Frankentruck

[cwcarpenter98]

Today I finally decided to start a build thread for my 1963 C10 named Frankentruck. Frankentruck was purchased as a father/son project truck back on July 4th, 2015 out of Jasper, GA. When we bought it, the truck had been off the road since 2004, according to the old license plate, and the engine did not run. Here's a few pictures from when I first got the truck home. The seat belts are from a Cadillac, but I don't know what year. The hubcaps were off a 65 Biscayne I believe, and the driver's door had been replaced. The entire bed had also been replaced by the PO after the truck had been rear ended at some point in it's life. The original color is code 505. Some day I hope to be able to return the truck to the original green, but a lot of rust repair needs to be done before that could happen.

[cwcarpenter98]

First order of business was to get the engine running again. At the time, my dad and I did not want to spend any money on the truck unless we knew that the engine would run. I did not find out until recently, but the original engine was a 292 straight 6. The bellhousing still has the original green paint from the 292 under years of grease and dirt. The PO had swapped out the inline 6 for a 283 sbc. He had also swapped out the original Muncie sm319 for a Muncie sm318. Yes, Frankentruck was originally built with a 3 speed overdrive transmission. 3 years later, and I'm still on the hunt for an overdrive trans. After we did all the basic tune up stuff, the engine rumbled to life, but was burning oil.

[jhrusk]

Welcome from another Ga boy.

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by jhrusk

Welcome from another Ga boy.

Thanks! This site has helped me so much that I figured I should show what everyone here has helped me accomplish.

[cwcarpenter98]

After getting the engine running again, I tried to move it around in the driveway a bit. I quickly realized that only one wheel stopped the whole truck from rolling down my very steep driveway. At the time, I was a Junior in high school, so driving to and from school in traffic was something I did almost every day. We decided to do a disc brake swap on the front end. Went with the kit from Performance Online, and it went together really well. Only issue we had was that it took several months before it finally showed up. After the swap was complete, the truck had a brand new brake system from the master cylinder to the rear shoes. To this day, I haven't had any issues with the brakes.

I also painted the tailgate letters with some old gutter paint that was on a shelf in the basement. Looks decent from far away

(Sorry, I have no idea why the pictures are orientated weird)

[cwcarpenter98]

Once the brake system was complete and bled, the truck was driving again. I still couldn't drive it on the street though, because for some unkown reason at the time, the taillights and brake lights would not work. For several months, all I did was drive around the neighborhood and begin learning how to drive a manual. I can honestly say that learning how to drive stick with a 3 on the tree was a lot easier than I expected. That ended up working out great for me because by the time I figured out it was the fuse block being covered in rust that kept the brake lights from working, I was getting pretty smooth with the transmission. My neighborhood has several hills that I would continuously practice on.

My dad's good friend from college also likes working on cars, and has a 72 Datsun 240z. He lives out in California, and found a place that sells c10 parts. During the several moths of frustration while trying to track down the wiring issue, he sent me a new, chrome mirror arm and mirror. It helped make the truck look a little better, and made me want to fix the wiring even more.

[cwcarpenter98]

I took an art class in my Junior year of high school, and had the opportunity to create a drawing of my truck. I chose this picture because of the body lines receding to the back of the picture and how the wheel was turned to the camera. The picture was taken while I was doing the disc brake swap and figuring out that I had to get new wheels because the original wheels would not clear the calipers. Actually drawing the wheel was the worst and hardest part because I suck at drawing circles

[flashed]

Frankentruck has come a long way .

[cwcarpenter98]

Originally Posted by flashed

Frankentruck has come a long way .

Yes sir, she has. For doing everything myself under the shade of the trees beside the driveway, I've made some pretty good progress so far. There's still a lot to get done though.

[cwcarpenter98]

I never knew that a fuse block could become rusty and keep me from driving my truck. After much fiddling with it, my dad was able to wiggle the prong on the back of the fuse block just enough so that the brake lights finally came on. The next day, we got the truck tagged and insured. The day after that, I drove the truck for the first time to my school for my senior pictures. It took 11 months for me to get the truck back on the road due to focusing more one school and baseball. The only things that have been done by a shop have been getting a muffler welded on, and an alignment done. My dad and I have done everything else, with mostly myself doing all the work.

This picture is from when I ran out of gas because I thought I had more in the tank than I actually did. The sending unit in the tank had the strap thingy break. I was able to solder it back together (out of the tank of course), and it has worked great ever since.

[cwcarpenter98]

Not much happened over the summer of 2016, other than driving Frankentruck a lot. I was working at a restoration shop for the summer, so I didn't want to always work on the truck every day.

School started up again, and as the weather cooled off, I started driving the truck some more. It pretty much turned into my daily driver, because I liked driving it more than the 1994 Pontiac Bonneville that I was driving around. The last day of Junior year, I was driving home from school in my 1995 Dodge Dakota. I knew that there was a coolant leak, but that week I didn't stay on top of the leak like I had been doing. That was obviously a mistake, because the engine ran out of coolant on the way home, and I ran the engine till it stopped running.

Later in the fall, I was driving home from school in Frankentruck, and it started to stumble under load. I pulled the plugs that I had installed a year before, and found that two of the eight plugs were coated in oil deposits. I knew the truck was burning oil, but did not know that oil fouled spark plugs. After that, I routinely pulled the plugs, scraped off the gunk, stuck em back in, and kept on truckin.

I also tried to revive the go kart that was in my grandparent's basement. It would spin over, but had no spark. Whatever part that makes the spark on those engines was rusted pretty bad due to the constant high humidity in the leaky basement. I never figured out what was wrong with it, because my uncle took the kart back to his home in Alabama. It was his when he was younger, but by the time he was done with it, my dad was old enough to drive the wheels off of it. I don't think the kart has ever been revived since my uncle took it.

[cwcarpenter98]

One of my classes during Senior year of high school gave me the opportunity to learn a little CAD and of course, I decided to design a 63 grille.

This entire time, my wipers were not working. I finally tracked it down to the same issue I was having with the brake lights, the fuse block. We ended up getting a factory replacement under dash harness to replace the rusty fuse block. The rest of the wiring was ok, so it was left as is. Everything works on the truck now except for the horn, and that is something in the steering wheel that I haven't pulled off to fix.

I continued to just drive the truck around, and take it to a couple of shows.

[cwcarpenter98]

I still drove the truck a lot, but didn't have something that I could take on longer trips and not worry about anything breaking. Even though I was still a senior in high school, my parents were looking ahead to when I started college. My girlfriend at the time had a Civic, and after driving that a couple of times, I decided that I really liked the little car. My dad found a 2013 Civic at a dealership near his work, and so we test drove it. About a week later, I had a reliable car to get me where I needed to go when my trucks were down.

About a month later, we decided to bring the Dakota back home and fix her up. She had been sitting at a shop for the entire summer and most of the fall because we didn't know for sure what we were going to do with it. My dad decided it would be a good learning experience to pull an engine, so I started working on tearing down the engine bay.

By this point, it was Christmas time! I wanted my truck to stand out a bit, and since the paint is crap, I didn't care about taping some Christmas lights on the truck. I ended up getting a lot of compliments, and a few looks of disdain

On Christmas morning, the one tool I needed, that I didn't have, showed up under the tree. This engine hoist has been one of the most useful tools that has ever been given to me.

[cwcarpenter98]

What the heck!?!? Snow in Georgia! We got a good snowfall the first week in January, so of course I had to take some pics.

The family pet, a Corgi named Moose, enjoyed the fresh snow.

The trailer I got for free from a friend that was cleaning out a building he had purchased. It was an old shop many years before, and this trailer was sitting out behind it. It was made out of a 67-72 GMC I think, because it has leaf springs. I haven't done anything with it except for using it as storage. The bed is extremely rusty, and needs to be replaced. Once I find a cleaner bed for Frankentruck, I will take Frankentruck's old bed and swap it onto the trailer.

The wagon wheel functioned as my "spare", because it was the only wheel I had that would clear the calipers. It has an old trailer tire on it because it was on the trailer when I got it.

The day after it snowed, I decided to pull the passenger side exhaust manifold because the divorced choke was not working properly. Turns out that the heat riser valve had either rusted off on the inside, or had been removed. It caused the choke to stay closed pretty much all the time, unless I drove the truck for almost an hour. Even though it was super cold outside, I got it off. Unfortunately, I broke a stud, but was able to get new studs put in the manifold.

[cwcarpenter98]

While I was waiting on the new heat riser valve to show up, I pulled the engine out of the Dakota. My best friend came over and helped me pull it the day before Spring semester of senior year started. It only took us about 6 hours to pull it because we didn't know what we were doing Thankfully, all twenty sausages were unharmed. I had already gotten all the accessories off the engine while the truck was still in the garage. All we had to do that day was unbolt the trans, exhaust, and engine mounts. Didn't realize for about an hour that there are bolts from the flexplate to the torque converter. Thankfully, nothing got bent in the process. The v6 Magnum engine had been cooked at least two times by my grandpa, and the third time by me finally killed it.

Got the exhaust system back together on the c10, and started driving it a little again. It was still cold, and it took forever to warm up, and on top of that, it would still fast idle almost the entire 30 to 45 minute drive to school, so I didn't drive it that much. I also developed a coolant leak from the radiator. I didn't want to have a repeat of the Dakota, so I pulled the radiator and started doing some research on how to fix it.

While waiting on the radiator I also picked up some Regular Car Reviews merch, and a Black Widow Exhaust Venom 250.

[cwcarpenter98]

Got some fresh stickers from the Georgia chapter of the C10 Club.

Also figured out the radiator situation. Took the radiator that was in the truck to a shop and they wanted 400 bucks to recore it Rather than paying that much, we decided to go for the Champion aluminum radiator that was half the price of the recore after reading up on some opinions here on this site.

After I got the radiator back in, I was driving to church when I started swerving without the rear wheels losing traction. Apparently, the PO had replaced the rear axle with a later model that had the mounting point for the trac bar on the pumpkin instead of farther out on the axle. Instead of using the correct trac bar, it looks like the PO had bent the original one to fit the newer axle. The trac bar snapped right at the most extreme bend while I was turning onto a side street. I ordered a CPP adjustable trac bar from Summit Racing and was able to get the axle back to center. The janky, old trac bar didn't even center the axle right.

[cwcarpenter98]

With the rear end back together, I started driving it some more.

I replaced the rear shocks after over a year of driving it. The front shocks were replaced when the disc brake kit was installed.

I also finally got around to attempting to install my new Venom 250. I cut off the old Sears muffler that was too quiet, and had a dime sized hole, so it needed to be replaced. I ended up not being able to replace the muffler myself, so I took it to an exhaust shop that had some pretty neat wall art.

The Black Widow Exhaust Venom 250 is stainless steel. It sounds great when I floor it, but just cruising at speed, there is no drone at all. It improved the sound of the truck ten fold.

[cwcarpenter98]

For a long time, the speedometer was bouncing back and forth. I had unplugged the cable from the back of the cluster because the bouncing was annoying me. I decided to plug it back in and see what I needed to do to fix it. I replaced the speedo cable, but it didn't stop the bouncing. It ended up being the odometer. The odometer stopped spinning which kept the speedo from reading steady. I pulled the odometer out so that my speedometer would still work. I still haven't replaced the odometer, but it wasn't accurate anyways. The speedometer reads about 10 mph slow, I think.

The pull cord for my buddy's go kart broke. I decided to help him out and fix it, so then I kept it for a couple of days and terrorized the neighborhood for a few days. They had cut the muffler off, because why not

The next thing was trying to track down some steering slop. When I did the disc brake kit, it didn't come with idler and pitman arms. After driving the truck for almost a year, we finally replaced the idler and pitman arms. It tightened up the slop some, but the majority of it is in the steering gear box. It isn't too bad though, just takes some getting used to after driving stuff with no slop.

My mechanical engineering class in high school built a telescope as our senior project. It turned out really well, and it was really cool seeing the moon up close through something I helped build.

[cwcarpenter98]

I'll try and finish catching up on this thread tomorrow. I'm about to fall asleep while typing this

[cwcarpenter98]

With the end of my Senior year of high school drawing near, my friend and I decided to take some beauties. These pictures turned out pretty good for a Samsung Galaxy s7.

The picture at the car show was just after graduating high school. Yes, that is a zip tie holding what's left of the lower fender on. The oil bottles in the bed were empty, because at this point (end of May, 2017), the engine was using a quart of oil in about 50 ish miles. It was losing oil every way possible, but I loved driving it so much that Walmart oil was continuously purchased and poured in.

The last picture is from the restoration shop I worked at that summer.

[cwcarpenter98]

In the middle of June, I took the truck to another car show. There were a couple of good looking trucks, and some really nice ones. I also got a chance to see Mike Finnegan's Blasphemi in person.

[cwcarpenter98]

The next day, I installed a new mirror arm and mirror on the passenger side to match the driver's side.

I love driving the truck, but when I sit in traffic during the summer, I feel like a turkey, baking in an oven

Even though I had pulled the engine out of the Dakota in January of 2017, it sat until the middle of June 2017 because of decisions that had to be made. I wanted to rebuild it so that I could learn how to rebuild an engine, but I just didn't have the time to do it. My best friend helped my load the engine up the night before we took it to a machine shop to get rebuilt.

At the car show I went to (see previous post) I picked up a 63 tag for my truck. After getting all the paper work figured out for it, I finally got it put on the truck. County code 28 is for Bartow County, but I would really like to find a tag from Cherokee County which is code 35.

[cwcarpenter98]

My best friend has a 1999 Dakota. I taught him how to drive stick in Frankentruck. His dad was given a 79 C10 because the owner was done using it, and wanted the truck to go to a good home. It's an all original truck that still runs great today. It has a 3 OTT as well, so now he doesn't have to burn up my clutch while still practicing We both have Dakotas and c10s, and the funny thing is that both of mine are older.

A couple days later, I took the truck on it's longest trip at that point. I drove up to my grandparent's house in Toccoa and brought back some vintage chairs. I was also on the hunt for a spare wheel that fit over the calipers. I ended up finding another squarebody rally wheel to match the rest of my wheels.

With the Dakota still down, I used Frankentruck to haul home some rock for extending the driveway a little bit. It's the cheapest way to lower a truck.

The last picture is after I removed the steel plate from the bed and knocked out all the rotted out wood. I had also removed one of the bed strips.

[cwcarpenter98]

I had noticed that the bed sides wiggled around a ton when the truck went over bumps. With the steel plate in place, I had not noticed that the wood bed was actually a structural part of the bed. I decided to redo the bed wood myself. My dad and I got some wood, ripped it down with a friend's table saw, routed the groves ourselves, mocked it up, and stained it with a 2 in 1 stain and sealer. I had left what was left of the old wood in the bed so I could still drive the truck until I was ready to actually replace the boards. After removing all the rusty bolts, my ratchet was clogged with some much dust that it stopped working. I had to blow it apart, clean everything, then put it back together.

[cwcarpenter98]

Got the bed wood done and back together the day before the first C10 Club Georgia meet. It looked great, and the meet was a great time meeting everyone and driving around with a bunch of other c10s. There's also a good comparison of stock height versus lowered.