Daily Go Fast: Holy Empire

[CadillacMazerolle]

Ive been building this for a few years with slow but steady progress so it will take me a while to get yall caught up with here it currently stands. It has been driven daily up until this point. i have currently gone past the point of no return.

I bought this thing for cheap money because a deer had taken out the roof BUT it came with a spare off another vehicle. Without a tape measure i grafted the roof on because i had to be to work t



My buddy convinced me to take it out for a drive around the back roads while it was in this condition. we arrived home running on 3 cylinders and knocking like crazy


Found a great surprise when i cut the donor roof to length......


this side turned out great with no body filler




Yanked the motor out and replaced it with another stock 4 cylinder....




Next step was to glue the rear end shut and lower it down.

[CadillacMazerolle]

Now that it is road ready it was time to start on the essentials. I knew that no matter what this thing was going to end up being, that i needed a cage. Being 6'3" tall and a regular cab mini truck i had to do whatever possible to keep the cage tight.







i like this notch through the vent


Column Mount






I felt pretty stupid taking the time to notched a sun cracked dash

[CadillacMazerolle]

Made a rear view mirror mount






gotta love precision!!


this was 5 hours of fitment.......


teaching myself how to TIG


Harnesses and a bench seat!


Through the body to the frame.


Parts delivery truck!

[CadillacMazerolle]

soooo this happened....


a few hours with a hammer and some ratchet straps and it is pretty close to straight....


i started to abuse this thing pretty hard on the daily.

[CadillacMazerolle]

fresh new look with some old cherokee wheels.






Heater hose roadside repair with nothing but a bicycle brake cable and vice grips


at this point i thought i wanted to build it into a prerunner so i jacked it back up and stuffed white walls on it. you know.... for class...




Hauling an LS7.....?

[CadillacMazerolle]

Not wanting to need repairs the next time i nerf traffic, i started building a push bar.






Starting to feel more confident in my TIG welding.




One of my favorite tools (grew legs and walked away :(... )

[CadillacMazerolle]

bare in mind, this was my only source of transportation so anything i did to this had to be on a night or a weekend. I flog this thing as hard as anyone could. After the years of extreme abuse this truck has gone through I recommend a 79-95 toyota pickup to ANYONE.

Tires were the biggest consumable item.




The tire tracks in this photo tell a funny story.....


hard to tell in this picture but it is basically a ski jump. it landed me with a flat tire and a ride to work on a flat bed.

[CadillacMazerolle]

picked up an LQ9 because who doesn't need one of them?


I was driving it home one friday and in rush our traffic it just died! like maybe it jumped time. all the timing chain guides were good, chain was tight. having next to no money in the bank and needing to get to work on monday, i had some serious decisions to make. I REALLY didn't want to dump any more money into that stock 4 banger when i had a perfectly good LSx sitting in the corner but i also didn't have enough time and money to do the LSx swap. Fuel system, building a stand alone harness, flashing the computer, transmission and cooling system... just slightly out of reach for me at the time.

My good friend Aaron had a backyard built mystery small block chevy and a 700r4 that we decided made the most sense to just slam in there. Quick and dirty!





being so proud of my oil pan modification i went to test fit and apparently the engine block i was given was some half breed junk! the dipstick was on the right side but the rear main seal was from the previous generation. so the only solution was to go hunt for the oil pan that was originally on that motor and modify it. OR do this......



chopped the stock motor mounts off


test fit




oil pan clearances are tight


Motor mounts

[CadillacMazerolle]

Transmission mount was super easy. i just used the factory pickup mount and welded a washer in the center to relocate and resize the hole for the 700r4 mount.


the GM driveshaft was a press fit into the Toyota driveshaft


I modified the shifter out of the 4speed top loader Toyota transmission




Bolted it to the floor with the original shifter boot and ran solid linkage to an arm on the 700r4 so it still looked like a stock toyota 4 speed trans from the interior.


The factory Toyota throttle cable worked perfect with a custom bracket


This is 3/8 rubber hose, slide over 3/8 steel line. probably the stupidest thing i thought i should do. it took lots of ARP assembly lube and some serious elbow grease but in the end i have a perfectly formed hose.

[CadillacMazerolle]

Then came time to fit a cooling system. i had set the motor as far back as i could without cutting the firewall and removing the heater core and wasn't much room up front. My initial plan was to put the radiator in the bed but i dropped the motor too low into the frame rails to fit coolant hoses by the exhaust. My radiator was far too large to fit up front soooo This happened.







I was able to put the old bumper back on.

[CadillacMazerolle]

I needed both radiator necks modified RIGHT NOW for free and i had never welded aluminum before. With some help from Google this the result of my first aluminum beads.



Unfortunately it put the radiator cap in a VERY inconvenient location.....


So i bent some aluminum tube and tried again!

[LERM]

I'll be honest... I was REALLY hoping to see an LQ9 in in a yota' at the end.

Just the same, I'm a sucker for any v8 in tiny little pickups. I like it. Strong work on your fab work too man. From the looks of that bitchin cage, you "may" have done that before.

[CadillacMazerolle]

Haha yeah i obviously wanted the LSx in it too but the old school SBC was still better than dumping money into the stock 4 cylinder.

Yeah.... you could say i've done a little tube work before........

My favorite is when you roll the tube to match the body lines like this Nissan i just did.

[CadillacMazerolle]

exhaust was actually very time consuming and tricky to run with the engine sitting so low and torsion bars in the way.







Yanked the motor out to finish weld the Y-pipe and while it was out i sprayed some satin black on the engine bay to freshen it up.


Pretty mandrel bent perfection


Tight tolerances

[monteboy84]

This is friggin cool, nice work!

[andrewb70]

.....

My favorite is when you roll the tube to match the body lines like this Nissan i just did.

You may want to double check the rule books of various sanctioning bodies. I do believe that bending tubes of a cage is a big no-no...

Andrew

[CadillacMazerolle]

You may want to double check the rule books of various sanctioning bodies. I do believe that bending tubes of a cage is a big no-no...

Andrew

Thanks Andrew. Which sanctioning body has a rule against bending tube? I figured if anyone was going to pick apart my work the first thing to be said would be how there isn't a continuous B-pillar.

[CadillacMazerolle]

Just a rattle can paint job on the cage


I needed some type on hood pin but i hate the traditional chrome circle with a clip so i came up with this.


I was talking about how EVENTUALLY i would like to cut my inner wheel wells out. I returned back to work with pizza to find this! I actually was NOT excited at all because it was already late at night and he didn't realize how big a project it was to relocate everything and rewire it.



Also, for whatever reason i thought it would be a good idea to sticker bomb the nose... *facepalm*



battery behind the seat


I find irony in the fact that the engine I'm hauling is being hauled by an engine it once hauled


It's maiden voyage was a 1,000 mile round trip. She got 20mph and had no mechanical malfunctions. Well... other than that time i found the headlight harness in bed with the fan.

[srh3trinity]

I like it when somebody chronicles their history with a vehicle. This will be fun to follow.

[CadillacMazerolle]

Driven hard and put away wet. If i could ad up all of the hang time this truck has seen it would be several miles! This was at 90mph.



It was so high that i actually scraped my roll pan.



Unfortunately it was a pretty hard landing and i kinda destroyed... everything. Blew the back window out. Broke my trans mount. Screwed up the shifter linkage. Blew the headlights and grill right off the front. Peeled the front lower control arms right off the frame. Broke the motor mounts and that landed on my steering. Crushed the exhaust and the only thing that kept my engine from going through he radiator was the oil pan hooked on the cross member. I somehow still managed to drive it 30 miles home.

sooo we're back to playing THIS game again....










plated the frame where the motor mounts were



swapped out for solid mounts



fixed the trans mount