[57taskforce]

Well guys, the time has finally come. The build thread for the truck that started it all for me. My 1957 3100. Unfortunately, because of my parents divorce I don’t have many pictures of the early days of this build. Somehow or another they were lost in the chaos of that event. I’ll post what I can of the early days. I’ve really not posted about this truck much at all, but I’ve owned it for the last 15 years. As a sophomore in high school I bought it from a close family friend for $1,000 and 3 cords of fire wood. I worked all summer at my job mowing a local cemetery and saved every penny possible to buy it. I got the truck home in March of 2006, by the later spring of 2006 my dad and I were fast at work tearing into it. It needed a ton of rust repair. About the lower foot or so of the cab is all new metal. It was already kind of 4x4 on the original frame but it was a cobbled together mess. It had a mid 70’s 305 with an sm465 and 203, feeding a 10.5” 14bolt 3:42 rear and an ancient closed knuckle 6 lug Dana 44 in 4:11 up front. The rear springs and hangers were from the same truck the rear came from. The rear Hangers were welded to the frame, and the front had some questionable work done as well when it was converted to 4x4, it also had some areas with some rust issues. The frame probably could have been saved but it would have been a lot of work.

The opportunity presented itself to buy a partially parted 88 full-size blazer. It had a supposedly newer 350 crate with a rebuilt corvette spec K-case 700R4, 4” suspension lift and 3” body lift. I bought the blazer, stripped the body from it and started to mock up the ‘57 cab and front clip on the new frame. Once we got it all mocked up and the cab mounts fabricated, we pulled it all back apart and started body work and final rust repair. This was all later in 06.

Fast forward to 2008 and we had the cab body work done and painted. At this point I moved to New Mexico the first time for 2 years, leaving the truck at home in Virginia. In that time my dad kept working on the truck and got new front fenders, new doors, and step side fenders. He painted and assembled the body.

June of 2010 I came back to Virginia and got right back to work, assembling the rest of the truck. From 2010-2013 I worked on it off and on and pretty much got it to where it is now. A lot happened in those years, I got married and life called us back to New Mexico at the end of 2013.
From 2013-present I haven’t done very much with it. It’s 85% complete and does run and drive on its own power but there’s things about it I’ve never quite been satisfied with which I will detail in the posts to come as well as outline my solutions to said problems. Here’s some pictures of where I’m at right now.