'67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Combining two trucks with this one, a 67 short/fleet originally will be getting the body panels off my 68 short/step. (68 project to come later!) PIcked the 67 up super cheap a few years ago, no front clip/motor/trans/interior/ beat up bed...the works. Cab was in rough shape down low, couple other spots on the Roof and firewall showin some cancer as well. Gettin that all Fixed up now (not my favortie part by any means) and it's taking a while but got the project back in full swing now. so hopefully I can make some progress! PIctures below are of the truck as it sits now. Going to get some older ones up as soon as i figure out what i did with them....

As it sits:

Frame stripped, cleaned, adn painted (Dust Covered as hell in the pics)
Rust Repair on Cab Started

Early Classic 4/6 drop w/ Relocated shock mounts, Super track bar, Extreme Drop X member, KYB shocks, Disc brakes up front, Fr/Rear Sway bars, Urethane all the way around,All new Steering Parts, New brake lines. Completely Re-built 12 bolt T w/ 4.11 & Powertrax, Stock axles (almost worried i didn't spend the extra cash there...) Completely new Rear Drums, No E-brake.

Planned:

Repair,fill, and smooth cab/firewall (exc door handles)

New fenders, Hood, Core support, wheel wells, bumpers, steps

Using All bed panels and doors from 68 (stripping down all the way), Grille from '67 (still in amazing shape surprisingly)

406, full roller, 12.5:1, AFR heads, Eagle Rotating, Comp valvetrain.(ALL NEW)

TCI TH-400 Tranny (from 68)

Interior--black reworked stock bench, carpet, vinyl doors, dash pad, visors, from 68, Brothers Gauge cluster w/ Autometer Phantoms, Heater removed. All custom sound, lighting, and wiring.

Copperhead style fuel tank w/bed fill, New wood floor

mush more i'm forgetting to list i'm sure...

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Here you can see some of the Repair work, and just for the record that spot on the Roof looks like hell... i know, It's a pain in the butt! but we'll get it looking good!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Daaaaaaang! Looks like you gotta lot of work ahead of you!!! Call me if you need beer!:metal:

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

well,

your girlfriend or wife will miss you.

doesnt look like a bad start

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

O i need beer! NOW! and no girl to sit around and miss me at the moment... perhaps i'll round one up while i'm in the middle of this and she'll know what she's in for from the get go!

Gotta take a couple week break from it for work right now, but i got the bedsides stripped down and the undercoat removed from them (UGH!) puttin up more pics soon!

and Portmod... where's your build thread huh buddy?

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I work on my truck like I snowboard, about once a year. I didn't figure putting up pics once a year would be very productive or interesting. Maybe I'll just post everything at once, when it's done, around 30 years from now... :dig:

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Now I'm subscribed, I expect more progress notifications than I can stand...

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I'll do my best, I'm gonna get some current pics tonight and hopefully post an extensive update soon, since I've made a LITTLE progress since I started this thread, and the project has takin a couple turns away from the original plan, and I feel I'm 2 years older & wiser now ( Relative term.)

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I wanna see MORE!!!
:clap:
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Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

OK, getting back on track and really excited about it. A little progress has been made since a whopping two years ago when I started this thread, but by no means has two years of progress been made :( .

I went out tonight, and finished my note list I've been working on the last couple days, which includes my Plan of Action, what parts I'm needing immediately, and some questions I need to answer before X point in the build. So I have a good solid plan going on now, definitely on a much better course than before. Now if I can just push through the hassle of this body work, it should be fairly smooth sailin!

In the two years since I started this thing, my outlook on mechanics, design, and craftsmanship, has changed dramatically, Influenced, in no small part, by Portmod7, and my time spent workin on race cars over the last two years. My skills have definitely made progress in the right direction as well, by no means am I master at this stuff yet, but I'm better than I was for sure. I look at a few of the things I did a couple years ago and just kind of shake my head, lol, some of that stuff may get changed for the better over the course of the rest of this build.

I'll make a couple posts here with a few pics in each and give some info about what's been done, and where it's headed. Like I say, the basic plan of this build had changed a bit (as they all do I think), and since it'll probably keep changing as I go, I'm not going to worry about laying out a complete plan for you guys now. I'll keep you updated with tidbits as we go post by post, and by all means, if any of you guys have any questions, ask away! We all may learn/ discover something in the process!

To start out, here are a few pics of how I got from two years ago to how it sits today. I got a set of Heater delete panels from Nate @ Porterbuilt, they are made great and fit very well (I wouldn't expect any less), And I fabbed the other small patch panels for the firewall and cowl myself. I'm not the best at sheet metal welding, and working with body filler is an art form that I’m SLOWLY understanding. All my patch spots have a little filler along the weld seems, but I've spent hours on pretty much every spot making sure everything is coming out smooth, with as little filler being used as possible, and I’m fairly satisfied with how it's turning out.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Here's filling the factory fuse panel hole & repairing the rust spot on the cowl, that double wall cowl is a little tricky to work with at that spot, but it came out OK.

And i know it's not glassy smooth, but I'm not really going for that look, I more want it to look like it was made that way orginally, and if you look at the countours & spot welds & wrinkles all over the firewall, that thing is FAR from anywhere near flat. Just keeping the engine compartment as clean as possible is the ultimate goal.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Couple more of the heater & fuse block area from the inside. I plan on making some inner panels on the firewall to mount all my electronics on, raised a little bit so I can hide all the wiring behind them.

I e-mailed Nate at Porterbuilt the other day about seeing If I could get another heater delete panel, except with an opposite bead roll so I could cover the inside area of the heater core the exact same way I did the outside.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

What's been cut out, and what's left to put back on ( think postiive..think positive....think positive....)

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

That's scary!

Good progress, just gotta keep plugging away. One small piece of the puzzle every time you get a chance. It'll come together! Gotta keep our Fo*d buddies from ganging up on us...

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Great job on all the metal work !

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Thanks! It's been a tricky learning process, gettin better with the welder on sheetmetal as I go. It's not professional by any means, but I am enjoying learning, and i'm as satisfied as I really can be with how it's been going!

Wait... we have more the ONE??? Oh jeez....

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Henley, Rouse, Josh, Stephen.... It's an epidemic...

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Ah jeez, I forgot about the RZR crew, crap...we better get on the ball, maybe round up some re-enforcements even.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Oh boy does all that look familiar. :lol:

I see you smoothed out your firewall, have you decided what system you're going with, any at all or perhaps just heat only? My cab is non-ac, would love to smooth the firewall and put in some under dash heat... not sure aftermarket AC would be in the budget for me, but curious what your plans are?

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

:) She's gonna be a "Fair Weather" truck, if you will. No Heat/No AC. (No windshield wipers either). I live in the desert really, and it's not too horrible to predict when it'll be decent weather, and it's not gonna be my daily driver (I will drive it as much as possible tho). I'm not the most informed source on alternate HVAC systems at all either, I've seen the vintage air system, and it sure is nice, but i'm sure it carries a hefty price tage too.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

this is pretty much my theory too. im not going to plan on driving my truck unless the weather is nice, so why have heat/ac/wipers/etc? although the only one of those three i DONT have is A/C... but still, I agree with that mentality!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Thats a good start.
I will be following along and I'm looking forward to all the progress.
I'm pretty sure the Vintage Air systems run in the $1300 range, which isn't too bad for what you are getting IMO.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I hear ya.. I've just rolled my windows down for the last 3 years when things warmed up. I think once I do the sound deadner and insulation.. Not sure I will even need AC.. but dang if it ain't nice on 100+ days... so who knows. :lol:

same here.. Heat, wipers, and a window crank.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

On that note, I'm open to suggestions on what to do with the wiper cowl where the windshield wipers would come out if they were going to be there. I could just leave the humps in the cowl and plug em with a slug, i could just leave em open and not worry with it, or I could do some worth of smoothing work there, I don't realy know which direction to head with it. So yeah, if you guys have any suggestions or stumble upon any threads with a similar situation, let me know.

Here's a couple more pics of how the truck was sitting last night when I left it:

The pic of the wiper cowl is on another cab I have sitting around (obviously for along time, as the dust tells you) just using it for referance.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Good progress man, I'll be following for sure :)
Hey just wondering. Won't the front lower part of the cab bend since you don't have the lower part of the pillar for support? I would tack something on their so it won't warp, but then again idk lol
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Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I both think and hope it's ok, that foresight wasn't there when the cutting wheel came out, and it's sat like that for years now.... so what's done is done :(. I think since most of the inside kick panel and dash is still there, it'll be alright. At least that's just the thought I'm going with until I come to the point where I found out I screwed up. I appreciate the heads up tho!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

No problem man, just lookin out. Just make sure the doors square up you'll have fun with the rest I'm sure hehe
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Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Some progress was made over the last week. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I felt it was worth an update. I got the kick panels, door pillar, rear floorplan & inner rocker, and rocker panel all welded on the passenger side. I had mentioned to 69swb in his build thread about the issues I had with the jack dimple area, which, as you can see in these pics, didn't line up perfect, partly because of the differences in stampings of the patch panel, and partly because I had to cut a piece out of the the adjoining panel for the rear floor, a very very slim piece, which made it difficult to fit in. None the less, I used some careful grinding & a gentle body hammer to get it close enough to be acceptable I think, i'm not 100% done with it yet, but I left it as is for the moment.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I also hung the door to make sure my cab hadn't warped or shifted since i let it sit for so long with the pillar cut out (as Chev71 pointed out). All the gaps came out good, and the dorr shuts nice and smooth, so I think it's OK! project is still a go lol. I found out that my door wasn't entirely straight, about the front 4" of the lower front corner is slightly messed up, but it's not a super hard fix.

I Also made some progress with that nasty spot on the roof. Again, some work left to do there, but it's coming along much better than it was when I started on it a couple years back.

The next couple weeks is a very busy time of year for me, so I probably won't make a whole lot of progress, but I'll hit it hard again after the new year, lot's of boxes headed my way via the brown truck in the next couple weeks :), so i'll have plenty to look forward to!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

My cab corners from GMCPauls are coming in today.. So hopefully by this weekend I'll be hanging a door and checking the gaps. I was wondering what you're going to do with that seam that runs along the rear part of the outside roof. Do you plan on just smoothing that all out? Do people do that or is that a no no?

Can't wait to see some more progress pics.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Yeah, just gonna smooth it out all the way across, i was planning on doing that before i realized i was going to have to cut through it. I think it'll add a nice, subtle, steamline look to the back of the cab. I hope it's a not a no no, lol, i can't see why it would really cause any issues.

I'll definately check your pics out and see how those corners fit, I ended up using the ones I had gotten quite a while ago from LMC ( Ithink?), which as I Mentioned, were from a completely different Manuf. But knowing that GMC Pauls has good stuff will be nice for the memory bank.

I've made a little progress since the last update, but nothing picture worthy. I own a ski & snowboard shop, and as you can imagine, Christmas & the couple weeks around it allow me very little free time. But it's starting to settle back down now so hopefully I'll be back at it in full force pretty quick!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

I think I'm gonna do the same.. It will sure look better in my opinion. I just didn't know if there were any kind of flexing issues between the top and back of cab that would cause any filler used there to crack... probably would be best to fill/level it with seam sealer and sand that down since you have to seam seal it anyway. then use a small amount of body filler to smooth it out. I guess I'll ad that to my ever growing list of things to research.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

That was my plan too, I hadn't quite got to the research section for that task yet. Let me know if you find anything vital.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Got a few nights of work in over the last two weeks, made some forward progress, and a suprise rust discovery that resulted in backward progress :bs: .

I got the passenger side cab corner welded up, after making a bonehead cut on a cab corner i've had forever (measure once, cut twi..... oh wait),I decided to order a new one from LMC and start over. Well, that turned out to be just as bad of an idea. The cab corner's LMC sells now are not correct at all, 69swb also ran into the same problem with the same corners, so it wasn't just the one I got. They seem like they're alright, but the lines and distances between the corner contour are off just enough to make them junk really. I've lost faith in LMC's sheetmetal now, as I was skeptical before even. From what I've found, it seems Tabco may be the way to go from now on. End Result, I ended up using the orginal cab corner I had from a ways back, and just fabbing up a piece to compensate for my mistake. I'll get a picture of how it turned out in the future, I took some, but they turned out bad and you can't really see anything.

I made some filler/delete panels for all the holes in the dash I plan to smooth out. Heater Controls, Dash speaker, Defroster vents, and the wing vents in the Kick Panels. I had to do that stuff to take a break from Rust repair, and I find that form of sheetmetal work SO much more bearable, and kinda of a relief from the tedious norm of rust repair.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

aaaaaannndd... On to the backward step. I discovered some rust I had missed where the dash meets the winshield seal area. I looked across the forum and found it to be a rather common problem, that I feel there is no awesome fix for.

The major problem area is the passenger side, the driver side is showing signs too, but nothing near as bad as the passenger side. I chipped the rust out of the area on the pass side with a screwdriver & chisle and was trying to find a way to fix the area in a decent way without removing the whole dash. Well... i picked up some carbide bits for my die grinder so I could work in the tight area, but as i went to work on it, I found further rusting down the side of the dash, between the area where the dash bolts to the cab. I pondered half-assing a fix & ignoring the parts I couldn't get to, but my conscience got the best of me (Good thing) and I couldn't let that happen. So out the dash came, and exposed became some pretty bad rust. So all in all, I'm glad I pulled the dash, even tho I felt it was a daunting task.

It turned out it wasn't THAT bad, 6 bolts and 15-20 spot welds on the winshield seam, I just hope everything goes back in as easy as it came out.

Anyway, this is pretty much were it sits now, I started a littled bit of cleanup tonight, but nothing quite picture worthy just yet.

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Nice! You and a lot of the guys on here make me feel like a big weenie, I copped out on a lot of rust work on mine. Keep it up, ought to be pretty nice and solid when you get done.
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Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

great progress on the rust repair !

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Thanks!

Hahaha, when you don't plan on painting your truck, and it's got a nice old aged look & feel to it that is basically impossible to replicate, it's dern near impossible to fix alot of the rusted areas buddy! At least you got the floor taken care of, that's a big one!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

You're making some great progress. I wish I had never read the part of about the dash! I'm gonna have to check mine out now. ugh.

I really like how your smoothing the dash and what you did on the firewall... I want to do the same but I also want heat. :-/

keep up the great work. It's inspiring!

Re: '67 C10 Shorty Stepside
 

Yeah, it's definately not something you want to find, it's an intimidating fix too. I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya! On the optimistic side, it's makes it a whole lot easier to work on the inside of the firewall :), and I think i'm gonna hold off on puttin it back in for a bit. I have been planning to spray the back wall / floor / inside firewall with the same liner I'm gonns use on the underside (Al's), and not having that dash there will make that a whole lot easier, and allow me to get into tighter areas for better coverage.

Thanks! I'm in a great debate on what to do with the heater control location, I had thought about putting 2 2-1/16" gauges there, but I might leave it smooth, i can't decide if it's going to look too "empty" with all that open area or not, and there's probably a few other things that run through my head every now and then, but nothing life changing yet, good thing I have time to think about it! I hear ya on the heat thing, it has always been my plan to get rid of it all and have sort of a "bare bones" truck, but I can deinfantely see how having some heat on a colder day is appealing.

Likewise & thanks! I love watching your build come together too!

I took a couple of pics tonight of how my passenger side cab corner came out after I fixed my oversight. This is one of the Tri-Plus branded cab corners I had from long ago, that I may or may not have gotten from LMC, still can't completely remember.