Looks great...I want one!!! It would go well with my Posh Spice seats...
No, not hard at all. I think TRUKTOR would agree that large quantities of beer and a dull pocket Gerber knife is the ONLY way to handle a job like this. Who needs power tools when you can do it by hand and take 20 times longer...and still not have it work!
Seriously though, from what I saw and IF we had the right tools it would have been relatively easy. However, the expense of the parts will put me out of the running for this project. Maybe I can find a nice billet look GRILL in the JC Whitney catalog! I'm sure Spice will approve
that looks evry cool....im planning the install of air cond. on my truck. id love to place the condenser in front of the radiator....its a tight squeeze...a grill like that would be a great solution.
Save the space on the front of the nose for an intercooler. Locate the A/C condensor either behind the driver side step (like the greentop A/C system wants to do) or in the space between the fuel tank and the rear right fender on the right side of the truck.
The install is very easy, but there are a couple of things to do. On my truck,
which does not have the cab lift, I had to trim the bottom margin, and then
later, without beer and WITH powertools, trim the two sides to line up with the sheetmetal of the cab.Because of the hydraulic hard lines, I (well, Chris, Gerber and I ) had to cut some mouse holes for them to clear. They look good now, but I'm going to open them up a little more, left to right, to have a little more wiggle room.
On a lifted truck, like Toby's U2450L no trimming is necessary.The full depth of the grill fits right in.
The UHN series have a different motor, and a different radiator, which sits a little more towards the center of the truck. This frees up space for the grill latch on the driver's side. On my truck, things are a little tight there, so I might have to remove the radiator in order to get the latch in...or maybe go to something else altogether.
The whole grill set-up with the new hood and the hardware ran about $3K,
but that was over a year ago...with the Dollar's relentless slide downward,
it would be closer to $4K now....
It does update the truck and make it look like the current ones, but the main gain, besides the vanity of it, is that it provides more room for an intercooler. The UHN's put the intercooler on the centerline, not in front of the radiator, and I might go that route, depending on the IC, blah blah blah.
The trophy truck is Alan Pflueger's "NEW, STATE-of-the ART" Trevor Harris
designed deal. It is different than the current batch, in that it has an independent Rear end with (I think) plunging axles. It is also the only
TT to run the OHLENS shocks.WELL, after a year of development and racing
it never won, and usually didn't finish. He was pushing to raise the bar and
take trophy trucks to the next level, and, in theory, 4 wheel independent suspension is preferable to a solid rear axle/4-link system.
ANYWAY, the story goes that after tons of work and tons of money ( $1.5 million, it is said...), it is now being used as a display truck for a wheel company, and is for sale at the bargain price of $350K....
Nice try...NEXT????
Last edited by TRUKTOR : 04-17-2008 at 12:00 PM.
Reason: spelling
OH, the hardware for the new nose ran something like $650, and would easily have fit into a lunch bag. You want to tear your hair, since it is too late to question your sanity--the evidence
is already sitting in front of you..in a nice little lunch-bag sized pile. But, it is only a truck, and hair tearing does not fit with the program, so, you dig through the box looking for
any missing pieces that might make the pile bigger, but, nope, you got them all the first time....oh well.
Here are some shots of the new latching system for the grill. The new hood is installed
in the same way and to the same hinges, with the 1/4 turn latches.
Now to head down to Long Beach to watch the ALMS cars practice...better get going.
Last edited by TRUKTOR : 04-18-2008 at 11:26 PM.
Reason: CRY was never right...
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