D^3 Dad's Down and Dirty 1955 Pickup, Nerd Rods C4 on the Cheep

[rat_rod_russell]

This has been one of those weeks where one thing lead to another and its a bit long winded to explain. So if you don't feel like reading here's the easy link to the pictures.

http://gallery.nerdrods.com/Projects/03_D3/03/


So Dad's 70th birthday is coming up and I wanted to give him something he wasn't expecting. I didn't just give him my 4:10 diff and 6 speed for no reason other than fun. I wanted to put a good power adder on it and those were necessary if they were to survive. So I got him an LSA supercharger thanks to their falling prices. I pick this guy up for less than a grand with the adapter plates so they would work on the cathedral port heads.



And we obviously need to make sure it fit the firewall before we went to far with the project. This is with my Vintage Air Pulley system and LS1 Camaro Oil Pan on the motor from the old PT-57. We just wanted to drop it in the frame and make sure it all worked out.




With that confirmed the frame was ready for powder coat. Dad was getting busy slamming the chassis together after it came out of the oven.










We've also been saving a set of the big 13" brakes for one of our projects.



So some of you follow us on the Facetubes or Twitter and those guys get a bit more of an update since I can just snap a photos and stab it to the net nice and quick. One of my customers saw the supercharger and we started talking. He had an STS Single turbo for his project but the super charger will actually make his life easier. I was still trying to work out an affordable pulley system (www.lssimple.net is what I was looking at BTW) and the fuel rail is an additional cost I wasn't looking forward to either since the LSA has a very unique system thanks to its pocketed fuel injectors and I was going to need some real headers to keep from choking the motor. So I asked if he wanted to trade. He said yes. (insert evil laugh)



So that got me thinking "Well we'll need a turbo cam and so I'll need to pull that one out of my 6.0L in the corner from the PT-57 and then take off its pulleys and move all that over to Dad's 5.3.......... OR, I could be lazy and just put the 6.0L in his truck." And so thanks to my laziness dad now has a 6.0L LQ4 with single turbo for his truck. Should be in the 550HP range really easily. That motor with twins and the same gear ratios did well over 567RWHP on the dyno a few years back so this should be a cake walk.



The motor goes in the chassis this afternoon. More to come ASAP.

-Russell @ Nerd Rods