Stripes by Scotty : Teenagers and Rattle Cans...

I've been debating for a few weeks now as to whether or not I should start some sort of "build thread" or blog about my truck project, the many smaller projects within the overall project and the things that I've been learning in school. Inspired by my buddy Layne's Edsel page on weebly, and after some input from friends, I've decided that considering that this truck will essentially be a rolling business card, or the face of "Stripes by Scotty" and the other automotive related skills that I'm developing, this place is as good as any. So a little bit of background on how I came to own this truck and what my current plans are and the weeks following will have more specific project updates/details on the various aspects of the build. Soooooo...

I bought this truck when I was 15 from my neighbor and close friend, Dustin. My dad had a blue 1965 F100 when he was in high school, so naturally I felt the need to do the same, and in some cases, one up what dad had. The truck had previously belonged to Dustin's brother but after he moved away for school, it fell into Dustin's hands and sat on the side of his house for several years as Dustin had his own sweet little 1965 F100 and other projects going on. We had initially started talking about me buying it on a neighborhood camp out when I was 14, not long after I started taking out the trash and doing small jobs at my Scoutmaster's local repair shop to start saving what little money I could to buy this truck. Some days I'd come home from school and instead of working on my homework, I'd just kind of stare out the window across the street at this old blue truck, dreaming of owning it and what it could be with some work.

The truck as it sat in 2007 when I bought it.

Fast forward to now. I've owned the truck for over 10 years now, I didn't have a dad that was into cars, so I did a lot of my own experimenting with the truck with the ideas, resources and knowledge that a teenager has and as time went on, apprenticed a master mechanic, got a job at a body shop prepping for the painter, got into pinstriping and suddenly all of the modifications I made in high school that were really "cool" to me at the time, ended up making a lot more work for me down the road to fix, and repair some (okay, kind of a lot of) rust, don't use expanding foam in vehicles for sound deadening... I had a lot of fun with the truck, but over time you start to realize that the quality of your work wasn't as great as you thought it was, and you don't want people to see your teenage experiments and think that's your current level of quality when you're preparing for a career in this field... So X number of rattle can paint jobs in my parents driveway, an engine build and a couple of college degrees later, I'm finally building this truck to a level of quality I hope will last a long time and provide years of enjoyable cruising and burnouts, without all of the over-spray and poorly prepped parts a 17 year old scrambled to make look nice before a hot date on the weekend... you know you've done the same!

I've recently graduated from UVU's 2 year Collision Repair Technology program and made a lot of great friends and learned a lot of things in regards to automotive and collision repair, started building my own arsenal of tools (student discounts are rad if you're considering a tech school program) and skills and been working on the truck at the school while attending. This fall I began the Street Rod and custom metal fabrication program that the school offers and that's when the past 2 years have come together and prepared me for all of the fun metal shaping and fabricating has begun and will be applied to the project. I have learned numerous forms of welding while in school, so I am not a seasoned veteran like many that work full time at shops but I've put the time in to practice and learn how the tools work before just diving into the truck, so for learning the theory, how some of the tools work and then bringing the projects all to life at the same time, I feel like its been a great project, but taken longer than it would for most. That said, I look forward to future projects where I've already had the experience and skills developed to where it can be a smoother process without all of the various learning curves integrated in to the project's progress.

Hang tight and in a couple days I'll fill you in on what all this "Marauder" business is about and why there's a bunch of Mercury stuff involved in this truck. -Scotty