1964 Dodge A-100 Hot rod sort of rat rod build thread.

Simulated six and a half inch ride height. See if I can end up around there. With the air out of the bags slammed down on the ground almost half the rear tire will get covered. Should be pretty cool.

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Right side is good but the left side rusted out bad. Worked all weekend making pieces to fix this issue. Our body shop said to use the SEM panel bond. I don't want any rivets or screws through the body panel. Prep and Por 15 paint is done. Man that stuff is nasty.  Tomorrow it all goes together. 



 
I have been dreaming about the interior for a long time and didn't really know what I wanted to do. Wanted something really cool, different and unique. Solved one part Yesterday. I decided I want to run a bar or two bars across the top (forward to back) and mount a Winters Sidewinder shifter upside down. Then make a cool custom hanging shifter. Then an upside down console to cover it. Have my buddy cut the shifter on his table once I design it. This will block the rear view mirror so I might run two circle track mirrors. Then do some sort of custom visors. 



 
From rough measuring it looks like I will have 3" from the front of the drive pulleys to the back of the cab. Dreaming about how I can mount the radiator and intercooler in front of the engine and tunnel fresh air to both from the front of the truck. Of course cutting into the cab and making it smaller. Really did not want to mount the rad way in back by the tailgate. Would be nice to have a partial functional bed.  Watching some of the old Rampy videos they said his fab guy had 400 hours in fab work. I will be way over that because this truck will have a lot more custom hand built parts. Sold the old original 8.75 rear end this week for $500. I had also thrown the drag link into our scrap bin. Guys messages me for one and I pulled it back out of scrap and sold it for $125.  :closeeyes:

 
48x3 1/2 inches of surface area. We will see if that is enough glue to hold that panel without any mechanical fasteners. I added a lot more glue versus what is shown in the photo.

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Man I love the bronze on this thing. I have some ideas for some cool front and rear bumpers. I might do bronze on those, the roll bar, and the exhaust. This is at a five and a half inch ride height which is where I would really like to be. Front wheel inset is still to be determined but I want this thing to turn as sharp as a regular Corvette. I need to get my red car out and measure some angles.

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Front tire right now is 1 in from the original front wheel tub. I figure I need to be able to have four inches of up travel for the tires and the new tubs. I will know that better once I articulate and play with the suspension on this thing. With a 4 inch higher front tub I will have 38 and a half inches to play with for seat height total. I lose 4 in at the visor area and thinking eyesight needs to be at least 4 in below that. So that leaves me about 30 in to play with. Not a lot. Thinking I really need to buy the seats for this project before I go any further.

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Sat in some Corbeau a4 seats and to tight in the shoulders for a street driven truck. Really like the Corbeau GTS II seats. Not quite as much support but still some. Would also do their 5 point cam lock harness. Order the seats with the notch for the crotch strap. I would also upgrade to seat heaters and lumbar adjustment.  And they offer a 1" shaved for the bottom cushion. Need every little bit.  Still not 100% not having notches in the seat for the upper shoulder straps. This was the response back from Corbeau. 

Our harness belts are universal so they would work fine with the GTS II seats with the 5th slot installed.  Yes, they do not have shoulder harness slots, but customers have put shoulder straps over the seat.
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A guy on the Dodge A100 Facebook community page posted this pic of his van. I am thinking possibly same original paint and primer as my truck. Pretty damn cool IMO. 

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ROBERT L said:
I know this isn’t a Dodge but I thought you might like it.  
 

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Well I missed this. Very cool. Got my trans and rear diff. From the front of the pulleys to the center line of the drive shafts will be around 54 in. Meaning the pulleys are going to be about 1.5 inches from the back of the cab. Really don't want to cut out the back of the cab to make the radiator, intercooler, and transmission cooler all fit. But I might have to. As of over 4 weeks ago my mounts from dobbertin were close. I have to think I might be able to start working on this thing soon.

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Been a long wait but I can finally start building this truck. Just got my dobbertn mounts for the rear this week. Now I can start doing some measurements before I cut this cradle apart and narrow it up. Thinking I will leave half to three quarters of an inch between the edge of the tire and the new wheel wells to get made. Came up with some pretty cool ideas how I want to metal finish the bed of this truck. That is a long way off. Airbags have quite a bit of adjustability so I will have to do some research and figure out how to set all this up before I start building the frame for the truck. Never done any of this before so this will be fun learning.

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I have my C5 ZO6 so I can measure angles, ride heights, etc. Let me cheat a little bit. Although it has a single mono spring and not bags on it.

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onanysunday said:
Been a long wait but I can finally start building this truck. Just got my dobbertn mounts for the rear this week. Now I can start doing some measurements before I cut this cradle apart and narrow it up. Thinking I will leave half to three quarters of an inch between the edge of the tire and the new wheel wells to get made. Came up with some pretty cool ideas how I want to metal finish the bed of this truck. That is a long way off. Airbags have quite a bit of adjustability so I will have to do some research and figure out how to set all this up before I start building the frame for the truck. Never done any of this before so this will be fun learning.

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Watch Texas Metal on TV and he will show you how to build the frame. He builds some nice frames. DON~~~

 
At ride height. Toe in on the rear is supposed to be zero to .200. right now it has .750 toe out. It's looking like I only need to narrow the cradle five to six inches. Less than I would have thought which is pretty cool. I believe on the corvair ramp side truck he narrowed that thing 9 in. The front cradle though will get narrowed a lot more I'm guessing.

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