Building an old truck from the ground up is no easy feat. It takes patience, skill, time, and most of all money. Lots of money. For that reason, a builder has to pick and choose where to spend. Sure, we would all love to build our trucks exactly how we picture them but oftentimes we have to crunch the numbers and build within a budget. When building along these lines it's always nice when someone throws you a bone, so to speak.
When building '55-59 Chevy trucks pretty much everything needs to be replaced or refurbished due to age. One can redo the entire rear suspension and rearend with all new parts for around $2,000; that's someone throwing you a major bone.
If you're looking to overhaul the rear suspension of your truck on a budget a great way to go is the Total Cost Involved bolt-in rear leaf kit. Their kit features all brand-new components including leaf springs, shocks, brackets, and hardware that bolt to the chassis. On top of that, this kit will also lower the rear of your truck 4 inches by flipping the axle. Best of all, it's slightly more than $500.
The second part of overhauling the rear of a truck is completely rebuilding the rearend from hub to hub. By using entry-level components, in terms of function not quality, one can rebuild any rearend ending with a stout street rompin' rearend. For our GM 10-bolt rearend, which is complementing the Total Cost Involved Engineering kit in this story, we got ahold of Yukon Gear and Axle and Master Power brakes for all the necessary components, which we'll dive into later. In the end, we rebuilt the entire rearend from hub to hub for around $1,400. All together, the entire back half of this '58 Chevy was made over for just under $2,000. Not exactly chump change but seeing all we got for that amount of dough makes it an absolute steal.
 Although this job can be handled...  Although this job can be handled with the bed on, it's strongly advised to remove the bed. The crew at Total Cost Involved engaged the grinder and began removing all of the factory rivets. |  After they sliced all the...  After they sliced all the rivets in half, an air chisel was employed to remove what was left. |  Once the entire rearend is...  Once the entire rearend is undone the weight is thrown off balance. Remember to place jackstands or equivalent under the front end to keep something disastrous from happening. |
 The next step is to bolt on...  The next step is to bolt on the new Total Cost Involved shock brackets. In order to locate the new mounting position, move 31/2-inches out from each of the original mounting holes. |  Before any holes were drilled,...  Before any holes were drilled, a flat piece of metal, placed at the bottom of each bracket, is used in order to make sure each bracket is level. |  All the hardware needed to...  All the hardware needed to install the kit is provided, next the holes are drilled and the brackets are mounted. |