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Living the Life and Printing the Passion: The Road to SEMA 2024

By Chris Hamilton

October 16, 2024

Living the Life and Printing the Passion

Crossing the Finish Line!

As I write this column, we are around six weeks away from our four-day roadtrip to SEMA 2024 in Las Vegas. This year, we are towing our project vehicle from Florida to the Las Vegas Convention Center to display it at our booth inside Hot Rod Alley.

Believe it or not, we’re ahead of schedule with this truck already dyno-tuned and proven reliable. We have a few little touchups to the paint and body to do before our interior guy comes back to finish off some last-minute details. Other than that, we’re pretty much ready to load up and make the long haul.

The feeling of having a truck fully completed before the deadline is something I’m personally not used to, but moving forward, I’ll make it a priority. The stress we enthusiasts put on ourselves trying to get ready for a big event will likely take years off our lives, so being ahead of schedule this time gives me a sense of pride for myself and my team. As with most projects, it’ll never be truly complete though—am I right?

While putting the pieces together on Project Rocky over the last two years, I’ve definitely seen a few things I would like to change after SEMA, including a rear coilover conversion to replace the leaf springs. The priority right now, however, is having a running, driving, reliable restoration to display in our booth and promote all the amazing manufacturers involved. If you’ve kept up with the project, we’d love to hear your thoughts on it via email or private message on any of our social platforms. If this project is new to you, scan the QR code below and check out the articles and videos we’ve built over the past two years during this frame restoration.

We stacked a lot into this issue, including another fun trip across the southern border to a show in Mexico that consistently impresses us each and every year with its growth and quality of trucks. We also go behind the scenes at Velocity Modern Classics to see how this incredible company pumps out picture-perfect classic trucks in a matter of a few months. All that and some beautiful truck builds, like the Toyota Tundra on the cover laid smack on the ground—the first one ever, by the way. We have a solid mix of modern, classic, and mini-trucks in this issue, so hopefully, we have something for everyone, including you.

Have some thoughts, wanna throw some suggestions our way? Or just want to let us know what you’re working on? Drop us a line via email at chamilton@engaged.media and let us know what you have in the works. See you in the next issue!

Keep it custom, Chris Hamilton