Her name is Molly and she was born in '49

[ghettoluxury]

Ok, to start things off I will let you guys know where this all started. Last June my buddy was hosting a tattoo party and I had drawn a picture of my stepside to get done. The night before the party my wife tells me that she doesn't like that truck and would prefer I not get it inked on my body. She asked if there was any other trucks that I liked, so I pulled up a picture of a '48 Chevy and she told me she liked it much better. I ended up getting a very large piece on my rib cage of Rusty's '48 without the door graphics.

So now it is September and I start looking for an AD truck since I have one tattooed on my side. I went and looked at a few within a 3 hour drive but they were in worse shape than I wanted to start with or they wanted too much. I have always liked the Chevy grille more than the GMC, but there was this '49 GMC long bed on craigslist that caught my eye. By the time I had looked at the other trucks it had dropped off of Craigslist and a very nice 2 ton '48 Chevy cab had popped up for $450 obo. I called the guy up and he told me that I could have everything that he had for $400. This was a complete 5 window cab with clear title, doors, recovered seat, steering column, inner fenders, grille and running boards.

Several months went buy and a 6 foot bed that was a kind of rough popped up for $100 so I went ahead and bought it. In the middle of December a '48 GMC cab and doghouse popped up about 10 miles from my house so I called and asked if he would split them up. The gentleman told me to stop by and look at it and he would let me know. $400 later I had a complete front clip with the radiator and a set of half length running boards.

Fast forward to the end of March and I am searching for an S10 to rob of it's frame for these parts that I have gathered. While looking I come across the '49 GMC long bed and now he has it resting on top of a S10 frame. I left the page open on my laptop when I went to work that Thursday night, so that I could call in the morning and see what he had with it and what had been done so far. The next evening I called and he told me that someone was supposed to come look at the truck on Tuesday and if they didn't buy it he would call me back.

That Tuesday my Dad had already made plans for me to help him remodel his bedroom and my wife told me she was going to take my truck when she went shopping because she was planning on getting a treadmill. So after putting in a full days work with Dad I went home and started watching TV. About 20 min later I hear the truck pull the drive, so I walk out to help unload. When I walk out the door My wife and Father-in-law are in the truck with his trailer attached and Molly was sitting there waiting for me to unload. My wife saw the Craigslist ad on my computer while I was at work and decided to get it for me for my birthday.

Sorry for the book I just wrote but I wanted to give the whole back story of how Molly my beautiful '49 GMC found her way into my life.

This first picture is the one that made me fall in love with her 8 months ago.

[ghettoluxury]

Here is my tattoo and Molly the day she arrived.

[draggin53chevy]

Pretty cool story background. Look forward to seeing Mollys progress.

[ghettoluxury]

Thanks Draggin, it has been a fun ride just getting here. The good thing is my wife is a good sport about it, for the most part.

I got some time today to work on Molly, so I placed the cab where I wanted it. I then Started cutting of the factory S10 cab mounts followed by the frame horns. The rear fenders that came with the truck are shot, so I pulled the ones that came with my 6' bed and will use them. Before calling it a day I decided to pull the grille and take a few hater shots with the S10's factory spare.

The pics with the rear fenders are from the start of the day before work started.

[alaska gasser]

Cool back story. That is something my wife would have done.

[ghettoluxury]

Today I took some measurements and proceeded to trim the inner fenders. As you can see these cuts are more drastic then your normal S10 swap. The reason behind that is, I want the truck to sit as low as possible with very good ride quality. In order to do so I am mounting the body at 2" off of the frame to the bottom of the front cab mount supports. This should set the running boards at about 6.5" off the ground without any mods to the suspension.

[ghettoluxury]

Ever since seeing the 56 Panel built by GRIMSS, I have wanted to use a set of 20" Dodge spare wheels on a project. I have been looking for these for about 6 months and could not find them in my area. Yesterday my wife had a meeting for work up in Traverse City Michigan and I had the first three day of the week off of work. I searched the entire state of Michigan and was able to find 3 salvage yards with these rims "on the way", so I mapped out a route and joined her on her trip.

The first pic is stolen from GRIMSS's build thread.

[BlueJeep]

I've always liked those wheels too. Looks like you've got 3 of the one style and 1 of the other. I think it was the earlier ones that had the round holes and the later ones that had the oval holes like that top right one. Did you notice that?

[ghettoluxury]

Yes I noticed, but I am thinking of filling the wholes. The one odd ball is from an 04, the rest are 06-08.

[ghettoluxury]

Well, I haven't done any work on Molly lately. Today I pulled her out of the way to clean out the barn. I did pick up a 9" out of a '78 F150 for her though. For $100 I could not turn it down considering it is the correct bolt pattern for my rims.

[ghettoluxury]

After the last 4 days off I feel as I have accomplished something, even though it may not look like it. I began on Sunday by pulling parts off of a 2000 Silverado I bought to part out. Over the next 4 days I removed everything from the chassis but the cab and suspension. Yesterday I pulled the engine & tranny and placed them in Molly's frame rails. I will be using these along with the wiring harness for the build, the plan is to utilize the DRL and Cruise from the Silverado.


Nothing is mounted, it is just resting on the frame and the tranny is laying on a chain slung across the frame.

[ghettoluxury]

The past couple weeks I have had some free time so I started working on the old girl again. All summer and most of this winter I have been working on my house. That project started out as replacing and relocating windows. Once I was inside the walls it turned into a total gut job.

The time has come to figure out how to get my rims to fit up front. I started by picking up an extra set of spindles to figure this out. The plan was to find rotor that has the same inner and outer bearings as the S10 with a 5x5.5 pattern. A rotor from a '78 F150 has just that. The problem is even after cutting off the ears for the factory caliper off of the spindle the rotor still made contact with the spindle. This is when I decided it was time for surgery.



I decided that I was going to make a hub out of a rotor so I took my grinder with a cutoff wheel and separated the rotor from the "hub" (mind you this was a brand new rotor). Now that I had a very crude hub it was time to figure out what size brakes I wanted, after all there is a V8 in her now. So I went back to Advance's website and started looking up specs. What I decided on was a front rotor from a '06 Ram, they measure in at just over 13" and are 1.25" thick. These should stop much better than the 10" rotors that came on the S10.



Since I had the rotor and "hub" it was time to make them fit together. I took the hub to work and turned it down on the lathe. Making it fit inside the rotor wasn't too hard, I just cleaned up my crude cuts. The center hole on the rotor was just over 78.5mm so I turned the hub down to match.




Now everything fit very nicely together but there was another problem. Even though the bearing were the same on the S10 & F150, when tightening down the castle nut i could not get a cotter pin in the spindle. So I removed the outer race and proceeded to move the seat in by 5mm. After doing so I moved the dust cap seat & face in 5mm.



I still have to figure out the caliper & mounting bracket and enlarge the studs to 9/16" or 14mm. These things should not be too bad. I am planning on using 4 piston Wilwood calipers off of the dirt track cars, they seem very adaptable. That's not the only dirt track parts that will go into this build. Yesterday I picked up a single pass 19x22 radiator from a buddy for $40, only ran 1 season.

[ghettoluxury]

Also my sister-in-law got me a center cap for Christmas. I cant wait to see these on Molly.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Maybe I missed it but have you decided what you're doing cosmetically?

Here's a photo of an AD GMC. I liked the color so much I've saved it for years. It's not mine but my '55.2 may end up this color:

[ghettoluxury]

The exterior will remain mostly as is with the exception of through rust repair and all new chrome/stainless. I will also try to closely match the rear fenders to the rest of the truck. As for the interior the plan is to make it look as close as possible to the day it rolled out of the factory. I am actually trying to find a 4 speed shifter and top plate so I can adapt it to control the 4L60E.

[ghettoluxury]

Picked up an original shifter & top plate from a SM420 this weekend.

[ghettoluxury]

I scored big today! Found a set of 255/45/20 Goodyear Excellence tire for $300 these are $317 a piece from TireRack. The guy said they have less than 500 miles on them and it shows. The nipples and paint are still on them.