West Coast Chevy 3500HD Dualie

There is no mountain high enough and no valley deep enough for this bad boy.

- If you happen to live on the West Coast, specifically Southern California, theres a good chance you have seen this truck. Its impossible to miss, and owners Doug and Kent Pielemeier are a mainstay in the local custom-truck scene. For the last few years, the father-and-son team have single-handedly turned out some of the sickest purpose-built on- and off-road trucks we've ever seen and have routinely been the subject of magazine articles. Dougs last project was a late 90s Chevy extended cab that began life as a beaten-down 2WD freeway cruiser and ended up a straight-axle beast that would smoke the living daylights out of the 39-inch Super Swampers it was wearing. That truck, as all the projects that came before it, was entirely crafted inside Kents aircraft painting shop in Chino, California. The story behind Up on 46s is similar but on a much grander scale. Kent picked up the white-colored 01 Chevy 3500HD dualie from a local insurance auction with the express intention of building an enormous show truck. The only stipulation that Doug had was that it needed a giant set of wheels and tires. The duo immediately set their sights on building one of the only 2WD trucks to ever clear a set of 46-inch tires. Doing so would not be easy, but nothing the Pielemeiers have ever set out to accomplish has been, so they continued on, undaunted by the task at hand. The backbone of the massive 29-inch suspension lift is a system of drop-down brackets that Doug and Kent designed and had laser-cut from cold-rolled steel plate. The brackets did not attach to the original control-arm mounting locations like the production lift kits we are all used to seeing these days. Kent cut away all the original suspension mounting locations and then welded the new lift into place. Next, a set of control arms were scratch-built and MIG-welded together, with holes punched out to save weight. The arms and spindles pivot on 1-inch uniballs. Because the guys had never built a truck of this magnitude before, nor had they seen an IFS lift of this size, choosing a coilover shock system and the appropriate spring rates was left up to the good folks at King Shock Technologies. King responded with a pair of 3-inch coilovers with 900-pound dual rate springs. The coilovers are mounted on custom upper hoops that are welded into the framerails of the truck.

Read more