Chassis and drip rail: 1938 Chevrolet Pepsi Truck Custom Build Part 3

This is part three of a series of posts on this highly custom 1938 Chevrolet Truck restoration, in post one we introduce you to the project and the custom features to be fabricated.  In post two, we look at the individual truck parts that make up the front end build In post three, we cover the chassis build and drip rail removal In post four, we show you the process of metal finishing the fenders. Post five takes us through the panel restoration of the original inner grille housing panel and a custom touch of deleting the cowl vent panel.  Post six takes care of the lower cowl metal and left hand front fender.  Post seven covers the toe board panel, door lock upgrades, and mainly the upgrades to the inner fender support panel; this panel has to be heavily modified to take the new location of the hood side panels.  Post eight looks at how the custom hood was created to open by pulling forward instead of the original butterfly design.

Newberry Motors assigned a chassis builder in Ohio to build a custom chassis for this 38 Chevy truck to take a non-original 350 engine, transmission, and rear air bags.  It is nicely done and we give credit to the builder.
The latter pictures in this set show the removal of the drip rail at the customers request.  Although there isn’t an ‘off the shelf’ replacement drip rail available, if needed our shop could have fabricated them.

Custom chassis for 38 Chevy truck

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The chassis.

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Drip rail removal for custom restoration

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Original drip rail, you can see some deterioration here.

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Once removed, you can see what’s under the primer.

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Work begins on the drip rail to remove the contour.

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Continuing to remove the contour and fill in the holes.

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In the process of metal finishing the drip rail area on the truck.  You can see how smooth the new contour of the cab is from this angle.

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All done, now repeat the process for the passenger side of the cab.

This is part two of a series of posts on this highly custom 1938 Chevrolet Truck restoration, in post one we introduce you to the project and the custom features to be fabricated.  In post two, we look at the individual truck parts that make up the front end build In post three, we cover the chassis build and drip rail removal In post four, we show you the process of metal finishing the fenders. Post five takes us through the panel restoration of the original inner grille housing panel and a custom touch of deleting the cowl vent panel.  Post six takes care of the lower cowl metal and left hand front fender.  Post seven covers the toe board panel, door lock upgrades, and mainly the upgrades to the inner fender support panel; this panel has to be heavily modified to take the new location of the hood side panels.  Post eight looks at how the custom hood was created to open by pulling forward instead of the original butterfly design.