 700sq ft shop to the 1800 sq ft shop up on the main street. We thought we were big time. Well now that i was "Living the Dream" I had no extra time or money and I had found some new interests. I bought a model A coupe and did a bunch of things to that.

Over the next few years the truck went from prized possession to back shop yard art. So in 2005 The editors of Classic trucks wanted to work with us on some tech articles, We decided to use the Flat Out Engineering C4 corvette front and rear suspension kit under my 57. After finishing the chassis and stepping the frame to get it to have a better stance. Around this same time a friend of mine asked what it would take to push my shop to the next level. I said "Money". He asked how much? After some discussion of the what we wanted to do, he decided to help me by putting up the money for any big parts or outside services to help me build what we planned would be a ice truck that might get local attention. Not too long into this build I had a customer come in that could not live without that chassis. The guys in my shop at that point and time had been thinking about building a transaxled C5/C6 vette tub chassis like some we had seen in the magazine. We used the money we got from the sale of the old chassis to buy the tubing bender and the C5 suspension and drivetrain. My buddy and now partner in the truck thought it would be a good move. Once the new bender had arrived we immediately began laying out the ride height and designing and building the tube frame. A few months down the road I found the Kinsler website and showed the manifold to my partner in the project, I said if we put this manifold on this truck it will make the engine compartment look like a Jewelry box. That manifold is what the got the ball rolling to the end result we have here now.

Over the next 3 years different guys n my shop would work on the project off and on as time permitted. Once the chassis was complete we began doing the pretty extensive body mods to the truck. We move the rear winodw down 2" and completely hand fabricated the rear bed to be able to hide the actuators inside the bed side for the aluminum tonneau cover. We made the hood flip forward on actualtors also. We smoothed out the dash and made the eybrow above the gauge cluster bigger. We cleaned up and lot of small things we did not like about the truck. About 2/3's of the way through the project I met Eric Turner who turned me onto Solidworks and how to use it. I began making different billet pieces and having them machined for different aspects of the truck. We made the clutch, brake and gas pedals, we made the alternator bracket that is also the power steering reservoir, We made most all the interior pieces along with the parts on the fuel tank. We made the line clamps to hold the brake lines to the chassis. We made quite a few of the engine bracket system parts also. When we started this project I had no idea we were capable or that this project would ever turn out like this.

Since completion, the truck has gotten Classic trucks Top 5 at Del Mar, Truck of the year Finalist at Columbus last year, GM Design award at SEMA 2009 for Best GM truck at SEMA while being in the Meguairs booth. It took first in class at the Grand National Roadster show in Pomona this past January. It has been featured in a few magazines, Truckin, American muscle car, and has been shot for Classic trucks and street trucks.

The specs of the truck, 1957 Chevy truck, 600 hp LS2 with FAST fuel injection with a Kinsler stack injection unit. The engine was built by Jim Watkins in Bakersfield, the internal are from Lunati and Comp Cams. The water pump is from Meziere. It has 20 and 22 inch Budnik Muroc II wheels with BFG tires. It has 14" wilwood brakes, and pedal assembly with master cylinders and custom made reservoirs. It has a Flaming River steeing column with a Budnik Flat track steering wheel. It uses al Aeromotive Fuel system parts with Kevlar XRP line. The Stainless An fitting are from JDA. The interior was done by Armando's in San Jacinto, Ca. The paint is Dupont and was handled by Jim Rameriez in Stockton Ca. All chrome plating was handled by Sherms in Sacramanto. The powder coat and Ceramic coat was handled by Kelly at Speacialized coatings in Huntington Beach Califonia. The exhaust is 2" steel build and sanded smooth in house. The fue tank was built in house. The transmission was built by D&D performance, the rear diff and built by Nic at R&H trans. The Air Conditioning duties are handled by Vinatge Air.