Originally Posted by 99 to Life
your truck is far from a ratrod, nothing wrong with a nice patina, or contrasting old with new, but hey if paint is your goal than do you. Thats whats great about building, its your vision coming to life. Your bringing back a piece of the past and thats whats important. You don't see these everyday so its about having something unique, whether its traditional, stocker, drag, gasser, custom, hot rod, ratrod, streetrod,bomb and whatever other term or style you wanna throw out there, its a piece of art.
Personally, here would be my approach. Cutting frame is not a big deal, and shortening/lengthening bed and running boards are options too, lot of people do it. Its just metal and to get the wheelbase right, front is most important, back has more room to play with. Steering, my opinion s10 columns stick out like a sore thumb, just don't go with the interior, but thats me. It is easy as pie to use and shorten the original tubed column or make your own. Just shorten it, get yourself a roller bearing to fit in the bottom, have your shaft coming out of the bearing, square off the end, get a used or new ujoint to mate to it. There are lots of heim joints and ujoint rigs out there that look like a puzzle to work.
fenders, and body work def eat up time. Less filler the better, but if you got the patience which alot don't. Learn some hammer and dolly work and smooth em out, plenty examples online and heck you can do that on your back porch at home. if you gotta replace some patches thats another thing, but doing and learning that is like anything else.
there are always hurdles to jump through man, if you want it bad enough it will happen. Some guys go years and years before completing something, others can do it in months. End result is getting the thing on the road, heck run the patina for a bit, get it on the road and then paint it later, options are endless. What I'v learned in life so far, depend on as little people as possible!
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