Peterbilt 379 Lowboy project

F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
Well I was going to post this little project on HEF, but figured it would be good to fill some spaces.This is a fix up project here. I almost financed a 2007 379 but came to my senses first. The 379 is sure holding it's value and especially if it has the big Cat motor. I found a good used one finally. I was dead set on the 379 EXHD. It had to be black and it had to have a Cat 550 HP and it had to be under $20k. Ha, if you enter those criteria on Truckpaper you get maybe 1 result. Even if you don't enter a price limit. I have many reasons to justify this in my head, but I'm still not certain how it's going to work out with such a big rig. I am still bouncing off the walls trying to make a decision on the lowboy trailer. My ultimate goal is to carry two machines at once and have room for three guys and tons of tools.

Long Long story, but I'll post some pics up first.


Well, I've tried all I know to do and can't get photobucket pics to load like they do at HEF. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or this site is different. Anybody know how to post pics?
 
F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
Yes, I'm getting a message error. I also have pictures on Flickr. I'm surprised you are not familiar with Photobucket .I thought Photobucket was the biggest picture hosting site on the web.
 
M

Mitch504

Well-known member
The biggest problem I see is unless they are little machines you are going to be overweight. At least in most states you can't get a permit to haul 2 machines.
 
Steve Frazier

Steve Frazier

Founder
Staff member
I don't have my photos hosted anywhere except here, HEF and Facebook, they're all stored on my hard drive. We don't permit links to images, too many times those images get removed from the host site at some point and then the thread here doesn't make sense. You must load them to our server to post them in a thread.
 
F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
Thanks, Steve. I always thought you had to upload to Photobucket and then host. I'm finding that all my pics on my PC are too big so I'm having to resize.

Mitch, I will be just under 80k according to my calculations. Cat 312CL is about 30K. Takeuchi 150 is 11k. The 379 is about 18k and the trailer should be about 19k. As far as hauling two machines at once, I wasn't aware of needing a permit. The paving companies haul three machines at once. Flatbeds carry several machines at once. Might have to check on that.

The truck is a 98 379 EXHD. 252" WB. Cat 3406E w/a 10 spd. It has 1.5 million miles. It's 15 years old. I paid $15,500. The owner was cutting back to just himself and his wife's truck. He had ran five trucks at one point. The driver of this truck was demanding benefits and the owner said he couldn't provide benefits. So he listed it on Craigslist and was just done with it. It hadn't been cleaned or polished in a very long time. The driver was a mess obviously and spray painted the frame, thermos holder, steering wheel, hoses, etc. The driver also smoked in it heavily against the owners will.

It is just a perfect find for me. It's straight and all there and I love a fixer upper. These are pics on the dirt road just 1/2 mile from the sellers house. I had to get out and pinch myself. I drove it two hours straight to the paint shop and took a picture before dropping it off.
 

Attachments

F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
I popped in at the shop to check on progress. They were held up waiting on the aluminum fenders and they had just got them painted when I got there. They went ahead and painted the truck while waiting for the fenders to arrive. They also painted the frame. This shop repairs and paints UPS trucks, buses, and big rigs. They really did a good job laying down the paint. I had talked with the owner prior to dropping it off several times about putting a rear window in, possibly removing the cab extenders and even a flat top and shortening the frame. He was too busy to deal with that at the time I guess and it was like we never talked about it once he got the truck. It took a month to get back.
 

Attachments

willie59

willie59

Administrator
Staff member
Looking good fastdirt.

Have you ever uploaded pics at HEF, works the same way here, plus there is a resizer here, no need to resize pics before upload to forum.
 
F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
Where is this resizer? Every single time I load a pic it is rejected and says file is too large. I uploaded a resizer online yesterday and it dang near corrupted my PC so I had to restore it to an earlier date. So back to my ancient method for now I guess.

Pics below. I've got the whole truck polished but I will have to hit it again after I finish everything. On the Inside of the truck I have replaced all the A/C Vents, removed the tall shifter and installed a new knob, New steering wheel, stainless window sills, new armrest on the driver door, ordered 4 matching seat armrests, dressing out the switches with chrome toggles. Right now I am mounting a Turbo boost gauge and mounting and routing a Pittsburgh Power box controller. On the outside I have replaced the cab lights with clear LED's, LED headlights, mirror blinkers and markers along with lower sleeper turn/marker lights. I put clear marker LED'd on the headlight housings, installed air cleaner lights. Got the grill surround polished and installed a stainless horizontal grill and S.S. grill bezel. I replaced all the Peterbilt logo's with new OEM logos. Replaced the stainless steel fender guards. Re aligned the hood with new bushings. The 18" bumper was in great shape so I'm holding off there and will mount some lights at the bottom....

I am still working on this and should be done this week....

Markbday246_zps8852ca69.jpgMarkbday278_zps4023721c.jpgmorepetepics060_zps4eb9a3f3.jpgmorepetepics068_zps8665fe32.jpg
 
F

Fastdirt

Well-known member
We had to get some aluminum stock to hold all the mud flaps nice and even. We had to make three sets of two. It involved cutting to size, drilling holes, and then polishing. I went with Peterbilt flaps that had the red logo, but I'm thinking about getting full rear fenders. I'm worried the machine and sleeper will be getting a lot of tire sling.
TRUCK FIX UP 057 (640x480).jpgTRUCK FIX UP 059 (640x480) (640x480).jpgTRUCK FIX UP 060 (640x480) (2).jpgTRUCK FIX UP 061 (640x480) (640x480).jpg
 
Steve Frazier

Steve Frazier

Founder
Staff member
You sure do nice work!!

I tried loading the pics you sent me and got the same message. I'll check with the tech on whether the resizer can be adjusted. I use www.irfanview.com to edit my pictures, when you click "Save as" it allows you to set the file size independent of pixel size. Hopefully we can get this worked out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top