Project Cannonball C10

[SKT]

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Wow, that interior looks so fresh!

Are you planning on keeping the current wrap on the outside or do you have plans for a full paint job in ge future?

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[mikentosh]

Originally Posted by SKT

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Wow, that interior looks so fresh!

Are you planning on keeping the current wrap on the outside or do you have plans for a full paint job in ge future?

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Yeah I think I'll keep it wrapped for a while. It really removes a lot of the worry about having a nicely painted truck. I've had a couple of incidents already and it just requires a bit of heat and most scratches disappear. Rock chips haven't got through the paint underneath either.

I'm even thinking when I want to go back to the original blue/white scheme I'll do it in a wrap. 3M makes a blue that comes very close to Hawaiian Blue.
Posted via Mobile Device

[SKT]

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I agree 100% w/ a previous comment you made about vinyl wrap catching on, even w/ classic trucks. Too many pros for it not to. Stress free, low maintenance, durable, easier to completely change the entire look compared to paint.

Also love the Sport Edition theme you decided for this one - fits the build perfectly!

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[mikentosh]

Haven't posted in a while. It's been sitting in the garage collecting dust while we've been out of town. Thought I'd post a little detail picture:

[SKT]

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^

It's the small details that sets builds apart, and you nailed it w/ this one!

Always look forward to seeing updates in this thread.

Was hoping to see some pics of it at SEMA!

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[mikentosh]

Originally Posted by SKT

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^

It's the small details that sets builds apart, and you nailed it w/ this one!

Always look forward to seeing updates in this thread.

Was hoping to see some pics of it at SEMA!

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No, didn't make SEMA. We've spent the last few weeks in Tokyo so didn't get a chance to go. Besides, we've got Dino's Git Down coming up in a couple of weeks...

And this year I've been thinking how nice it will be to just cruise down to Scottsdale without any last minute wrenching beforehand. Well that must of jinxed me, cause I went to take Cannonball out this afternoon and found a giant puddle of power steering fluid underneath the truck Looks like its coming from the fittings entering into the rack. Hope to address that this week.

[mikentosh]

We got it out to Goodguys November Get Together in Pleasanton over the weekend. Originally just planned to head up for Saturday morning and turn a few runs on the autocross course. Before we even got out on the track we were notified that Cannonball was selected as the Gazette Pick for the show, so I was to bring it back for Sunday morning to do a photo shoot. On Sunday I also got to park it in the winner's circle and did a parade through to pick up an award It was really cool to meet everybody in person who had seen this thing come together online. Looking forward to next weekend when I can meet more peeps in Phoenix.

[aggie91]

Congrats on the award!

[carboncrew]

So cool!

[Qwk]

Pheewww...I just finished reading this entire thread!

Im digging that you put a lot of miles on this square, race it at events and it still wins awards at the shows!
Congrats on your Build!!

[91short]

I just seen your truck in C-10 Builders Guide mag, congrats on the mag feature, you've got a beautiful truck for sure.

[Desert1957]

What a great thread, Congrats on your award.

[mikentosh]

Thanks guys! It's been super cool to see it in C10 Builder's Guide. The photos turned out even better than I expected thanks to their awesome photographer Luke.

I've got one more outing planed for next week, which is the most exciting thing we've done yet with the truck...time to really put this chassis to work. Hopefully the weather cooperates with us. Stay tuned

[Damien]

This is an awesome build and a very similar style to one I want to build. I'll be building a step side and was thinking the orange Sport paint scheme. Thank you for sharing this build.

[mikentosh]

Thought I'd check back in here with an update. Just looking back I noticed that I never posted after we had Cannonball out at Thunderhill Raceway Park in December.

I was lucky enough to score a cheap rental day for the Thunderhill West track, so we had the whole day to ourselves with just Cannonball and my E46 M3. So normally in a track day situation you will be out on track for 20-30 mins at a time with maybe 10-12 laps at speed, then at least 1/2 hour for a cool down in between. Unfortunately this didn't occur to us and we ended up hot lapping the truck for about 75 mins before we noticed things starting to fail. We ended up completely cooking the power steering fluid to the point it exploded out the top of the plastic reservoir and covering the engine bay...also roasted the clutch fluid to the point that it wouldn't throwout anymore and we were stuck in gear. Other minor things was cracking the rear welds on both exhaust pipes, and (which we noticed way later) breaking off the internal baffling in the fuel tank. Worst though was a loose fitting underneath the differential vent which ended up blasting gear oil all over the track (and bottom of the truck). Fortunately the Thunderhill guys were really cool and they had the track cleaned up in short time.

We managed to patch things up over lunch enough to get back on track, and had an absolute blast doing lead-follow hot laps in the two cars for the rest of the afternoon.




The track is about 3 hours drive from home and 2 1/2 hours into the return trip the rear end really started whining. I had serious concerns that we toasted the gears by running it too low on fluid, but after a rear diff flush and fill everything seems good.

It was definitely an awesome day, but also revealed some more areas that need attention if we want to use it like this again.

[mikentosh]

And basically Cannonball has been laid up in my garage or at the shop for the last 3 months while we take care of everything that we broke in December. Ricks Tanks were really good and wanted the fuel tank shipped back so they could investigate why the baffling failed, and they got it all back to new for us. While pulling the tank I realized that the bed had slid back on the frame...guess there really was a lot of force at work on track

Anyway I finally got motivation to throw it all back together last week so I could attend a lunch with fellow gearheads from my company. It was pretty funny to see the attention that Cannonball got amongst the Ferrari and P-Car crowd.

Glad its back on the road as we are planning to get it out to Goodguys summer get together in Pleasanton, and then Brother's Show down in LA.

[mikentosh]

Captured an in-car video of a few laps from the passenger seat. Not sure if Photobucket is displaying the video properly though:

[MTCK]

That's awesome! Love watching you make it work. Drive break fix repeat.

[lownfast]

By far one of my favorite trucks!

[TrailerTrash]

Sounds awesome

[rusty76]

Glad to see the truck again.

[Jacobsonz]

Originally Posted by mikentosh

One of the many side projects to get ready has been the door panels. I have a mint set of NOS 73-74 door panels that I was going to use on this project originally, but when we decided to do this truck in "best of the 70s" I switched to the full-size door panels ('77 era) for power windows. Well the woodgrain inserts I have were in poor shape so I decided to try the newer 3M DI-NOC vinyl woodgrains to see how close a match I could get.

Here is the '77 insert with (top to bottom) cherry teak wood, walnut wood, and marine teak wood:


And here's the door panels and dash insert all done in the marine teak. Its a really, really close match to the 73-74 woodgrain that GM used.

Where'd you get your door panels?

[mikentosh]

Originally Posted by Jacobsonz

Where'd you get your door panels?

Door panels came from Brothers. They are the typical offshore reproduction crap, and I'm trying to hunt down some original ones. We are using a custom vinyl die anyway so color isn't important. The big problem with these reproduction ones is they are very hard plastic and don't conform to the doors well. Both panels have already cracked on me and this truck doesn't exactly see a lot of daily usage.

[Jacobsonz]

Originally Posted by mikentosh

Door panels came from Brothers. They are the typical offshore reproduction crap, and I'm trying to hunt down some original ones. We are using a custom vinyl die anyway so color isn't important. The big problem with these reproduction ones is they are very hard plastic and don't conform to the doors well. Both panels have already cracked on me and this truck doesn't exactly see a lot of daily usage.

I was actually just getting ready to order these from brothers too, maybe I'll hold off.

I've been searching for some originals for the last 2yrs but they're hard to come by.
Do you know much about their dash pads? are they worth it?

[mikentosh]

Originally Posted by Jacobsonz

I was actually just getting ready to order these from brothers too, maybe I'll hold off.

I've been searching for some originals for the last 2yrs but they're hard to come by.
Do you know much about their dash pads? are they worth it?

Yeah finding good ones is hard to come by. I browse eBay every once in a while and have come up empty handed, but there is a local guy who parts out Squares so I'm hoping he'll come across a good set at some point.

I have one of the aftermarket dash pads in Cannonball. I think its a Dashes Direct one, and it also came from Brothers. Its not as bad as everybody makes it out to be, and after trimming, working it and getting some heat into it, it will look about as good as what I expected these trucks to look like on the showroom floor (which is not perfect hahaha). We also used SEM vinyl die/paint on this...if you even look at it the wrong way the paint scratches off