Project Chevy 2500 HD

*** UPDATE 10/25/08 ***

New pics of the body drop of the bed below

Would you believe this guy wants to bag this? Man this thing will be sick bagged. Yes he wants to keep the 4 wheel drive working. He wants to get it as low as it will go and still have a functioning 4 wheel drive system. This thing has lots of HP goodies. It has so much power at the wheels it will burn all 4 at the same time.

I started on this truck by shaving the door handles one at a time. The guy brings it to me and leaves it for a day or two over the weekend. I get as much done as possible. When I was doing all this I was working up to 90 hours a week at my old job at Bell's. I now have a job where I only work 40 hours a week. This gives me time to work on projects like this and also get my shop up and running.

I also shaved the third brake light and bodyworked the rear cab area.

I also welded up all the stake pocket holes and the holes inside the bed along the side walls.

I redid the rear seat mounts and cut one seat base up so it could be turned into another rear bucket seat. The owner had the seats recovered and cushions reworked so they matched.

I was asked to redo and shave the tailgate on this truck as well. The owner also wanted to have the license plate in the tailgate but to do something different with it. I made it slide from side to side. The license plate now slides into the tailgate to the left and its gone. Flip a switch and it comes back into the plate box. I used a power antenna motor and a drawer slide to make this work

I had to cut the whole back out of the tailgate and also add the handle flipped to the inside. I vut out one side at a time and used flat to make the covers go back on.

I then welded up the handle hole and top trim holes. I grinded all this down and bodyworked the whole outside. I wiped it with glaze after the filler was done and smoothed the glaze with a long board.

This tailgate as well as the rest of the truck will be black as the final color. I had to make sure the tailgate as well as the doors and cab were smooth as glass.

I also welded up all the small holes in the wheel openings and shaved the bolt heads that hold the bed corners. I welded the bolts in the backside after cutting and welding in patches.

I think this gives this truck a unique look that not many people bother to do. I hate to see a full custom truck on a magazine cover and those holes as well as other screw holes in the wheel openings are still there... fuck thats stupid...

I have done alot of work to this truck and alot of it you dont even notice unless you know what you are looking at. One of the most recent things I have done to this truck was installing the sir Michaels roll pan.

There was a 1/4" gap on each side of the rollpan. Im not sure if it was a thing with the bed of this truck or the rollpan was too narrow. I doubt sir Michaels screwed up.

I used 1/4" solid rod along the edges to fill the gap and also to make the welds and whole roll pan stronger.

I bodyworked the back area and blended the filler around the sides. These trucks have funny shaped rear bed corners. The bed also has beed painted over more than once. The owner wants to strip it down to bare metal anywhere I do anything to it. I have grinded every area I worked on all the way down.

I will probably do more bodywork to this truck as the project goes along.

I will soon be starting on the bag setup.

Im sure I will have to fab some upper and lower tube arms to make the bags fit nicely and also to improve the balljoint angles.

This will probably be one of the last bag jobs I do in my current shop. As I get more equipment to make parts I will have less room to work on trucks. I have to do this truck, the pathfinder and also my brothers Bronco. After that I will do nothing but build parts at DHP.

Look for new pics of this and other projects as I gather them and make pages for everything I have been working on.

Enjoy the rest of the Chevy 2500 pics.

Heres the pics from the bodydrop of the bed

The idea here was to cut the floor out of this bed and replace it with sheet metal. The guy wanted the inside all sheet metal. I decided that cutting the floor and moving it up then covering it all up with new sheet metal was not the way to go. Plus it would increase the weight by more than we wanted.

The way we are doing this makes it lighter and it looks better underneath as well.

The first thing we did was to cut out the old floor all the way up to the edges. We couldnt get up into the corners so we cut it as much as possible then flipped it over and drilled all the spot welds in the bed floor that held the braces in place. We put two pieces of 1" square tube along the bottom and a cross brace to hold it all in place when the floor came out.

This is the floor rails all held together with tubes and cut out of the truck.

This is the part of the floor that will not be used. The sides and wheelwell braces will also not be used.

You can see here how much we cut out. Basically the bed is nothing but the sides, front and rollpan.

We next started by leveling everything and measuring from corner to corner to square it up. We then got the floor sitting at the level we wanted and tacked it in place. Once we got it all tacked, we then started welding it in across the front and then bracing the rear. We seam sealed the front because we were done with that seam already.

The next thing was to add bracing along the sides of the back and front. We added braces that went from the floor frame structure up to the bed top rails. Since this will be sheet metal we had to make these flush. Then we started adding braces under the new floor between the stock floor braces. We could not do the middle since there will be a step notch there. Plus the guy wants the step notch covered and with one piece all the way across. This means that the wheel hump will be the same height and all the way across. This part will not be removeable. The guy wants it to be welded in permanent.

The following are from today 10/25/08

As you can see we have the braces in but there will be more to hold the sheet metal. This bed will have a spray in liner. There will also be a propane injection setup in the front. At the back there will be a covered hole in the floor that opens to a box where the two tanks and two compressors will be located. There should be enough room on the sides of the rear to add compressors later if needed.

I have not decided on the placement of the filler neck yet but the outside has been shaved. The back wasnt seam sealed but I will cut away the outer metal where the hole was and seam seal it so it doesnt crack out later.

I have a few ideas on the filler neck but I will have to find out if there will be a bed cover on it or if it will be open. This makes a big difference on placement of the filler neck.

More to come soon.

For more info on this or any of the other projects on our projects pages, please feel free to email me at

Mike@Dallashotrodparts.com