Not on the same par with some of the other rides here but I love her dearly so here she is....
I only bought her as I was losing my storage and selling my other baby's - caddy and mk2 Cortina. I wanted something that needed for nothing and was taxed and tested so I could just get in and enjoy. After 50 plus VW's and being generally sick of them and the state of the VW scene, and half a dozen or so Cortina's and being sick of the cost of OSF ownership I decided to fulfill a boyhood dream and get a lardy old american pickup.
This is how she was when I got her...
Bought fairly locally from an old dude who had looked after her well but couldn't get her in his trailer park (how awesomely fitting is that!) so he went and bought a '94 S10 which, by his own bitter admittance , he saw as no kind of substitute for a full size truck.
Anyways, after 3 months of enjoying bullying buses, toffee nosed arses in 4x4's and other assorted nauses the natural instinct to get her closer to the blacktop took over. Sadly because of nowhere to do it and to be honest no inclination given the weather I dropped it down to Paul Coltech and he flipped the axle....
Axle out........
Chassis notched......
ARB shortened appropriately.....
Back on.....
Stance check.
It looks like somewhat less than a 6" drop and with the BFG's being a touch on the large side I knew that they would be no good and had already secured a pair of 225 50 15's from GasserJay of this very forum (nice one sir
This added up to a more pleasing 8" drop....
However, the dream beams (lowering I beams for Ford Trucks) still hadn't arrived from the States, so the front and rear wheels were swapped around and the truck was driven back from Poole to Bristol gasser style - it was so ugly I couldn't bring myself to take pics. To keep me going and to get an idea of what it was like, another kind friend did a photochop of the truck with the front down....
In the meantime while waiting for the Beams to arrive, I picked up some E150 van steels to replace the chrome steels with - due to their offset I was concerned about clearance at the front. You wouldn't think it, but you are actually pretty limited on running wide wheels.
They, and the wheels arrived a week before Christmas and again Mr Coltech was kind enough to have my truck in on the Monday after Christmas (as well as store it from Christmas Eve!) to get the front down. I'll be honest in saying that as much as I had a great Christmas with the other half's family but knowing that the truck was only 15 mins away meant much time waiting for monday to come around
;D.
After a day spent on the front, she was finally looking more like my kind of truck. Paul's workshop was pretty busy and I was happy to get on with it myself although he did help with one or tweeks - the springs needed shortening as the beams only give a 3" drop so new securing clips for the spring tops were needed. Also, we couldn't understand why it hadn't dropped as much as it should have until we saw that the ARB was fouling the steering arms. Bye bye ARB, hello lowered truck. 6 1/2" at the front to be exact.
So here is where she is at today.....thank you for reading my essay.
I only bought her as I was losing my storage and selling my other baby's - caddy and mk2 Cortina. I wanted something that needed for nothing and was taxed and tested so I could just get in and enjoy. After 50 plus VW's and being generally sick of them and the state of the VW scene, and half a dozen or so Cortina's and being sick of the cost of OSF ownership I decided to fulfill a boyhood dream and get a lardy old american pickup.
This is how she was when I got her...
Bought fairly locally from an old dude who had looked after her well but couldn't get her in his trailer park (how awesomely fitting is that!) so he went and bought a '94 S10 which, by his own bitter admittance , he saw as no kind of substitute for a full size truck.
Anyways, after 3 months of enjoying bullying buses, toffee nosed arses in 4x4's and other assorted nauses the natural instinct to get her closer to the blacktop took over. Sadly because of nowhere to do it and to be honest no inclination given the weather I dropped it down to Paul Coltech and he flipped the axle....
Axle out........
Chassis notched......
ARB shortened appropriately.....
Back on.....
Stance check.
It looks like somewhat less than a 6" drop and with the BFG's being a touch on the large side I knew that they would be no good and had already secured a pair of 225 50 15's from GasserJay of this very forum (nice one sir
This added up to a more pleasing 8" drop....
However, the dream beams (lowering I beams for Ford Trucks) still hadn't arrived from the States, so the front and rear wheels were swapped around and the truck was driven back from Poole to Bristol gasser style - it was so ugly I couldn't bring myself to take pics. To keep me going and to get an idea of what it was like, another kind friend did a photochop of the truck with the front down....
In the meantime while waiting for the Beams to arrive, I picked up some E150 van steels to replace the chrome steels with - due to their offset I was concerned about clearance at the front. You wouldn't think it, but you are actually pretty limited on running wide wheels.
They, and the wheels arrived a week before Christmas and again Mr Coltech was kind enough to have my truck in on the Monday after Christmas (as well as store it from Christmas Eve!) to get the front down. I'll be honest in saying that as much as I had a great Christmas with the other half's family but knowing that the truck was only 15 mins away meant much time waiting for monday to come around
;D.After a day spent on the front, she was finally looking more like my kind of truck. Paul's workshop was pretty busy and I was happy to get on with it myself although he did help with one or tweeks - the springs needed shortening as the beams only give a 3" drop so new securing clips for the spring tops were needed. Also, we couldn't understand why it hadn't dropped as much as it should have until we saw that the ARB was fouling the steering arms. Bye bye ARB, hello lowered truck. 6 1/2" at the front to be exact.
So here is where she is at today.....thank you for reading my essay.
. I like my insurance premiums nice and low (hence a yank tank - super cheap) and wouldn't want to risk life or policy. I will admit to the buses part though.
