The latest project has arrived and damn is there some work to be done as you will see. The AE was nothing compared to what this is going to involve.
As the first pic shows the right front, grill, and bumper+ valance is McJacked.
I am going to try to find a fiberglass frontend. But even that will require a grill. Instead of trying to find a grill I made tubular grills a long time ago mainly for domestic pickups. Back when those were common.
With what is left of the grill and headlight bezels I can dupe some fiberglass maybe even carbon fiber bezels and use the grill for reference on tubes. I will probably powder coat the tube section when it's finished.

The motor and tranny are coming out. They belong to my friend that gave me the rolling chassis.
He is not the one that hacked this up BTW.
Speaking of jacked take a look at the welded up battery access panel (passenger side behind door)
If that is not jacked up enough for you look at the air shocks in the back. They took a 12" or so section off the bottom of the bed to put them in and stood the upper mounts
I am not sure what the end result they were trying to achieve but in all the lifting and lowering of trucks I have ever seen or done did not look anything like this at any stage of the project. The closest thing is tubbing and even that does not look even remotely close to what you would do.

The white vinyl tape at the top of the windshield was the first thing that had to go.
While cleaning the interior out I found the factory books and the grill emblem.
All in all it was free and has a clean title.
I have a 5 speed GXL tranny to put in it. This is where you guys will start ragging my ***. I am putting a pport with twin Dellorto 40mm sidedrafts.
Since this is a 1974 and does not have to pass emmissions. It won't be a daily driver but it will certainly be intense

Here is what the ugly dawg looks like. It sent Ms. Scalli into panic attacks and it has to remain under a cover unless I am working on it.

 

 

 

Nice!

 

congratulations man....hopefully someday i can find an REPU like that somewhere close to the border....like buffalo or sumtin....are u gonna go with the factory colour paint or sumtin else.....i would recommend the corvette blue.....with all the shiny pieces of ur car chrome plated and i dont think i gotta give u any suggestions for the performance upgrades

 

Here you go Scalliwag. You've got something to shoot for. Click on the pictures at the right for a bigger picture of each.

http://www.checkpointmotors.net/Proj...ail.asp?pID=17

 

Those REPU's are sooo sweeet!! Wish we had them in Europe!

 

nice score buddy.
It is a lil rusty, but so is my 74. Glad to see you still have the hood trim part, those are hard to find. I have seen a lot of repus missing those. Like my 77, 74, and my brothers 74.

www.mazdarepu.com, has a good forum you should vist from time to time. A lot of really nice people on their.

 

Hey Scalliwag, if need a clucth and brake setup for that repu. I might have one soon, that is if I deside to part out the 77 repu I got.

 

I need the clutch/brake pedal assembly. It sux that it is an automatic. Pretty strange that they put a tach in an auto too

 

nice it even has air lol

matt

 

haha!!! Yep, it's a little Hillbilly Ghetto ain't it?!?!?!?!?!

 

i'm jealous

 

looks like a decent base to start with......you like projects anyway

 

I Imagine looking at it.... and from the age of the "Mods" someone looked at one too many Mini-Truckin mags back in the mid 80s when they tried to mod the poor thing...

Welded Batt Box, Braided cover on Rad Line, Vynil Windshield, Fake Air Shock Drop kit, Tweed thing under the steering wheel with some sort of mysterious grille for AC maybe.. No rear bumper..

BUT Thankfully it appears to be a solid truck to start with... no real bad cancer appears visible...

Cant wait to see how it ends up

 

This thread has now forced me to start my search for a REPU. I had forgotten about these things for soooooo long. I'm in VA, so the chances that I'll find one that isn't completely eaten by rust are slim.
BTW_ Scalliwag, If you are ever in the D.C. area, let me know. You deserve a beer for all the projects that you work on. You have been a personal inspiration to me lately.

 

That truck on Ebay sold for $460. Good luck on finding one jinx22630. I can't imagine living where the older cars were "melted away" by rust. That is incredibly sad
Thanks for the compliments too If/when I get back to DC I hope to get together with several of you guys. Around here the rotary folks are very tight and we are always doing something together. Hell just check the South Forum sometime to see some pretty interesting stories and conversations.
Hopefully we can get together and knock back a few someday.

 

Hey Scalliwag I was the one who won the truck on ebay. I was looking for one for over a year now and i finally found one.

 

Congrats bro!!! How are you going to get it home?

 

Thanks, I am getting a shipping company to get it for me. I wanted one that bad that i am paying three times the amount of what i payed for the truck for the shipping.

 

Hey Scalliwag, do you need a 13b for that thing?
I'm Parting out my 82, and I've gotten the motor about half-way out. I think it only has a bad cooland seal but I'm not sure. Let me know, I'll make you a helluva good deal on it,

 

Yep, I chacked with my buddy and it is about 1200 miles. He would charge $1 per mile so that is pretty close to 3X.

 

Hey, guess who's an idiot. I meant 12a. D'oh!!!!!!!

 

Chris (the friend tat gave me the truck) and I got the motor fired up last night. It ran like a champ. So now plucking the motor and tranny is next on the to-do list.

 

Tuesday night we started the motor. It ran good which was really surprising considering it supposedly had not been started in 5 years. I expected the carb to be gunked up way too bad. But it ran through the RPM range smooth and solid.
Too bad it has to get pulled out
I got the frontend pulled off today. It appears the truck was originally white. The front suspension has been hacked up a bit too. I will get some pics of that as well. The suspension was supported by a 4x4 wood block