DRAGGIN: Garage Built, Daily Driven. (Indy's build thread)

I'll start with some background on the truck. I bought it new in late 2004. It's a 2005 model ZQ8, no options except the cruise control convenience package. Simple, and less useless shit to break.

Before I even picked the truck up, I had a stack of parts waiting on it. I got the truck on a thursday, and shortly, this is what it looked like:



That's a 2/3 drop, goodmark steel hood, and a streetscene urethane roll pan.

Around the same time came baked and blacked out headlights, a pin stripe, tinted windows, blacked out bow tie and lower grille, and a Z85 chin spoiler:

Not at all satisfied with the stance, it was time to bring her down some more. I tried several combinations of static parts, from the 2/3, all the way to a 5/6. Looking back, that was a huge waste of money, since I bought the truck knowing it would be bagged, and no combination of off the shelf static drop parts came close to satisfying my lust for lowness.

With the break-in period just barely over, and the warranty in full swing, I cut into it for the first time. I wish I had more pictures to share of this, but they have been lost along the way. I rode around with just the rear bagged for about 6 months before the front came down. The setup consisted of a 2 link with no panhard, a 5" mini-notch, SMC 1/4" valves, a single Viair 380, and RE6's and 7's. Budget all the way, I think I had around $600 in this setup. I rode with no shocks up front and stockers out back for a week, then added QA-1's up front and some belltech drop shocks out back.





Around the same time, the body mods also began. It started with a shaved tailgate and snowballed from there:





That's laying on the stocks trans crossmember and leaf spring mounts, with all of the fender wells intact.

You'll notice that at some point, I also added the SS front bumper and grille inserts, SS mirrors, and painted the hood gloss black with white stripes. I don't remember the exact timeline that I added this stuff.

Thank god it doesn't look like this anymore... :lol:

Glad to see a build thread man, I've always loved your truck... :thumbup:

I found some more pics of the truck on an old hard drive. These first few are of just the ass end bagged.

Almost all of these are cell phone pics, so forgive the poor quality.

Then the front came down. One of the questions I hear the most is "how low can a 355 go without cutting the fenders out?" Well, here ya go. This is laying on the trans crossmember and leaf spring mounts, with all of the sheetmetal intact. The rear fenders have been pulled slightly, but are otherwise stock. Up front, the plastic liners are gone, but the metal is stock, it hasn't even been massaged with the BFH yet. This is absolutely as low as you can go without major cutting. The tires contact the wells at the same height as the leaf spring mount and trans crossmember contact the ground.

This is my last post today, I'll get started on the body drop tomorrow.

Here's a few more body mods in various stages of completion.