The Shop Truck

One of the dreams I've always had ever since I was in high school was to have a hot rod shop. I wanted to walk out my back door to my shop and build amazing cars and sell them. Fast forward 12 years and I now own a successful powder coating shop that is right in my backyard. Every now and then I build a cool car or motorcycle too. So since I now had a shop that was doing it, I needed a cool ride to match the shops character and still be able to haul stuff around that I needed for the shop including parts and equipment.

A few years back i had bartered a deal for some cash and some coating with a buddy, in exchange i got a nice clean 1998 Chevy S10. This wasn't my first mini truck. My first car every was a 1992 GMC Sierra that was lowered with a few performance mods. Then a few years after high school I had bought a 1995 S10 and later sold that to a guy for his kids first car. When i picked up this one it was very clean with next to no rust. It was already lowered witha 5-6 inch drop on it and had air ride shocks in the rear to help level it out. I painted the truck red and had some old steel wheels that had the hoops that go around the outside so i painted those white to give the truck the look of white walls. After driving it for awhile i really liked that look so i decided i needed them next time i changed tires on the truck.

Fast forward a few years to 2019 and the time had finally come to "redo" the shop truck. First up was paint. I wanted to go old school, flat black paint. My buddy has dabbled in painting for years and recently started getting pretty serious with it so i enlisted his help. We started by patching up the few small rust holes in the rockers. I also secured a third door for the extended cab that was rust free. This gave us a completely rust free body. After that it was some minor dent fixing throughout and then a nice thick coat of primer. We followed that by a nice coat of sealer primer. After that we layed down several layers of base coat which was black. We finshed it off with a nice flat cleat and it came out great. I finished off the body of the truck with a chrome grille and chrome front bumper. I also added a little touch with mirrors that had chrome backs on them. I really wanted to go for nice vintage 1950's shop truck look.

The last thing I needed for the exterior was new wheels and tires. As i said earlier i wanted white walls. So coker 2 inch white walls was a must. After that i wanted solid steel wheels with some half moon hubcaps. I called up summit racing for those and since i own the coating company i toped the wheels off in a beautiful flat red with a gold flake. As you can see from the pic the wheels and tires came out amazing. That was the some total of what we have done for the truck so far but as of now its still one of the coolest little trucks in town to bop around and grab parts and supplies. But its not done yet.........

Travis Ridenour

TLR Coatings

TLRCoatings.com

Kalamazoo, MI