Hmmmm... So you say your grill is too far away from the firewall, you can't use the vehicle's stock fenders and the only way you could think to fix it was to make a hinge out of chain link fencepost and safety fence stakes. OK... I like a good challenge
Let's start out by making a list of the main components that reside between the firewall and the grill of a vehicle. We'll address the placement of each afterwards.
-Engine and attached accessories (manifolds, turbo, timing components, etc.)
-Transmission
-Radiator
-Various fluid coolers if applicable
Now let's look at your particular application. It appears that you have a gap close to 36" +/- between the grill and firewall. I see that you chose to keep the intake on the stock side of the motor which increases the minimum possible distance between the cab and engine. I still don't see why you couldn't have moved the engine 6" closer to the firewall. You were cutting up the cab anyway. Make a tunnel for the trans and shove that sucker a little further back. If the shifter placement was an issue it could have been modified or an adapter created.
Good, now that we've made some room it's time to reorganize things and we already have only a 30" gap!
Let's start by moving the oil cooler to a more suitable location such as on the font frame rail facing forward where it will receive ample flow. This will keep the lines inside of the frame rails too! Let's then fabricate some brackets to mount the radiator (which I don't see pictured but will assume it exists somewhere or will soon be made out of a spare refrigerant coil pulled from a non running refrigerator and a glass Coke bottle) directly behind the oil cooler.
Now about that 30" gap...
I've got it
! Ditch the 4" long pieces of safety fence stake holding your "hinge" and the 8" long pieces of safety fence stake holding the grill and mount the grill to the front of the frame with proper hinges. BOOM!!!!! Now you have a reasonable gap between the grill and firewall. That's 12" more removed
Now you can use your stock fenders and you have a slightly shinier turd! I did it!
Quote:
very front heavy and very fugly.
FWIW I absolutely agree.
In all seriousness this looks terrible; "Rat Rod" or not. A 36" gap between the cab and the grill looks ridiculous. If you mocked up the grill and realized that it wasn't going to work you should have stopped what you were doing, made a real plan, and fixed it properly. Making a hinge out of fence post is ridiculous and really a poor excuse for just being lazy in my opinion.
Throughout this project I have thought to myself that there really was never a plan to begin with. The approach was "Hey I did something... and this is what it looks like now... and because of what I just did, something now has to be done this way... which isn't the best way nor does it look good but hey... I'm doing stuff!" This is usually followed by "It's my project and I don't care what anyone else thinks."
That's a good attitude to have too because it looks like poo and I am still convinced that it is unsafe.
Sarcasm aside... you asked what we thought.