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Hi, I'm Tommy Lee Byrd and I'm 20 years old. I'm from Dayton, TN. I'm currently building a 1953 Henry J "Rusto-Rod". I bought the car knowing it was too far gone to try to de-rust it. Plus nobody makes Henry J parts unless they're fiberglass. So I decided to buy a wrecked mid 80's Chevy S-10 for a donor vehicle. What I wanted with this car is to have a daily driver. The S-10 was running and driving when I got it but was wrecked badly. It's a 2.5L 4 cylinder. I've got a hot rod and I realized that I can't afford to drive and I just want something that I can afford. So, after pulling all of the un-boltable stuff off, we cut the roof off. I wanted to leave my firewall and floor board so I'd have something to start with because the floors were so rotted out in the Henry J. The Henry J's wheelbase is 8 shorter than the S-10 so we cut the frame right over the rear end. Along with that, I ground all of the rivets out of the front leaf spring hanger and when the frame was cut we just rolled it forward and it was ready to weld, ha-ha. We also cut the back of the cab along the cab corners and hammered the back of the cab down to make some additional floors and that worked out awesome. It met right up with what stock floor I had left. I only ended being able to channel it about 3 because of the height of the firewall so I knew I'd have to do quite a bit to the suspension. In the rear, I pulled all the leafs out except the main one and put 3 blocks under it. For the front, it got a new set of 2" drop spindles and a couple rounds cut out of the coils. I did most of the suspension work in a day's time and that same day; I put the freshly painted wheels on it. We then attached the doors and front end, which was a chore because of the lack of stuff to bolt to. But it worked out good and all that is left to do is make some hood hinges and a latch, wire up taillights and make some bumpers and it will be done. I've already driven it a few times and once I get it pretty close to being done, I'm going to make some rocker panels for it.... at least that'll make it look even lower. It's all down hill from here.
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