ure, we can salvage an original door. Lately, however, our salvaging efforts haven’t been so cost-effective. As you may recall from last month’s installment, our ongoing ’55 Chevrolet second-series project’s passenger side will retain an original front fender and door. For the driver side we’ve procured a reproduction front fender and door, both from Brothers Trucks.

Last month’s comparison focused on fenders. This time around we’ll focus more on doors. The right side original had the usual issues that we’ve pretty much come to expect. From the gate we saw the need for outside corner patch panels, so we ordered up a lower doorskin from Brothers early on.

Certain sections of the old used door required abrasive blasting. As usual, blasting exposed other needed rust repairs, mostly along the inner doorskin’s lower edge. In the end our skin-grafting procedures were successful. Some door-edge modification rendered better-than-new gaps. That went quick and fairly easily. Necessary fillerwork, however, totaled up to more than we’d like to admit.

hen it comes to suspension design there’s a reason many high-end luxury and performance cars have independent rear suspension: it’s the simple fact that an IRS rides and handles far better than a solid axle. Like many classic truck enthusiasts, Paul Willis wanted to improve the ride and handling of his ’55 Ford F-100 with an IRS update, but the heart-stopping cost of the aftermarket designs put such a swap out of reach. That was before he learned of Don McNeil’s Flat Out Engineering installation kits that use C4 Corvette suspension components.

McNeil has a long and storied career as a hot rodder and entrepreneur. He’s been involved in drag racing, Bonneville competition, built a long list of modified cars and trucks, as well as developed a variety of successful businesses. Today McNeil’s focus is Flat Out Engineering that specializes in affordable, easy-to-install kits to adapt ’84-96 Corvette C4 suspension components to a variety of cars and trucks—that includes a kit for the rear of our ’55 F-100.

As McNeil explains it: “The C4 Corvette suspension was a design milestone in sports car suspensions. GM engineers worked for years on this to have a ‘World Class Sports Car’ that would outperform the finest high-priced European sports cars on the market. The forged aluminum spindle uprights, A-arms, half shafts, and control arms are not only light weight but incredibly strong. The lightweight aluminum components give the suspension system a sprung to unsprung weight ratio that is unsurpassed. This provides excellent ride quality with cornering and handling that outperforms any other production vehicle.” McNeil points out another big advantage to the C4 suspension is the availability of parts. “Ball joints, brake parts, tie-rod ends, and any other parts that might wear with frequent use are standard GM parts and easily available at parts stores anywhere.”

t’s clear that Art Morrison Enterprises (AME) understands the truck enthusiast’s mentality of “bigger is better” and threw out the rule book when engineering their new C10 chassis with its beefier suspension control arms, bushings, crossmembers, and framerail design. Check the box next to the “independent rear suspension” upgrade and you have the ultimate foundation for the sport truck of your dreams. One lucky truck body will be sitting on top of the chassis you see before you, especially now that the team at MetalWorks has layered on the best performance products in the industry. The end result will provide the makings for the ultimate C10 truck.

In part 1 (Oct. ’22 issue of CTP ). of the AME C10 chassis feature assembled by MetalWorks in Eugene, Oregon, we showed how the professionals prep the chassis for coating and assembly of the suspension components. So, what’s left before adding your truck’s cab and bed to this performance chassis? Here we’ll cover how the MetalWorks team completes their final assembly of the rolling chassis package that features a supercharged LT5 GM Connect & Cruise powerplant. Additional components include a Wegner Automotive engine accessory drive kit, Inland Empire driveshaft, Rick’s Tanks’ fuel tank, Wilwood brakes, E-Stopp electronic e-brake system, and Forgeline Dropkick wheels.

When your chassis looks this good, it’s hard to cover it up with sheetmetal, but we are also itching to see the truck build finished and how this chassis package performs!