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We drive it around to some local cruise-ins, but the furthest trip it’s been on since we’ve had it back together has been about a hundred miles,” Auman says. “I’ve started driving it a little bit more lately and I really enjoy driving it, but every time you go out now you’re scared of rock chips or whatever.
“Plus, I’ve got the stock gas tank in here and it’s not the best on gas. It probably gets about five miles per gallon and that may be being generous. You can run pump gas in these motors fine, but I’ve been running racing fuel in this one pretty much since I got it and it seems to run a whole lot cleaner and a lot better on it, but needless to say you don’t just go down the road and find race gas everywhere.”
JUST THE FACTS GENERAL CHASSIS & BODY ENGINE INTERIOR |
It was about 10 years ago that Auman first got the itch to build a Pro Street-style ride. Though he also has a classic Chevelle in the garage he felt it was “just too nice” as a low-mileage original car to cut up and that’s when he started to look at his work truck in a different light. “I realized I could do this truck and get the look I was going for without having to butcher it,” he says.
That began a long odyssey of laying out a plan and gathering parts over the next four or five years. “That was my goal, I’d buy something new for the truck every week and I set aside one room in my house where I put all this stuff. The idea was that when I got ready to build it I’d already have everything and it wouldn’t take as long to put it together.
“My wife was waiting for me to get all my parts so I could get my truck done and she could have her room back. It worked out pretty well. You always change some of your plans about what you’re going to do. I initially was going to put a blower engine in, but I liked the clean lines of the truck, so I ended up putting everything under the hood.”
Once the parts were gathered, Auman says the project took less than a year to complete with Arthur Bryant in nearby Stokesdale, NC, handling most of the chassis work and fabrication, while Auman did much of the assembly, mechanical and wiring jobs himself and Rod Crafters in Welcome, NC, did the bodywork and laid down the PPG Torch Red paint.