The New Engine Fires

New Engine Being Installed

The new 350 engine and 700r4 transmission are being installed right now by Denny Nash.

The Interior is Completed

Completed seat. Notice hand leather lacing.

Completed interior. Yahoo!

The dome light is a vintage motorcycle turn signal. The paneling in 5 mil Louan board from Lowes. The leather cord is a pull cord for the air horns.

The steering wheel is a vintage MG wheel. Remnants from the leather seats were used to hand sew the cover on the wheel.

I use the original in dash gas tank. Notice the original gas level gauge. I added some minimal pin striping to the dash.

I am a US Ranger so I carried the Ranger badge theme throughout the hot rod.

The door panels complete the interior.

More Interior Work

Here I am doing more interior work. I purchased an entire cow hide from Tandy Leather for the interior material. I created a template to cut the leather to fit. Then a buddy of mine (Mike Pleasant) and myself hand laced the interior pieces together with leather cord.

There is a picture of the heater and AC under the seat out of sight to retain the vintage hot rod look but have some modern comforts.

Wood slat ceiling, switch panel and leather glove box overhead.

Gauges added into the original dash bezel.

Working on the final interior leather work here. Notice the 12 volt air compressor behind the seat to fill the air horn tank with an air pressure gauge below the seat. Also under the seat is a heater box and the AC unit.

Layed out the cow hide and templates, cut the leather to the patterns and hand laced the seats and interior panels.

New Upholstery Going In

The rod is in the shop for the next couple of days to upgrade the interior work I had done myself. This is my friend Kyle stitching away on the leather.

The New Engine is Ready

I picked up my new engine yesterday from Wolfe Machine in Hayesville, North Carolina. http://wolfemachineshop.com I am really excited about this engine.

• Chevy 350 bored to 355 
• Forged aluminum pistons
• Comp Cam with roller lifters and roller valve train
• Air Flow Research aluminum heads
• 700R4 transmission

The engine swap will take place in a week. Yahoo!

As I purchased the hot rod.

This is the way the hot rod looked when I purchased it on October 31, 2011. It has a stock 307 Chevy engine, 350 transmission and a Ford 9 inch rear. I flew into Dallas, Texas to purchase the vehicle and drove it all the way home to Chattanooga, Tennesse the next day without incident. The hot rod ran great. I had a blast driving it.