1970 C20 father/son frame off rebuild

[justKIDn]

I've been lurking around here since 2017, when I picked this truck up as a father/son project with the end result being my boy’s daily driver when he turned 16 in October of 2020. I've finally decided to start a build thread while stuck inside during this "ice storm".

[justKIDn]

It’s a 1970 C20 LWB with a 350 V8 and a TH350 transmission. It has a Dana 60 rearend with a 4.10 ratio. It was optioned with air conditioning, power steering and power brakes. It wasn’t running and hadn’t since 1996.

[justKIDn]

The boy and his mom went for a “ride” when we got it home. She’s showing him how his girlfriend would ride next to him one day. (He had never seen a bench seat before!)

[justKIDn]

It was in fairly good shape for a 48 year old truck having the traditional rust in the rockers and cab corners, which I consider to be pretty easy fixes. There is however, one spot above the windshield that I’m pretty sure will be kind of challenging.

[justKIDn]

Our plan is to get it mechanically sound. Running and driving, safe and reliable. We rebuilt the engine, adding some power of course, with some stuff I had lying around. (turns out a broken rocker arm stud is why it hasn’t run since 1996) The auto transmission is going to be swapped out for a stick (that’s what the boy wants), the front brakes will be upgraded from drums to discs, and the whole suspension will be brought to like new condition. We’re keeping the ¾ ton suspension as our family hobby is drag racing. I know that before the boy is out of high school, there will be some sort of racecar on a trailer, in tow!

[justKIDn]

Earlier I mentioned that this was a father/son project, Well, father is the master and son is the student. He is the worker and I'm the helper. By him taking ownership of this project, I think it’ll help him learn to shoulder some responsibility and hopefully get him to put the damn phone down! Fingers crossed, time will tell. Summer of 2018, the teardown begins.

[justKIDn]

More tear down pics...

[justKIDn]

I brought the engine to a local machine shop and the block and crank checked out ok. We punched it out a little and upgraded the cam and valve train.

[justKIDn]

I’m replacing the heads with a set of Dart Iron Eagle heads and the intake with an Edelbrock Performer Air Gap, both left over from old projects. I’ve decided we’re going to replace the carburetor with a Holley Sniper system for more reliability, better drivability.

[justKIDn]

Well, it had been over a year since we touched the truck. My daughter aged out of the jr dragsters and stepped up to a big car. I bought her an older dragster, had the engine freshened, and backed it into my garage one weekend in February of 2019 to put the freshened engine back in and get it ready to go racing. Well after finding some serious wiring problems and some cracks on one of the motor plates, that weekend in my garage turned into a year to make it ready for my daughter to go racing.

[justKIDn]

In that time, I found on Facebook Marketplace, a cab for sale locally so I went check it out. It’s got no vin tag, not much firewall left and had been cannibalized somewhat, but it had a solid A pillar to upper windshield piece which I needed. It was worth the $100 to me so I took it home.

[justKIDn]

Fast forward to July 2020 and the boy (KaCee) and I get back to work to continue stripping the truck, by removing the cab, with some help from my dad. I built a dolly to put the cab on, and was going to build something to lift the cab with my engine lift, but realized I have access to overhead cranes at work so I figured that was way easier.

[justKIDn]

Once the cab was out of the way, KaCee goes to work on the chassis, tearing it down as well as wire wheeling it.

[justKIDn]

The wire wheeling on the frame proved to be somewhat ineffective against the thick undercoating. We enlisted the help of Richard at Blastworks LLC. to come and clean the chassis up for us, as well as misc. suspension parts.

[justKIDn]

We then put 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint on everything blasted.

[justKIDn]

KaCee’s also been cleaning up and painting all the suspension pieces, both new and old.

[justKIDn]

We tore the peg leg Dana 60 down, and added a Yukon Gear & Axle Dura Grip positraction carrier from Summit, leaving the 4.10 ratio in place.

[justKIDn]

And hung the rearend on new 3” drop springs from Eaton-Detroit Springs.

[68Gold/white]

I like all the family "do'ins"!!!
I wonder if the it might be better to just cut the entire top off the donor cab, and graft it onto yours???

[justKIDn]

Here is where we ran into our first roadblock. The front spring eyes on our new drop springs didn’t quite fit into the hangers, so I did a lil grinding to slide them into place. I got the springs in but ground thru the hanger in a couple of spots, and they still didn’t fit correctly. So I left it for now to do some thinking.

[justKIDn]

In the meantime, we moved on to the front end. We installed POL drop spindles and converted to 1971 C20 upper control arms and lower ball joints to add disc brakes. To tie 1970 and 1971 together, we’re using 1971 outer tie rod ends as outers, 1970 outer tie rod ends as inners and POL’s High Performance tie rod adjusting sleeves to connect them together.

[justKIDn]

KaCee had some help from his girlfriend packing the front wheel bearings and he hung the rotors and calipers.

[justKIDn]

Because we converted the front end to 1971 disc brakes, the wheel studs on the rotors are 9/16”. To keep from having 9/16” lug nuts in the front and ½” in the back, we pressed out the ½” studs, drilled out the holes in the hubs, pressed in new 9/16” wheel studs and hit the hubs with some primer and paint.

[BC10]

This is awesome! Can wait to see how this all takes shape.

[justKIDn]

After a couple of days of thinking and online shopping for something to solve my problem, that now I don’t think exists, I decided to modify the spring hangers to accept my new springs.