My 72 SWB Progress

[beaterku]

Good evening. I have been quietly lurking the boards and gathering information for my truck over the last year. I have only posted a few times. I thought I would share my truck and the slow progress. My wife and I had been on the hunt for a 67-72 SWB for several years. she was a little more open to years as her grandpa had a 57 LWB on the farm. We looked at every truck that came across craigslist and never could find exactly what we were looking for. They were either more project that I wanted to take on or too much money. I found one in Fort Worth that was a really solid truck but after much thought, I decided it was a little more work than I wanted at that point. So we pressed on, looking on and off for another year. A buddy of mine from DFW called up and said a buddy of his is looking to sell his 72. He sent over the pictures and I made a call to see what the truck was all about. I decided to take a chance and hopped on a plane that weekend...

A few beers later at my first crawfish boil, I owned it.







About a month later, it finally made it home and I took it to it's first car show in my wife's home town. It got a lot of attention but no awards. A month after that I took it to the car show in my home town...

Won it


With my first win under my belt, I decided to start taking car of some of the things that had been bothering me.

First up was the steering wheel and dash pad. Both were no bueno.


Next was a retrosound Zuma. I am not a huge fan of this unit, but it does it job.


I also took out the janky ratchet shifter and converted it back to a column shift.

I then parked it for the winter and didn't get a chance to really touch it at all. This past weekend, after a ton of research and looking at pictures for weeks at a time, I finally decided on a set of wheels.

American Racing Torq Thurst II's in 18x9 5"BS all around. 265/50/18 Nitto tires.



I am in the process of procuring a trailing arm rear end and all of the bits to convert it to trailing arms. This is a factory leaf truck. My plan is to go air this winter. I am looking at a stage 1 porterbuilt kit. I don't want to slam it, I just want the adjustable and most of all, the ride. I have a shelf full of all Moog front end parts to rebuilt the entire front end. I am going to overhaul the front brakes and convert the rear to discs. Following that is a new engine and finally use the 700R4 I have sitting in the shop.

That's all for now. Thanks for looking!