I will admit that I tend to over think things when I am building a custom car and sometimes I mock something up and I don’t like it or decide I need to tweak the original idea. A while back I decided on a set of ’62 Oldsmobile 88 taillights for the back of the truck. I liked the lens shape and chrome trim on them, but the bezel had peaked ends that made it tough to sink them into a relatively flat panel. For the sake of getting “something” in the rollpan I temporarily made brackets to slide them into the panel. At first I was “ok” with how they looked, but the further I got with building the tailgate on the backend I knew in the back of my head I needed to revisit how they were sitting.
Tag: kustom
Grand National Roadster Show 2015- The year of Bare Metal?
Our main focus here at Eastwood is to make products that the DIY guy or gal can afford and can produce pro quality work with. In order for us to be sure our products are good enough for you at home, we like to get our products into the hands of high end shops so they can put them to the test. This means our Eastwood “stuff” get used on some pretty high-end vehicles built by these shops. This year the Grand National Roadster Show was chocked-full of EXTREMELY high end vehicles, many of which had Eastwood products used on them! We decided to post up about our three favorite cars by some shops that we’re honored to say use Eastwood products in their builds!
How to Build Motorcycle Gas Tank Sides with Ron Covell
This year he showed how to make a motorcycle gas tank side with a voluptuous compound curved shape using some of the most basic metal shaping tools. In this demonstration he shows how to make the left side of the tank.
Solid Rivet FAQ
Solid rivets, sometimes called aircraft rivets, are a solid piece of metal with a large head on one side and a straight shaft. They are installed by sliding them in a hole slightly bigger than the shaft, then deforming the protruding shaft to 1 ½ times its size, so it is tight and cannot pull out. They differ from pop rivets in that they are solid, therefor stronger, and use a buck bar and pneumatic gun to install them instead.
How To Spray your first Wild Kustom Paintjob- Custom Lined, Candy and Flaked Skateboard Deck
Flake, Pearl, Candy, Lace, and all things flashy are what full blown Kustom Paintjobs are all about. If you want to flex your painting skills and standout with your paint job you’ll need to learn the process of custom taping, spaying candy, flake, and pearl. We decided to let Eastwood Tech Mike L. paint a skateboard to show you the basic steps to achieving a wild paint job like the pros do.
2014 Eastwood SEMA Hands-On Award Winners
Each year we blow up our social media feeds with our favorite vehicles from SEMA. This year we decided we’d take it a step further and give the owners and builders of some of our favorite vehicles notoriety for their hard work. After some brainstorming the Eastwood “Hands-On” Awards were born. The idea behind these awards are to recognize some of the standout vehicles from the show. We judged on a number of factors from quality of work, execution of concept, and just outright ridiculousness of the finished product. Really the car needed to have something “special” to catch our eyes and earn the award. We’ll admit we leaned heavily on the smaller shops and DIY builders that didn’t have a million dollar dream team of employees and tools to finish the car, there’s plenty of awards out there for those guys!
The 2014 The Race of Gentlemen Report
 The Race of Gentlemen or “TROG” has by far become my favorite automotive event of the year and this year was no exception. TROG is a perfect example of a small low-key event that’s kept true to their roots. Even with all of the exposure and hype surrounding this […]
Custom Scratch Built Bed DIY for Project Pile House
Project Pile House has been an ever-evolving project and like many projects, things start small and spiral out of control and next thing you know you’re detailing the inside of your glove box hinges! Luckily I’m not quite that OCD about my vehicles (yet), but Pile House is now more than just a thrown-together junkyard parts runner like I originally planned. It’s turned into a full blown custom and not much on the truck is original or untouched. After getting the cab, dash, hood, etc. all smoothed out and “roughed in”, the original patched together bed and fenders was bothering the crap out of me every time I looked at it. The fenders looked like boat trailer fenders and were more roughed up than a boxer after a title fight, while the bed itself wasn’t much better. I decided to start dreaming up a subtle custom bed.
Plumbing Custom Brake Lines on Project Pile House
First of all, if you’re rebuilding an old car, whether it’s a full blown 100 point restoration, or an out-of-this-world kustom, you shouldn’t forget about completely redoing the brakes on your ride. Brakes are one of the most overlooked part of a build that can save your car and your life. Project Pile House is a full blown custom with little to be left original on the truck. It sits on a first generation Chevy S10 chassis, so the brake components on each corner are easy to get replacements for, but that’s about where it stops being easy. I recently decided to plumb the brake system on Pile House, and show you what goes into a project like this.