Firewall Fabrication and Some Packard Donor Parts

Now that we’re starting to settle into our new workshop and photo/video studio here at the Eastwood headquarters, I’ve been able to turn my attention back to making progress on Project Pile House. At this point the truck has the silhouette that I’ve been envisioning, but it just needs a lot more rust repair and final finishing of the body mods, and some more associated work I’ve got on my to-do list. I’ve decided I want to take a break from some of the visual enhancements and get back to making the truck closer to being roadworthy. This includes making a new firewall that fits around the Chevy 350 crate engine from Pace Performance and the Chevy TH-350 transmission from TCI Transmissions.

Our new tech-help guy Mike was eager to help me extract the old firewall. Mike has years of body shop experience and knows his way around a grinder and jumped right on board with chopping up the truck to make it better! Make sure you welcome Mike if you call or email and speak with him, he’s a great addition to the Eastwood family.

Now with the firewall cut out I can start making some templates to make a new smooth firewall for the truck. I’m still undecided if I want to run some beads around the perimeter from 18 gauge or if I want to use some thicker 16 gauge and make the firewall completely smooth. Like a lot of things with custom cars, it’ll take some standin’ around and eyeballin’ things to figure out what looks best. Once I’ve got a template made up, I’ll move on to the real thing out of steel and I’ll be sure to post the process here on the blog as I progress!

I also hit up my favorite local junkyard to rummage around their classic car section and see what sort of goodies I could find for Pile House. I’m not a fan of billet accessories on this build and I wanted a steering column housing and steering wheel that I could customize and keep it looking period correct. I settled on a late 40’s Packard column housing that has a cool oval housing and intergrated turn signal switch. I plan to shave the shifter hole (I’m running a floor shifter) and smooth it out before mounting it up. I think I can make a custom steering shaft that fits the S10 steering joint and box on the chassis and integrate it to fit the Packard housing. I’ve started by gutting the surround and now I can start modifying it to fit into the new firewall. I’m still on the hunt for a steering wheel that grabs me, I feel like I’ve looked at just about every steering wheel from the 30’s-60’s at this point!

Stay tuned, with the weather warming up I’m itching to get Pile House on the road this summer!

-Matt/EW