Redemption_5.9 Build

Melting_pistons

Melting_pistons

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So a little back story to all of this. A couple of years back, I decided 7.70 wasn’t fast enough anymore... but to make my current truck any faster I would need to literally redo everything I had previously done to my truck. For the cost of that, I figured I could just buy a regular cab truck and start over, and keep my current truck for a fun daily/tow rig. So that’s what I did....

I went out and found this fairly clean 04.5

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I had the truck for less than a year. I didn’t really drive it much, I mainly wanted to make sure everything was sound with the truck before I started dumping money into it.

Mechanically the truck ran great. It already had a stage 1 (I believe) TRE transmission in it (triple disc dpc and billet input were the high points), smarty tuning, Glowshift gauges, and a pieced together exhaust.

After driving the truck for about 3k miles, I started buying parts. It started simple with a sport front clip, all clear headlights, and new 5” exhaust. I also bought a nice set of shoes for it.

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Before Diesel Truck Wars I decided to just clean it up, throw the new exhaust on, and try to run E.T. in it just for the heck of it.

I went to pick it up on the 2 post to swap out the exhaust and I started to hear a cracking sound... this is what I found.

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Now... I’m not a complete idiot. When I bought the truck, I noticed a couple small spots of rust (over fenders, bottom of tailgate, and bottom of doors) but nothing terrible. I know rust is ALWAYS worse than it looks. So I spent a long time rolling around in the parking lot looking this thing over. I checked the frame, suspension, everything. It looked flawless.

The truth of the matter is, the previous owner had done a really good job bondoing the frame and painted over the rust. I felt sick to my stomach, and wanted to burn the truck to the ground. But I knew at this point I couldn’t sell the truck so I loaded it up and took it to the shop to get a game plan together as to how to go about fixing this cluster.
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Now I’m going to stop for a second and say going forward, that there are a few options that may be “best” to go about fixing this...Such as replace the frame, back half the truck, etc... I’m doing none of those.

This is how I look at it though... what was there (bondo) was holding fine towing, test n tunes, daily driving, and hitting railroad tracks at 80mph. So what I’m doing will do nothing but make it better. Lol


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When I got the truck torn down and got to cleaning/cutting, this is what I found...
Basically, from the factory drilled holes in the frame down, the frame just rusted away to nothing. It was ridiculous.
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About the same time I had this going on, I had a good buddy looking for a project truck. I found him a few, but he kept coming back to my regular cab. I was reluctant to sell it because of the frame... but he is a welder/fabricator and assured me that he knew what he was getting and that he had no worries, he would get it fixed. So.... against what I felt was “right”, I sold it to him.
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I bought a twin to my daily to build for a 6.70ish truck, and continued on with my life (so to speak). If you haven’t already, you can check out the build for it on the drag racing page under melting_pistons build thread
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Now to current times...
Since my buddy bought the truck, it has just sat in his garage. Due to our work schedules, I never had time to help him with it and he could never get around to working on it. About a month ago we got moved to the same shift, and decided to get it to the shop and start back on it
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Yesterday we got it moved into the shop to start piddling with it. We decided to name it the redemption build because we are going to bring it from whatever the previous owner had let happen, to what it really deserves. Rust to 6s, so to speak.
Here is what we are starting with....
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Today I messed with it for a few minuets. Got the tires off and batteries/boxes out of the way so I can see what I’m dealing with... some people don’t deserve trucks........
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Just getting the batteries and battery boxes out make a huge difference. This truck will be getting a 2nd gen swap and batteries relocated to the frame like my other truck.
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That’s a good project you have there. Nice shop as well.

At what point would it be easier to perform a frame swap?
 
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