78 Big 10 on Wide Fives

[GoSki]

Introducing myself,

Hello everyone, my name is Nick and I'm new to this forum. Some of you may be familiar with my good friend Corey (hewittca). He has had a presence on this site for some time now. I helped him out with the build of his 72 GMC a few years ago, after that I decided I needed my own. I've loved the square body for many years, and owned a 4x4 variant years ago, but this time I decided I would do a 2wd build.

I've worked in motorsports for the entirety of my career, and always thought race cars were cool, however, I've also always said, "If I ever have enough money to go racing, I won't." And that's because it's a money eating machine that you can't drive to work.

Being in motorsports for several decades has exposed me to many types of racing, as well as a lot of racing history. At some point along the way I discovered photos of of a few square bodies and other 80s trucks in racing trim. They were from a very short lived series in 1983 that the rumor mill claims was started by Buck Baker. It was those photos, combined with my familiarity and access to race car parts that let me decide I would do a race "themed" or "inspired" street machine.

There are a few things worth noting about this build thread.

1) I'm about 2 years late on starting it, I bought the truck in October of 2023

2) I have a lot of information to share, but I'm not the greatest at remembering to stop and take photos (Corey is much better at that)

3) I've had two main guiding principles for this build

A) I wanted to build something that I thought a guy in the early 80's would build, with a fairly real world "normal-ish guy" budget.

B) I do in fact have to operate with a real world "normal-ish guy" budget

It is because of these two things that you are not going to see a 4-link in the rear, you are not going to see coil overs and tubulars on the front, or rack and pinion steering, and you are not going to see massive slotted rotors and 6 piston Brembo's on the corners. I'm going to spend some money, but in calculated areas, and in the areas where I can reuse factory parts, I'm going to. Again, think about "just some dude" in the 80's who thinks race cars are cool.

It is worth noting that for a lot of the modifications to this truck, although I did not spring for expensive aftermarket parts, I did invest a lot of time and I do have access to a lot of tools that many people don't, so that is worth considering if we are going to be fair about it.

If you were at the Fall Revival in Denton, NC last weekend, you may have seen what the truck looks like right now. But on here, we are going to rewind back to October of 2023, and start at the beginning of this build.

I live in Huntersville, and the truck I found was local to the area, it was purchased from a local Huntersville car dealer in 1979, and has never left the area. The guy I bought it from was the only person to ever drive the truck. Although it was in fact a "one owner", it was not garage kept, it was kept in a field, under a tree, and had been very well used.

[Getter-Done]

Welcome to the forum.

Your are on the right track because you added pictures.

We love pictures.

I like your Truck.

[GoSki]

The truck had an interesting natural patina, it almost looked like it had been in a fire, but there were no indications that it actually had been, the rust rings and overall coloring of the truck just gave me that impression.

I knew almost immediately on the day I brought this truck home that I was going to have to change the color. I very much like natural patina trucks, but I was not a fan of the way this one "aged". In addition to that, I'm not into red, and this truck was originally silver and burgundy with a red interior. Right away I told Corey, "we need to change the color, but I want to keep the hood and roof patina, do you think we can do it?"

His extended silence told me most of what I needed to know, but I was holding onto my delusion.

2 years down the road, I can look back and say I think we were successful, but also, "kids, just find a truck the color you want."

As I mentioned before, this truck was a one owner, and it was also about 98% complete, it really wasn't missing any components, except a section of the rear glass, and a few pieces of trim that were likely buried in the guy's back 40 somewhere.

I got the truck home and gave it the "comet, scotch-brite, and pressure washer treatment". After that, I was left with a different looking truck, the front half was now basically black and silver, and then the rear of the truck was rust and burgundy. Still not what I was looking for.

[GoSki]

After spending a few weeks tinkering on the outside of it, and by tinkering, I mean sitting on my stool and staring at it while I tried to decide what direction to take it, I decided to pull the interior out and see what the floors looked like.

I already had a decent idea because I had crawled all over, (and under) the truck dozens of times, but I really wanted to see how bad the floor pitting was from the inside.

Despite how rusted this truck looked on the top side exterior, none of the floor, rockers, or cab corners had any serious rot. I'm originally from the far Northeast, and up there, if you see a truck that looks like this one did on the top side, then you can expect there to be nothing left on the underside.

[GoSki]

Now that I knew what the floor looked like, and since I had already started tearing it down, I went ahead and pulled the drivetrain out. At this point I had decided this truck was going to go down to the frame. Once I had the drivetrain out, I decided it was time to try one of the ideas I had in mind for the overall theme of this truck.

I headed over to my friend Pat's house and asked him if I could borrow a few race car parts for mock up purposes. For any of you guys who know short track racers, you know that however many race car parts they have bolted to their car, they have at least 3X that in parts sitting around their shop.

After a trip over to his house, I returned home with a wide five wheel and Hoosier racing slick, as well as a Wilwood wide five aluminum hub, and an 8 degree pin inclination angle spindle.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with these parts, they are every day, run of the mill, pieces in the short track racing world, however, they are very far from that for the street. I had a bit of an intuitive hunch that this set up had a chance of working, simply because most of the race car parts that exist today can trace their lineage back to street car parts. The 8 degree spindle would have bolted directly onto my truck if not for the ball joint taper being incorrect for the OEM ball joints. The pin inclination angle is not the same as stock, the factory brakes would not have worked, and the track width was going to be too wide to fit the tires inside the fenders. But regardless of all that, this mock up session showed me enough for me to believe I could make this idea work.

And so it began.

[GoSki]

More uploads tomorrow...

[hewittca]

I'm SO glad to see you start a build thread for this awesome truck! Even though I've seen it in person where it is now and had a hand in getting it there, it's still crazy to believe this is the same truck when looking back at where you started! I'm looking forward to seeing this one to completion.

[GoSki]

Originally Posted by Getter-Done

Welcome to the forum.

Your are on the right track because you added pictures.

We love pictures.

I like your Truck.

Thank you

[rodstored-72]

welcome!! very cool beginning, hope to see more updates and progress! there is a lot of info here & worth spending time to read thru some of the awesome builds on here!! thanks for sharing!!

[SCOTI]

I'm in to watch.

Looks like the track width would be an easy-ish fix (narrow the stock arms a bit and/or modding wheel offset).

I'm hoping to see some truck-arms under the rear.....

[GoSki]

Now that I had made up my mind on my build direction, I stripped the rest of the truck down to the frame so I could start the process of turning a long bed into a short bed, and executing a step notch for the rear axle.

[GoSki]

Once I had it down to the bare frame, I shortened it to the wheelbase of a short bed truck. I opted for the step cut over the straight vertical or the angled cut. I have seen successful executions of all 3 options, but I prefer the step.

In looking through my photos I have realized I did a poor job of documenting this step. I have no good photos of it as I was welding it back together, but I have some before and after shots.

You'll also notice that I elected to use part of the section of frame I removed as an internal "doubler" plate along the inner portion of the c-channel frame rail. This plate was drilled and plug welded in 8 or 10 spots on the inside of the frame rail, as well as partially perimeter welded.

[GoSki]

My next step was to mock up the rear end in the truck and get an idea of where to make my step notch.

In addition to wanting to put this truck on wide five wheels and hubs, I also decided I wanted to put a quick change axle in the back.

Anyone who is familiar with these things is probably thinking "dude, that's a bad idea, do you really want to listen to endless straight cut gear whine coming from the back of this thing. My answer to that is "Yes, maybe, I think, at least for awhile."

The real answer is that you can get helical cut gears for the quick change portion of this rear differential, and my long term plan is to play around with gear ratios using gears I can borrow from people until I land on something that suits the truck best, then order a set of helical cuts to bring the noise level down.

This axle is a winters center section, but it appears to have Franklin bells on it. The ring and pinion is a 4.86 ratio with a locker, and it has a set of 24/21 quick change gears at the back that give me either a 5.55 or 4.25 final axle ratio, depending on which way I orient them. Both of these options are deeper than what I am going to want, but I bought the axle used, and those are the gears that came with it.

I picked it up locally off a guy who was running it in his limited late model at Hickory Motor Speedway. He said it had a fresh rebuild with only 3 nights on it.

Some of you will be disappointed to know that (at least for now) I am going to stick with leaf springs at the back of this truck. See my comments about budget a few posts up. I can see a future where I build a 4-link for it, but that will likely be once the truck is fully functional and I'm ready to improve on it.

I Knew this rear axle was going to need to be narrowed to fit under the truck, but at this point in the build I was not concerned about that, the point here was to identify where I should put my step notch. To assist in this, I also started the process of shortening one of the bedsides to make sure things were going look right.

[GoSki]

Because I elected to make my own step notch from scratch, rather than install one available in the aftermarket. I had to know how big I could make it, and in order to do that, I had to figure out how much I was going to cut from the bed floor.

My goal throughout this entire project was to use as many of the original body parts as possible, however, it was obvious right away that the bed floor was too far gone (at least for my liking) and I spent weeks trying to find a nice bed floor on marketplace but came up empty. I was willing to buy a long bed floor and cut it down, but couldn't even find one of those. So, in the end, I decided to buy a new one, I don't regret this decision.

I knew I was going to be running tires that were wide enough to warrant wider wheel tubs, and here I again was faced was a decision to either widen the factory tubs, or buy the 4" wider ones available in the aftermarket. I took awhile to make this decision, but again, in the end, I decided to buy the wider tubs. However, I did not elect to buy the bed floor that was designed to accommodate those tubs, so I had some fab work to do there.

Once I cleared this fitment checking step, it was time to do the step notch.

[GoSki]

Originally Posted by rodstored-72

welcome!! very cool beginning, hope to see more updates and progress! there is a lot of info here & worth spending time to read thru some of the awesome builds on here!! thanks for sharing!!

Thanks for checking in to see it!

[GoSki]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

I'm in to watch.

Looks like the track width would be an easy-ish fix (narrow the stock arms a bit and/or modding wheel offset).

I'm hoping to see some truck-arms under the rear.....

I ended up doing both of the things you mentioned to make it work. I am going to disappoint you with the rear suspension, though. At least for right now.

Thanks for checking out the build.

[GoSki]

My approach to building the step notch was to make it from laser cut flat plates that I broke on a press break.

I designed the profile of the step notch in CAD and sent the .DXF files to SendCutSend, they laser cut them for me and sent them to my house. For the top and bottom pieces of the box section I was creating I used flat bar stock and made the bends in a press. For the larger radius bend I pressed against a piece of tubing laid on its side with an OD the appropriate size to create the radius that matched the side pieces.

I started by seam and plug welding the outer profile plate to the outside of the frame rail in my desired location, I did this before I ever cut the stock frame rail, this allowed things to stay aligned once I did cut the frame rail section out.













Then I cut out the section of frame rail.



The next step was to bend the bottom portion of the box section and weld it in place.



Then I did the top side of the box sections





And then finally the inner plates



Although I MIG welded the frame seam where I shortened the wheelbase, I opted for TIG welding in the step notch because I thought there was a chance it could end up being visible, depending on what I do for the center portion of the bed floor.

This step notch is going to yield me about 5.5" of clearance to the top of the axle tube, this should be plenty of travel and maybe room for a very short bump stop.

[GoSki]

I started out thinking I was not going to spend the money to have the frame sandblasted, so we spent a few days wire wheeling it and I just was not happy with how it was looking, so I spent some more money and had it blasted and a light coat of epoxy primer sprayed on it, this was because I knew the frame was going to sit around for some time while I was about to turn my attention to a different portion of the build.

Corey allowed me to store my frame at his place for awhile (longer than both of us planned)

[GoSki]

It was at this same time I made one of the biggest decisions for this build, the tire and wheel combination. As everyone knows, the tire and wheel setup usually dictates the overall attitude of any vehicle.

With this in mind, I settled on a set of Good Year Eagle Vintage Sports Car Special Tires, and the size is 26.5x10.5-15. Once mounted onto a wheel, the tape measure says these tires are about 26" tall, and 13" wide from outside of sidewall to sidewall. They are a soft compound racing tire that are not going to last very long on the street, but I was and still am committed to this look.

The wheels shown in this photo are 15x10 with a 5" backspace.

At this point in the build I had only purchased 2 tires and 2 wheels because I was undecided on if I could run the same size on all 4 corners, or if I was going to have to stagger something for the front. What I did know was that at a minimum, these tires were going on the rear, and hopefully on all 4 corners if I could make it happen.

[GoSki]

More Tomorrow.....

[Getter-Done]

Originally Posted by GoSki

More Tomorrow.....

Nice work.

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by GoSki

I ended up doing both of the things you mentioned to make it work. I am going to disappoint you with the rear suspension, though. At least for right now.

Thanks for checking out the build.

I know you're farther along & we're catching up on your progress, but when I did the 4-bar for my dually, I made my front frame mounts & placed them where the leaf spring hangers were. Some square tubing, .1875" & .250" flat steel.

My logic here was the leafs could always be swapped back in if someone after me (or if I) desired inj the future.

[clay68c10]

Subbed, I like where this is going.

[GoSki]

Originally Posted by SCOTI

I know you're farther along & we're catching up on your progress, but when I did the 4-bar for my dually, I made my front frame mounts & placed them where the leaf spring hangers were. Some square tubing, .1875" & .250" flat steel.

My logic here was the leafs could always be swapped back in if someone after me (or if I) desired inj the future.

I have always liked this idea, and it is likely exactly how I would execute a 4-link on this truck. I actually have some joints laying on a shelf from an old 4x4 project I never finished. I'm really only a set of coil overs and DOM away from doing it.

Thanks for the ideas

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by GoSki

I have always liked this idea, and it is likely exactly how I would execute a 4-link on this truck. I actually have some joints laying on a shelf from an old 4x4 project I never finished. I'm really only a set of coil overs and DOM away from doing it.

Thanks for the ideas

Mine is set-up for bags in the rear but I also built things to allow for changes there as well. I like options....

The rear shock mounts on my dually were oriented to allow the possible future use of a coil-over set-up as the primary spring & use of the bag as a supplement should I grow weary of the air-only set-up (full disclaimer, that's where I'm currently at ). The bag mounts will also accept a coil spring (think 63-72 C10/20 rear spring) so I have that option as well.