C10CJ: A Pro-touring '71 Stepside on a No Limit Pro-C10 Chassis

[1971_c10]

Well, how about a near 4 year gap! Not intentional, that's for sure. I have no excuses. I lost my way. Trying to find my way back.

I'll try and catch you guys up. Work life has been a bear. Covid sucked.

Let's start with 2021 and 2022. I'm trying to remember my workflow for creating posts. Mainly the photo side of the workflow. I'm delinquent on updating you guys with photos so here goes.

2021 was a much a bust as 2020. Well, maybe not. I made it to 2 shows, the Colorado Goodguys (my "home" show, I go every year) and Hot August Nights in Reno, NV (HAN for short). HAN was a car show, no racing, so not my norm, but I still had a blast. Here are some key photos, some that got posted to IG and some that didn't.

The typical parked pose:


Some good company for parking a few of the nights. The awesome thing about the setup was each hotel has a section blocked off for only registered cars. The entry/exit was controlled. So all the classics were parked next to each other for the night. C10CJ liked parking next to a long lost big brother.


Of course, the main show was downtown Reno. How lucky was I to get a corner spot like this? Spots are "assigned" and not first come first serve.


Racing is never out of the picture when you need tires and are near a Summit Racing store. So some new rears were in order. These tires are still on the truck today.


And last, check out this score from the swap meet. I wasn't planning on buying anything but when you see a C10 short box step side, any year, in a model or a sign or whatever, the wallet comes out.


The ride home from Reno was the last straw for me renting car haulers. The car hauler I had rented had issues, from brakes, to leaky tires, to breaking a spring on the way home. So I also picked up an enclosed trailer in 2021.

I'll get some photos for the mods from 2019. Oddly enough, I didn't take photos of the mods, I was in a quick hurry at the time. Stay tuned. Not only am I going to attempt to get you guys caught up, but it's also time for some MAJOR mods.

[1971_c10]

Ok, so hotrod1, sorry these are late, but here goes.

In 2019 I had made 3 mods to the truck in prep for getting my ___ handed to me racing against a touch crowd. But it was a great learning experience.

The mods: wider tires, went to a 335 in the rear, so needed a 12" rim. Moved the battery and trans cooler from the front to the bed. The rims needed sizing, but that was straight forward, same backspace as before, but add 2". Then I did shift the rim out a touch, 1/4". Oh, and while I was in there, I replaced the crappy piece of wood from my front bed crossmember to the front panel with some aluminum angle that essentially mimics the the original spot welded rail, but without any boards. Notice the bolts going into the sides. Yes, the front one is in the stake pocket to hide the nut and the other 2 are in under the fender.

On the battery box, I took the box I had fab'd up and I cut the oem mounts off the box. I then fab'd up some brackets to mount the box between the front 2 crossmembers for the bed.




The trans cooler got a similar treatment, a set of brackets to mount it between the crossmembers, but at an angle since it's a plate cooler and plate cooler really want to be vertical. The blue block in front of the cooler is a temperature sensor which ties in to my ECU to control the fans.


All painted up and bolted in.


Final setup. I did need to add a large gauge wire from the battery up to the posts I had mounted on the radiator support.

[1971_c10]

The year of 2022 was kind of lame. And that's on me. Just one event, CO Goodguys. Barely any other driving. Work was a mess.

CO Goodguys, the good, met new friends. The bad, didn't drive well (not the truck's fault) and got a flat driving home from the event on Saturday.

Pitted next the Jerry from TX and his C10 'SuckerPunch'.


The truck class from CO GG 2022


Nice slice in my sidewall I got on I-25. These tires weren't that old!


New Falken 660s for the front. Had to fight with Tirerack to get them. All the way up to the regional manager with nothing but poor excuses. But they finally did show up. These are what I run today. They are hands down better in my application.

[1971_c10]

The year was 2023 ...

So, from the tire pic in the last post, until the 1st pic in this post is 1 year and a whopping 6 pics. Yes, not much happened on the truck in the first 8 months of 2023. But ... this is where things start getting interesting.

Started off with the usual Goodguys Colorado. Truck was all nice and clean.


This year, Rob (from No Limit) was chasing a Goodguys championship. They didn't really need the points from the CO event, but they drove out anyway. Rob was driving Bill's maroon square body. I wound up driving fairly well and made the shootout (they take the top 4 trucks and we race "head to head" in a single elimination bracket). Pic of the 4 trucks in the shootout:


From there I did something I don't normally do. I made an impulse decision to go to Goodguys Texas (fall). I had never been to a Goodguys event in TX so I went. I'm pitted next to one of my autocross buddies.


I got better. At this point, I was kind of done with "trying to make the truck faster". I was realizing that the truck was fast enough, it was the driver that needed work. I again made the shootout. The 4 trucks from the TX shootout:


So the itch is on. While there aren't any mods to the truck I wanted to do, I started to remember my chassis setup days from racing in college. I was the drivetrain guy, but I was also generally the only guy around when the chassis guy was doing setup, so I learned some tricks. But you need scales. So I invested in some scales:


Let the fun begin!

[1971_c10]

The fun on the scales began with ballast. Now with scales, I can optimize the location of ballast to make something "spot on", in this case, my cross weights. Here I have 2 40lb kettlebells helping me decide where to put ballast. This location was more for behind the passenger seat, but I couldn't fit the kettlebells in there.


Ballast and pre-load. I started playing with pre-load to dial in the cross weights.


Why cross weights? Well, for starters, C10CJ is not 50/50 f/r. And cross weights are important too. So I can get those in line. That also means my axles wind up near 50/50 l/r. All ratios with the truck in race setup and me in the truck with helmet. Once that was all sorted, it was alignment time. I made some adjustments on camber and caster and left my total toe set to a little toe out.


Then is was time to load up for Goodguys Scottsdale. Yep, I decided to try and race my way into the big race since I wasn't pre-qualified.


Also tried something new for AZ and rented a house with a garage via airbnb.

[1971_c10]

So, here I am down at near sea level and the truck is running rough. I had some trouble in TX with idle. Here, the truck just won't idle. I spent the handful of days before the event attempting to tune the problem. Got to the event, and pit setup, still no solution.



It's a small pic, but you might be able to get a sense to how much camber and caster I had dialed into the front suspension. It was a bunch. Two runs in and the idle issue is killing me. Fortunately, above idle is running well. And the setup work paid off, I was faster. I did wind up solving the idle issue. I have no clue how, but the idle region of my injector end table had become corrupt. I regenerated the table from scratch (in between rounds) and got the truck to idle fairly well. Good thing, because I qualified for the Duel in the Desert shootout.



Unfortunately, I face sensei Rob in the 2nd round, and as usual, I lost to Rob, but that's ok. I'm getting closer to Rob's times.

Shot of all the contenders after the event


I did spend a little time walking around and got to see the awesome fully carbon fiber C10 built by Fiber Forged, the ZR/10.