[Conundrum]

Figured I would start a build thread, and maybe just maybe it would help to motivate me to get out to the garage and get busy more often. Kind of bad timing I know with winter coming soon but it's worth a shot anyway.

So i'm starting with a 74 GMC long bed that had a bump setup on the bed when I got it

My dad and I removed it

And it sat for awhile and I started to gather some more parts. I picked up a short bed from a guy in texas, and some steel 20" dodge spare wheels (that I was going to have changed to from the dodge 5X5.5" bolt pattern to the GM 5X5") but I traded those to a friend of mine for a set of the same wheels that had been powder coated a medium metallic gray, redrilled rotors for the front and adapters for the rear.


I was originally going for an old school kind of look but slightly modern, was even going to run the GMC hubcaps when I found 2 more. I was going to drop it real low or bag it, but my ideas have changed "slightly" but i'll get to that. I had a 350/700R4 out of an 86 suburban that I had picked up for parts off another friend. I actually traded that engine and trans to a guy for the pontiac engine and trans that I am now going to use. I picked up some drop spindles for a good price a few months back, but no real work had gotten done til about a month ago when I started cutting up a stock front crossmember for 1.5" of drop.


I am working on it during my breaks and lunches at work so my progress isn't quite as fast as I would like, but I have access to all the tools needed there.

My change of plans actually came from the ideas I had put together for my 74 Chevy project, which due to this truck those have also changed a little but that's another story.

I am wanting to build a truck that I think may have been, had people been into trucks in the same way back in the early 70s (which was a few years before I was born) that some of us are now. I want to do what I think GM or a dealership/tuner may have done, much like the Silverado SS or a Joe Gibbs chevy truck, Dodge Ram SRT10, Ford Lightning or what everelse may come to mind. I know that dodge had the little red express in the late 70s, but that was a dodge. My thing is what if GMC and Pontiac had teamed up and built a truck, or a couple guys at a dealership had the crazy idea to team a Pontiac engine with a GMC pickup. I came to this in part because my first car was a 78 Firebird with the 400/350 combo, and I loved that car even with it's rust holes and few small missing parts. I have regretted selling it since the day I sold it.

I figure that either scenario that may have possibly built this truck, they would have borrowed quite a few parts from the Pontiac bin. Being my first car was a Firebird, I will be borrowing mostly from Firebird/Trans Ams.

This will be a very slow moving thread, but I hope to stick with it.